Posted on 10/20/2016 3:01:53 PM PDT by BBell
Will convicted killer Brendan Dassey go free? Not if the Wisconsin Attorney Generals Office wins their appeal against his petition for a writ of habeas corpus. On Wednesday, they filed their opening brief in Dassey v. Dittman in a bid to keep him locked up.
A federal judge overturned Dasseys conviction in August, saying that his videotaped confession to the 2005 murder of photojournalist Teresa Halbach was involuntary under the Fifth and Fourteen Amendments.
But the AG is now requesting an oral argument, and a chance to prove that police did everything legit. They maintain that he fessed up to his role in the killing without undue prodding from investigators. From the opening brief:
Furthermore, Dassey volunteered the vast majority of the details of his story in response to open-ended questions, like what did you see? and what happens next? Supra pp. 1316. By the time the investigators asked their first leading question with a detail that Dassey had not already suggestedWho shot her in the head? SA 76Dassey had already described raping, stabbing, choking, cutting, tying up, and disposing of Halbach. Supra p. 16. Dasseys confession is therefore much more likely to be voluntary than simple yes-or-no answers to leading or suggestive questions.
Meanwhile, Dasseys current attorneys want him out on bond, and are, of course, working to keep him free for good.
Dassey and his uncle Steven Avery were both sentenced to life for Halbachs killing, but they continue to dispute their convictions. The case became famous thanks to the 2015 Netflix documentary Making a Murderer.
You can read the AGs opening brief here:
(Excerpt) Read more at lawnewz.com ...
$400,000 is an enormous amount of money in a small jurisdiction like that.
I would clear my calendar for the year for a $400,000 murder trial.
As a reminder, my jab at Wisconsin was mainly due to the John Doe raids.
http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/15/wisconsin-john-doe-leak-exposes-democrats-contempt-law/
Enormous amount for Avery, if he had been free to spend it like he wanted.
The two lawyers, though, were probably accustomed to higher living standards along with the accompanying higher costs. Weren’t they big city lawyers? Can’t remember, but most of them are, since they don’t like to live near junkyard scrap dealers as far as I know. Property values, scenery, you know the deal.
Not that I begrudge them their money. They’re entitled to it, most of the time. It’s just when they come to a sleepy little podunk town with good old boys in charge, they have, as you call it, an uphill battle. Steep uphill.
By the way, for the record my wife is an associate attorney, with 25 years of experience just at her current firm - almost 10 more years at another one before that.
The lawyer she works for now lives WAY beyond his means, so much so that he has trouble paying the two employees he’s got. And his firm brings in 7 figures a year in a relatively backwater place.
Taking a famous defendant in a high profile murder appeal didn't hurt the firm's drawing power, either, I'm sure. But Dassey, on the other hand, was a dumb kid with neither money nor notoriety.
So conspiracy was the route they took.
The problem is, that their conspiracy involves two jurisdictions and the FBI crime lab.
procedurally the case was screwed up all over the place.
Which the system is trying to remedy. That doesn't make Dassey innocent.
As for Avery, in my reply elsewhere here, I do not even touch on the evidence that the conspiracy theorists working on his behalf consider controversial: the bullet with the victims DNA, the car, the keys, EDTA, the supposed lack of blood evidence at the scene... Avery, Netflix and other various enablers cannot dispute the timeline, the contact, the fact that he was the last person to see her alive, her remains on his premises, and the testimony of his own relatives.
Discounting all of the "controversial" material, there is still enough of a case to be made.
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