A bit of a slide, but I think worth mentioning. This weekend, I watched the 2nd season of the Netflix series, "Making a Murderer". There are some pretty shocking revelations in the series, but one hit me the hardest with its relation to topics we've discussed here in the past.
We've talked about the use of unwilling participants being "convinced" to cooperate in certain schemes through the threat of prosecution of pedo material or recorded imagery of committed acts. Speculation that certain judges make decisions based upon these threats, the pizza gate shooter comes to mind, the political branch of the Franklin Coverup conspiracy, members of Congress forced to play ball ... etc. Think of pedo, Denny Hastert and the unlikely rise to a couple of heartbeats from the Whitehouse of a former high school teacher/wrestling coach to his lofty position. Think of J. Reno and stories of her past behavior.
I had a conversation with a family member once where I explained that I thought many in power as elected officials and appointees are in those places not because of their talent, skills, integrity ... but instead, because of their malleability due to their past. Some of the evidence eventually used against them may have been due to their own behavior, while others may be victims of evidence fabricated by controllers.
Think of Nevada Senator Pat Geary played by G.D. Spradlin in the opening scenes of "The Godfather II". In the opening scenes, the Senator was a racist bully that attempted to extort large sums of money from the family in exchange for a lucrative boxing license within the state of Nevada (part of the family's expansion program). Overnight, the good senator evolved into sniveling and highly-cooperative supporter when photographic evidence emerged that he had murdered a young beauty during a sexual encounter. Of course, the drugged senator had no clue that The Family had "arranged" the entire setup. I think this example, though fictional, is a powerful lesson on coercive persuasion and how it is likely heavily used around the world in government and business.
I say all of that as a tie-in to the latest episodes of "Making a Murderer." For those not familiar with the story, a brief synopsis. The main character Steve Avery served 18 years in prison for a brutal attack and rape of a young lady that was later proven to have been committed by someone else.
Avery was released and he sued the local county that prosecuted him for the slipshod way they handled the case - winning a $36 million judgment. Almost immediately, and literally days before he was to receive the funds, he was arrested - accused in the murder a young lady hired to take photos of a car he was selling through his family business.
The series is a story of his claims that he was set up. I'm not going to discuss whether he was guilty or not, because #1, I'm not convinced one way or the other yet, and #2 it's not my point.
The point is that Steve's nephew, Brendan Dassey, who was 16 at the time and with a measured IQ of 81 or 83 was also caught up in the accusation and has been in prison since 2005/6 for something he may not have done.
Regardless of who is innocent or guilty, the show has shown an amazing list of incredible mistakes or provocations/criminal acts made by LE and the prosecutor's office in the case.
The events revealed in the latter episodes of Season II illustrate that the prosecutor's main witness who pieced together the highly critical timeline of events is the older brother of Brendan, Bobby Dassey. The new defense attorney Kathleen Zellner revealed that Bobby Dassey had some incredible information on his computer and that information was apparently illegally withheld by the prosecutor since its discovery shortly after the crime in 2005. A CD of this information and the investigator's analysis of the computer and its contents was withheld, and the prosecutor claimed in a memo to the defense attorneys of proposed pre-trial stipulations that, "THE COMPUTER'S CONTENTS HAVE NO BEARING ON THE TRIAL." However, the recently revealed investigator's report included a list of topics including many listings of child pornography, and specific to the trial, images and stories of female mutilation techniques (snuff film kind of imagery). The list itself was absolutely horrifying. The point being that if this information had been properly revealed, Bobby Dassey himself should have been a suspect (he fits the revealed timeline) and certainly would have been completely disqualified as a credible witness during the Avery trial. The implied accusation is that LE, in an attempt to frame Avery because of the $36M lawsuit, they and the prosecutor's office "convinced" Bobby Dassey to play ball or suffer the consequences of possessing the illegal material. To my knowledge, he has never been charged with possession of the horrible/illegal imagery.
I immediately thought of how this was a point-in-case of how power is swayed through such illegal manuevers. There is so much more to this story and I encourage you to invest the time in watching both seasons. It will be interesting to see what unfolds.
One final note, the smarmy/arrogant prosecutor, Ken Kratz was forced to resign in 2010 in the midst of a Wisconsin DOJ investigation of how he used his office to coerce potential defendants into sexual favors in exchange for reduced/dropped sentences. Here is one of several articles that discusses his issues. the man is a danger.
https://www.newsweek.com/steven-avery-lawyer-says-prosecutor-sexual-misconduct-undermines-conviction-490010.