Posted on 10/20/2016 3:01:53 PM PDT by BBell
Will convicted killer Brendan Dassey go free? Not if the Wisconsin Attorney General’s 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 Dassey’s 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. 13–16. By the time the investigators asked their first leading question with a detail that Dassey had not already suggested—“Who shot her in the head?” SA 76—Dassey had already described raping, stabbing, choking, cutting, tying up, and disposing of Halbach. Supra p. 16. Dassey’s confession is therefore much more likely to be voluntary than simple “yes-or-no answers” to “leading or suggestive” questions.
Meanwhile, Dassey’s 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 Halbach’s 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 AG’s opening brief here:
(Excerpt) Read more at lawnewz.com ...
Anyone who watched the tape of Brendan Dassey being interviewed.
Is this the one featured on Netflix?
His jurors have been interviewed about the so-called "pressure tactics" used. Those who've been willing to speak have made it clear that the parts of the interviews edited for public consumption completely mischaracterized the nature of the questioning. As the foreman has said: "We watched all four hours. I invite everyone who thinks he was railroaded to do the same."
Netflix is an increasingly destructive force in American culture. Luckily, you don't have to watch most of their in-house produced liberal propaganda.
If they did everything that was “claimed” in the “confession” they did one heck of clean up job in house.
So are you saying it was okay for his court appointed attorney and their paid investigator to work for the DA’s office to strengthen the case against his uncle? If so then why was he removed form the case and was the basis for the US Courts overturning the conviction?
GUILTY
If you think Steven Avery is innocent, you are, at best, a fool. Very nearly nothing presented in the series is anything more than propaganda put out by either The Innocence Project or his lawyers. Steven Avery was the last person known to have seen the victim alive. The timeline of her going to his garage agrees with the time of her death. He took active measures to hide his phone conversations with the deceased leading up to her murder. Her remains were discovered (contrary to completely false reporting by his lawyers) in a fire pit in front of his own home. His efforts to scrub the scene were attested to by his own relatives.
He completely controlled the crime scene. Of course he did his best to clean it up.
Who uses chlorine bleach to clean the floors of his garage?
No one.
So are you saying it was okay for his court appointed attorney and their paid investigator to work for the DA’s office to strengthen the case against his uncle?
If his attorney believed that was in the best interest of his client, there is nothing ethically questionable about that per se. And there is certainly nothing illegal or ethically questionable about a DA seeking that kind of assistance from one of the accessories to a crime. It happens, literally, every day.
If so then why was he removed form the case and was the basis for the US Courts overturning the conviction?
You are confusing overturning a case on the basis of a lack of competent counsel with innocence. They're not the same thing. I don't say his lawyer was a great lawyer. That doesn't make him a villain, or mean that he did anything improper; just not a terribly good attorney.
The scenes shown in the documentary, where the police seem to be "feeding" Dassey answers were a confirmatory part of the interrogation. They are reminding him of his own statements, previously made and freely offered (and not shown on the video.) There is nothing improper about that, either. Again, it happens in literally every police interrogation.
After a freeform interrogation in which the confession comes from the accused, it is usually followed up with statements like: "Then you went to location X and did Y." The interviewee is free to correct or clarify that statement.
The freeform interrogation was not shown by Netflix. Why not?
The jurors saw all of the videotape, and they concluded he was not led. You saw twenty minutes of interrogation which omits crucial parts, and has an editorial voice-over. I have more confidence in the jurors than I have in you.
Steven Avery is guilty, and Dassey was an accessory. Whether the crime was committed in the way described by Dassey is immaterial to the question of Avery's overwhelming guilt, because neither Dassey's testimony nor his confession were used in Steven Avery's trial.
Who cares about this schmuck. We got a nation to save!
You have been presented a film, produced with the intent of putting the kid’s guilt into question. The dice are loaded. Its propaganda, just like a pro-Hillary election ad. I once lived and taught in Manitowoc, am very familiar with the case, and, if the kid is released because of this film, then I hope he goes to live with the saps and families of those who freed him.
8 million dollars and a previous wrongful conviction says otherwise.
Wisconsin is full of crazy power mad authoritarians. I don’t know what it is about that state, but it attracts that sort of courtroom crazies.
Avery didn’t kill anybody, and his nephew with a far below-average IQ surely didn’t. I don’t care what the court jesters said. They’re cut from the same cloth that Comey and Lynch are.
Why did they make the movie? Profit, sure, but if there was nothing there it would be easy to see. Like all the “didn’t do nothin’s” and the “gentle giants” with their “hands up don’t shoot”.
This could have all been avoided if they would have given him a Miranda Warning.
You share the same mindset as murderer Steven Avery, who believes that his previous wrongful conviction is a lifetime Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.
"All bitches owe me."
A charming man.
Now, other than an ad hominem attack against everyone in Wisconsin, where is your exculpatory evidence? Netflix? The Innocence Project? Two ACLU lawyers? (talk about court jesters)
Give me a break.
Dassey interviews (unedited):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYOaIDxirHE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJt6j5E1y_s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-Y_CCkMv3Q
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTipx6RfTC0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nN-4qFhRttE
Congratulations!
You share the same mindset as murderer Steven Avery, who believes that his previous wrongful conviction is a lifetime Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.
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Cheers! Vote for Hillary! The State is never wrong!
Are we done with the stupidity yet? If so, let me know.
When your defense theory is that the police set you up because they have a beef, you’re climbing a serious up hill battle. Are there some crooked cops? Yes. But no reasonable juror is going to believe that there was a vast conspiracy among the Sheriff’s office to lock a guy back up over a conviction from 20+ years ago. A jury is just not going to buy that.
If I recall, I believe he paid his lawyers with money from his settlement. The lawyers probably thought, well, here’s a big pot of money, so we’ve got to come up with something to defend this guy (And yes, I’m a lawyer so I can tell you that money does talk). So conspiracy was the route they took.
My problem is that procedurally the case was screwed up all over the place. They should have given Dassey a Miranda Warning, and the logs and investigation should have been tightened up. But, this is what you get in small jurisdictions.
I am not questioning his guilty, but that Sheriff’s Office created this mess.
If I recall, I believe he paid his lawyers with money from his settlement. The lawyers probably thought, well, here’s a big pot of money...
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From a possible 8 million dollars, Avery had to settle for $400,000 to pay the attorneys. Not that big a pot for fancy lawyers. Saved the state a lot of money, though.
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