re: New Netflix docu-series "Making a Murderer" (Spoilers)

saw an article about how a juror straight up admitted he/she felt pressure for the guilty verdict even though they felt he was set up

i have no idea what to believe

The whole way they treated the nephew was wrong. There was lots of sketchy shite. One of the jurors was related to a sheriff's deputy from manitowoc and another was a wife of a clerk of court employee.

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The whole way they treated the nephew was wrong. There was lots of sketchy shite. One of the jurors was related to a sheriff's deputy from manitowoc and another was a wife of a clerk of court employee.

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So what. Should everybody that is related to people that work for the city or county be disqualified? That just doesn't make any sense. It would have been different if those one or two people hung the jury, but it was a unanimous decision. It would have been bias to dismiss people like this and just shows how little people understand about the voir dire process. It isn't sketchy at all. The last jury I was on had a lady whose husband was a cop, one guy was a guard at Angola and another was retired game/wildlife whatever they are called. This was in a parish (East Baton Rouge) that has more than 10x the population of that county. They had some extreme views, but weren't any different than anybody else.

How did they treat him wrong? They took him and his mother to a resort. He was questioned in a suite. His mother consented to the interview. He was fed and given something to drink. He was never touched or put under duress. He caved under the lightest interrogation procedures I've ever seen. No bright lights, overt threats, nothing. They just kept asking him questions. He is a simple kid and he cracked easily. People may not like the results, but the cops did nothing wrong..

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How did they treat him wrong?

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The police interrogated a minor with an IQ of 70 (borderline mentally retarded) without consent of his guardian and no legal representation at all. Filmed the whole thing, and then submitted this confession as evidence.

I feel bad for that kid.

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The police interrogated a minor with an IQ of 70 (borderline mentally retarded) without consent of his guardian and no legal representation at all. Filmed the whole thing, and then submitted this confession as evidence. I feel bad for that kid.

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The kid is a rapist and a murderer, convicted of both. His mom was outside the room the 1st time he confessed. She consented to the interview. They were brought to a resort, so the would be more comfortable and the family wouldn't know or influence them somehow.

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How did they treat him wrong?

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His lawyer worked against to make a deal with the Avery prosecutor to talk him into confessing.

His lawyer also intentionally allowed him to be interrogated while not present. You think that's a sound decisions for a lawyer of a minor with a sub-70 IQ?

He has new lawyers now who claim to have found exculpatory evidence.

His old lawyer...

So the other thing that wasn't [addressed at trial] — and the state really had no explanation for it — [was]: If Avery was the killer and he burned the body behind his garage, why would he move just a few of them, and put them in his burn barrel, and a few of them and put them in some quarry a quarter-, half-mile away? You would think that if you're going to try and dispose of evidence, you're not going to leave the majority of it right outside your garage, right? They never offered anything to explain that, and, in fact, in my closing argument I challenged the prosecution to explain to this jury. The way it goes in Wisconsin is, because the state has the burden of proof, they get to finish the closing arguments with a rebuttal argument. So they make their opening closing statement, and then the defense goes, and then they can follow up with their final. [In my closing statement, I said] "He's going to get up here in a few more minutes and I challenge him to explain to you why these bones were moved."

Because there was absolutely no doubt that the bones had been moved, certainly to the burn barrel and possibly a third location as well. The state never even offered [an explanation about] that; they completely ignored it. Didn't even address it, and neither did they [address it] at the Dassey trial, I believe.

The other thing that wasn't covered in the documentary is, we presented an expert who's from Canada, and he had never testified for anybody but the Crown, the prosecution, before. He was really a world expert on finding cremains outside and in various locations [where one might] try to hide and dispose of a body. And he testified consistently with what we had found in the literature, which is: to burn a body takes either extremely high heat, or a very long, sustained, moderate medium-high type of heat, and it would be very difficult to burn a body in an open pit — an open fire — particularly to the degree that these bone fragments showed. At a crematorium, for instance, they use extremely high heat, and it still takes several hours.

Here, you would have had to continually stoke a fire over, and over, and over for 12, 14, 16 hours — something like that — in order to produce this [type of effect]. And there was no evidence that any fire [like that] had [taken place]. There was a bonfire, but there was no evidence that there was any intense fire like that for such a long, sustained period of time.

In a pre-trial ruling, the judge denied us the opportunity to directly point the finger of guilt at one or more possible suspects, and we thought there were other possible suspects — people who had access, opportunity, could have done it. But the judge ruled, "Well, you can't prove that these other individuals had a motive to do so." And we said, "Well, wait a minute: the state doesn't have to prove the defendant had any motive, that's not a requirement, so why should the defense be required to prove the specific motive of a third party before we can even show the jury that there could have been someone else that may have done this?"

Because, in a very high-publicity case like this, that was what I thought was going to be the biggest problem. The jury would be asking, "Well, if he didn't do it, who did?" So, we were not allowed to direct evidence, but we were allowed to raise [questions].

The thing that never made sense to me was: there was evidence that her friends had been calling and her voicemail was giving a message saying, "This mailbox is full." There was no more space, so they couldn't leave messages. Well we used the — I think it was Cingular Wireless at that point — to show that the data capability of her mailbox was not full when they looked three or four days later. So, if people were getting those messages — and there was no dispute that they were — then somebody had deleted some messages in order to free up the space that they later saw was there.

Then, I don't recall exactly how this developed, but I believe it was the morning of November 1st or November 2nd, and she wasn't reported missing to the police until the 3rd. Perhaps the morning of the 2nd there was an indication that somebody had called in and actually listened to or accessed the voicemail box and that was very important, I thought. Their theory was she was dead on the 31st. Well, who had access to her voicemail and why would somebody have listened — I think it was 8 a.m. on that morning — when she isn't reported missing for another 36 or more hours. Nobody came forward and had any explanation for that.

There's a reason the cops and DA always investigate first - family, relatives and acquaintances...

....because that's who kills you - people you know, who know you, who have developed a motive or dislike for you -

So, unless you are in a gang, being murdered by a complete stranger is actually rare.

The numbers back it up. Despite sensational stories, most people are murdered by a loved one or a family member or a friend.

Average middle-class women in Wisky/Minny aren't murdered by strangers.

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age middle-class women in Wisky/Minny aren't murdered by strangers

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The lady who was raped in the first case was almost murdered by a stranger.