Making a murder

[Spotcheck Billy]

I would also like to know if those folks think that Brendan Dassey is guilty as well.  After all, there is nothing to suggest (as far as I have seen) that, unlike Avery, he had run-ins with the law before this all happened, and there is literally no evidence to support he was involved other than his own highly questionable confession and his cousin's report to the police that he was acting strangely after Theresa's disappearance (which she recanted at trial).

and has no history of burning cats, burglary, assaulting women etc.

I agree that Avery likely is guilty, evidence likely was planted to insure a conviction but Dassey got screwed by the sheriffs and prosecutor who just wanted convictions whatever the cost

[mu03eng]

and has no history of burning cats, burglary, assaulting women etc.

I agree that Avery likely is guilty, evidence likely was planted to insure a conviction but Dassey got screwed by the sheriffs and prosecutor who just wanted convictions whatever the cost

Not to mention his first lawyer.

[jsglow]

Not to mention his first lawyer.

For sure.

Ironically, I innocently asked a close friend last week if she knew any of the players. I did this because of where she resides with her family and both her and her husband's profession.  The answer I received stunned me.  Apart from the Averys themselves, she knows everyone involved.  Victim's family. Prosecutors. Defense.  She has a very strong opinion on all but hates to re-live any of this.  While I'm pretty sure she or her husband aren't on scoop, I won't share any of her comments out of courtesy.  I'll just give her a hug next time I see her.

I guess the lesson for me is that this is close to home for many folks.  I'll try to remember that.

[warriorchick]

Don't forget the whole fact he's mentally challenged, per IQ.

Yep.  One of the primary reasons I called it "questionable".

[NavinRJohnson]

I would also like to know if those folks think that Brendan Dassey is guilty as well.  After all, there is nothing to suggest (as far as I have seen) that, unlike Avery, he had run-ins with the law before this all happened, and there is literally no evidence to support he was involved other than his own highly questionable confession and his cousin's report to the police that he was acting strangely after Theresa's disappearance (which she recanted at trial).

100%!

Coupe key points/questions, I would like to see answered in return...

1) How much of the 5 or so hours of his interview have any of you seen?

(The jury saw several hours of it, and obviously concluded that it was not "clearly" coerced, or coerced at all, as the mocumentary suggests.)

2) Why did he confess - with excruciatingly accurate details, all caught on camera - to a crime he didn't commit (and that supposedly didn't occur)?


I know many in the tinfoil hat brigade won't bother to listen to this, but you should. You don't necessarily need to agree with every element, but At the very least, I hope all would agree that this guy has done a very good and thorough job of dissecting these episodes and providing additional context/counter points that the filmmakers intentionally left out, and has some credibility and knowledge of the case, having covered it at the time (and holding a law degree).

http://www.newstalk1130.com/onair/common-sense-central-37717/rebutting-a-murderer-episode-9-14278246/

[warriorchick]

100%!

Coupe key points/questions, I would like to see answered in return...



2) Why did he confess - with excruciatingly accurate details, all caught on camera - to a crime he didn't commit (and that supposedly didn't occur)?



http://www.newstalk1130.com/onair/common-sense-central-37717/rebutting-a-murderer-episode-9-14278246/

Get off the pipe, man. 
Most of those "excruciatingly accurate details" were never corroborated by any other evidence, physical and otherwise, and they changed every time he told the story.

[NavinRJohnson]

... but Dassey got screwed by the sheriffs and prosecutor who just wanted convictions whatever the cost

How exactly did that happen?

Maybe the specific charges should have been slightly different, I dont really know, or know that it matters (1st degree, second degree, etc), but he is guilty of raping and killing that girl, burning her body and attempting to get rid of the evidence. You can say he got screwed, but saying it doesn't make it true. How exactly was he screwed?

[NavinRJohnson]

Get off the pipe, man. 
Most of those "excruciatingly accurate details" were never corroborated by any other evidence, physical and otherwise, and they changed every time he told the story.

Interesting. I notice you didn't answer the first question. You know the above how? From watching the complete interview? Reading the entire transcript? What specifically is your source for making that statement?

I'll ask again, compared to the 3-4 hours the jury saw, how much of the interview did you see? I would think that's a pretty easy one to answer.

Given the time it took you to respond, you obviously didn't listen to the link I shared. I'd recommend it.

BTw, you didn't actually answer the second question either...why did he confess?

[StillAWarrior]

100%!

Coupe key points/questions, I would like to see answered in return...

1) How much of the 5 or so hours of his interview have any of you seen?

(The jury saw several hours of it, and obviously concluded that it was not "clearly" coerced, or coerced at all, as the mocumentary suggests.)

2) Why did he confess - with excruciatingly accurate details, all caught on camera - to a crime he didn't commit (and that supposedly didn't occur)?

http://www.newstalk1130.com/onair/common-sense-central-37717/rebutting-a-murderer-episode-9-14278246/

Honestly, not too much of it...but probably double what they showed in the documentary.  And I read some of the transcript.

Honest question, along the lines of Chick's question:  in what ways was his confession "excruciatingly accurate"?  I'm not trolling or baiting...I'm genuinely interested.  And how do they know?  My impression -- admittedly from a documentary that I acknowledge was biased -- was that the way Dassey said it went down was extremely unlikely.  There was literally no blood in the room.  That's pretty hard to imagine if they killed her the way he said.  And no blood in the garage either.  And the bed didn't show any signs of someone being tied/chained to it.  What parts of Dassey's confession were supported by other evidence in the case?

[NavinRJohnson]

Honest question, along the lines of Chick's question:  in what ways was his confession "excruciatingly accurate"?  I'm not trolling or baiting...I'm genuinely interested.  And how do they know? 

He provided significant unsolicited details of what happened, that was corroborated by the physical evidence...items in the burn pit, cell phone, camera, tires, or where they put her in the car and how they disposed of the car under brush and a hood, etc.

I'm tellin you listen to the podcast I linked. You can hear it from the actual interview. The cop is of course asking him to provide details, but i don't see how anyone can conclude that he was being led or coerced in any way. Granted it also is a portion of the entire interview, but obviously provides a drastically different perspective vs what was hand picked by the show.

[mu03eng]

He provided significant unsolicited details of what happened, that was corroborated by the physical evidence...items in the burn pit, cell phone, camera, tires, or where they put her in the car and how they disposed of the car under brush and a hood, etc.

I'm tellin you listen to the podcast I linked. You can hear it from the actual interview. The cop is of course asking him to provide details, but i don't see how anyone can conclude that he was being led or coerced in any way. Granted it also is a portion of the entire interview, but obviously provides a drastically different perspective vs what was hand picked by the show.

I'm assuming from everything you've typed in the last couple of posts that you believe there was absolutely no issues with police or prosecutor actions in this case. Everything is 100% above board in your mind?

[jsglow]

100%!

Coupe key points/questions, I would like to see answered in return...

1) How much of the 5 or so hours of his interview have any of you seen?

(The jury saw several hours of it, and obviously concluded that it was not "clearly" coerced, or coerced at all, as the mocumentary suggests.)

2) Why did he confess - with excruciatingly accurate details, all caught on camera - to a crime he didn't commit (and that supposedly didn't occur)?


I know many in the tinfoil hat brigade won't bother to listen to this, but you should. You don't necessarily need to agree with every element, but At the very least, I hope all would agree that this guy has done a very good and thorough job of dissecting these episodes and providing additional context/counter points that the filmmakers intentionally left out, and has some credibility and knowledge of the case, having covered it at the time (and holding a law degree).

http://www.newstalk1130.com/onair/common-sense-central-37717/rebutting-a-murderer-episode-9-14278246/

Pretty damaging to Dassey.  I agree that he never read that book in question.  I agree that the portion of the interview cited seems like solid police questioning.  Clearly the documentary only showed the times interrogators 'lead him' during other segments.

Again, I have no doubt that the documentary was slanted.  That said, huge portions of this still don't add up for me.  I still believe that Lenk and Colburn are bad cops and that they may have supplemented evidence because they were going to 'make sure' Avery went away.  But in the end I do believe Avery is guilty of the crime.  Either way, as I said on p.2 of this thread, let's all remember that a documentary isn't subject to the rules of evidence and should not be taken as anything approaching a complete, unbiased account. 

[mu03eng]

He provided significant unsolicited details of what happened, that was corroborated by the physical evidence...items in the burn pit, cell phone, camera, tires, or where they put her in the car and how they disposed of the car under brush and a hood, etc.

I'm tellin you listen to the podcast I linked. You can hear it from the actual interview. The cop is of course asking him to provide details, but i don't see how anyone can conclude that he was being led or coerced in any way. Granted it also is a portion of the entire interview, but obviously provides a drastically different perspective vs what was hand picked by the show.

He also said that she was shot 3 times in the head and 7 times in the stomach area as well as having her throat cut.

Do you know how much high velocity blood splatter there is from a head shot?

Do you know how much you bleed from gut wounds?

Note these are rhetorical questions meant to highlight that if either of those things happened, there is no possible way there is no DNA evidence in the bedroom. The absence of evidence is evidence it didn't go down the way Dassey said it did.

He very well may be guilty as well, but that's a tough sell.

[keefe]

For sure.

Ironically, I innocently asked a close friend last week if she knew any of the players. I did this because of where she resides with her family and both her and her husband's profession.  The answer I received stunned me.  Apart from the Averys themselves, she knows everyone involved.  Victim's family. Prosecutors. Defense.  She has a very strong opinion on all but hates to re-live any of this.  While I'm pretty sure she or her husband aren't on scoop, I won't share any of her comments out of courtesy.  I'll just give her a hug next time I see her.

I guess the lesson for me is that this is close to home for many folks.  I'll try to remember that.

Glow

I would submit that this is close to home for all of us. A friend of mine is a Duke Law Grad who practiced in the South though now a member of Seattle's VC community. At the club we talked about this show and he commented from first-hand experience that the government prosecutorial machine is one of the most corrupt institutions in this country.

He opined that Avery is a worthy suspect but that the government's misconduct should have caused this to have been vacated. Unfortunately, for every citizen in this land, that isn't how these dialogues actually play out.

Curious if your friend thought Avery was guilty or her thoughts on the conduct of the investigation and trial?

 

[StillAWarrior]

He also said that she was shot 3 times in the head and 7 times in the stomach area as well as having her throat cut.

Do you know how much high velocity blood splatter there is from a head shot?

Do you know how much you bleed from gut wounds?

Note these are rhetorical questions meant to highlight that if either of those things happened, there is no possible way there is no DNA evidence in the bedroom. The absence of evidence is evidence it didn't go down the way Dassey said it did.

He very well may be guilty as well, but that's a tough sell.

I've previously speculated on how it might have gone down if Avery was not involved.  My speculation -- and that's all it is -- if Dassey was involved, is that he got involved after Avery already killed her.  That could explain why his details about how she was killed are so clearly contrary to the physical evidence (or lack of physical evidence, as the case may be).  It seems to me that most of what Dassey's confession was right about was the post-murder details.  The biggest problem with this theory, of course, is why he'd make up a story about being involved in the murder if he stumbled across the aftermath.  Then again, that's not nearly as big of a question is why he'd make up that story if he had no involvement whatsoever.

[Silkk the Shaka]

I'm not convinced that the law enforcement would need to be involved in the murder if Avery didn't do it.  If, for example, Avery's other nephew and the brother in law (or was he just the mother's boyfriend?) did it, it would not be unthinkable that the sheriff's department might believe with every fiber of their being that Avery did it.  The body was found burned in a nearby quarry -- pretty damning evidence against the last person known to have seen her alive.  The vehicle was found at some undisclosed, nearby location.  If they were totally convinced that Avery did it, perhaps they would move bones to his fire pit, move the vehicle to his property, plant the key, the bullet and the DNA.  I'm not saying this happened, but it's a possibility that is far short of actually killing an innocent woman to frame Avery.  I also understand that this is wild speculation.  I think the defense worked hard to suggest that one or two people could have done this without the involvement of everyone else in the department or prosecution.

This might be a little late, but my thoughts exactly.

[jsglow]

Glow

I would submit that this is close to home for all of us. A friend of mine is a Duke Law Grad who practiced in the South though now a member of Seattle's VC community. At the club we talked about this show and he commented from first-hand experience that the government prosecutorial machine is one of the most corrupt institutions in this country.

He opined that Avery is a worthy suspect but that the government's misconduct should have caused this to have been vacated. Unfortunately, for every citizen in this land, that isn't how these dialogues actually play out.

Curious if your friend thought Avery was guilty or her thoughts on the conduct of the investigation and trial?

 

We didn't get there.  I could tell that it was painful for her given her personal relationship with the Halbach family.  She mostly offered her informed opinion on the various attorneys.

[mikekinsellaMVP]

Slight tangent, but on topic.  A little over a year ago I was summoned for jury duty in Cook County.  While I was ultimately not selected for the jury, I was in the 40-person pool for a first-degree murder case.  Despite mixed feelings at the time about not being selected (eager as I was to participate in the justice system for the first time, a capital murder case was definitely jumping in the deep end), I now wonder how serving on that jury would have affected my perspective on this case.

Anyone here served on a homicide jury?

[Spotcheck Billy]

How exactly did that happen?

Maybe the specific charges should have been slightly different, I dont really know, or know that it matters (1st degree, second degree, etc), but he is guilty of raping and killing that girl, burning her body and attempting to get rid of the evidence. You can say he got screwed, but saying it doesn't make it true. How exactly was he screwed?

other than 1 of his questionable confessions there is zero knowledge that Halbach was raped. If Dassey had bleach all over his pants from sanitizing the garage so well that none of Halbach's blood was found there, how was there deer blood splatters in the garage?

[Benny B]

Slight tangent, but on topic.  A little over a year ago I was summoned for jury duty in Cook County.  While I was ultimately not selected for the jury, I was in the 40-person pool for a first-degree murder case.  Despite mixed feelings at the time about not being selected (eager as I was to participate in the justice system for the first time, a capital murder case was definitely jumping in the deep end), I now wonder how serving on that jury would have affected my perspective on this case.

Anyone here served on a homicide jury?

Nope and never will.  A very close relative of mine was kidnapped, beaten, raped, chained to a tree and murdered... not to mention, I'm a stubborn, cynical, know-it-all bastard who thinks logically, considers all possible permutations and has zero tolerance for attorneys who have high opinions of themselves.

In short, people like me are the reason that peremptory challenges exist.

[Eldon]

Couple of random thoughts based on the last couple pages.

1) Biased =/= False

2) Dassey doesn't strike me as the reading type and to be sure, that book (Kiss the Girls) was made into a movie in 1997.  I read a few weeks ago that cutting off a lock of the rape-victim's hair (which Dassey claimed to do) is not in the book, but is in the movie.  Never seen the movie, but if his account matches the movie that could explain why he was able to so fluidly come up with a detailed story.

3) Regarding IQ, I think people put too much faith in the measure.  Avery may have an IQ of 70, but that doesn't mean that he is mentally handicapped.  He's not stupid enough to not clean up after himself.  IQ scores are normalized at 100 with a standard deviation of 15.  IQ being normally distributed, this would mean that Avery's IQ is in the bottom 5%, which is 1/20.  Randomly select 20 people; one of those people has the same IQ as Avery.  My point here is that he is probably "smarter" than you think he is (I bet he knows more about fixing cars than most on this board).

4) Question for the Avery-is-guilty clan: If God Himself came down and told you both:
a) Avery is in fact guilty of the murder
and
b) The Manitowoc Sheriff office planted boatload of evidence in order to ensure a conviction

EDIT: Do you still think Avery should remain behind bars?

I ask this because I think what may be at the center of these arguments is the dispute about the  general principle of letting known murderers off based on police misconduct, legal technicalities, etc.  Of course, if you have a personal connection to the victim (as glow mentioned) this question becomes infinitely harder to answer, well, for me anyway.

[Eldon]

5) Also, while I'm thinking about this case, I wanted to mention that I don't think the 'stubborn juror' argument carries much weight.  I mean, stubborn jurors are not particular to this case.  I believe that the judge should have allowed the jury to have come from a different county, but he decided against it.  I disagree with his decision, but I am no legal expert.  And furthermore, it seems that all of the appellate courts in the state agreed with his decision.  And they also seem to have agreed that there was no misconduct in Avery's case.  It's hard for me to swallow that the entire state is out to get Avery.  But, at the same time, it's also hard for me to swallow that there was not blatant police misconduct in this case, thereby tarnishing Avery's right to a fair trial.

6) As a similar 'appeal-to-authority'-type argument, I think there may be something fishy to the Dassey confession.  The legal clinic at Northwestern law school would not have taken up Dassey's fight (before it was trendy to rally behind him) if they did not think that the confession was coerced.

[Eldon]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/theres-one-big-problem-crucial-220545816.html

OnMilwaukee.com reports that court papers from Avery’s appeal show prison nurse Marlene Kraintz was set to testify in Avery’s trial for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach that she punctured a hole in the test tube of Avery’s blood, and in fact such holes are commonplace, because that’s often how the blood gets put in the tube in the first place.

[jsglow]

Eldon,

To briefly respond to your questions I don't think Avery should be released assuming God tells us he did it.  I'm more disappointed that it seems likely to me that some level of police malfeasance (or at least gross incompetence that could be reasonably interpreted that way) almost certainly took place.  I still think the story line proffered doesn't match what exactly happened.  I'm highly skeptical about the lack of blood in certain spots, for example.   I'm also firmly of the opinion that the various reviews that took place afterward by independent parties (let's use the appellate court, for example) were legitimate and competent.  No way the entire system is 'in the tank'.  Lastly, filmmakers can and do masterfully get the reaction they want.  Again, they present only what they want to present.

[brewcity77]

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/theres-one-big-problem-crucial-220545816.html

OnMilwaukee.com reports that court papers from Avery’s appeal show prison nurse Marlene Kraintz was set to testify in Avery’s trial for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach that she punctured a hole in the test tube of Avery’s blood, and in fact such holes are commonplace, because that’s often how the blood gets put in the tube in the first place.

That's hilarious. As someone who worked in a lab and has drawn blood, that's laughable. Those types of tube have a very spongy type of rubber at the top. Yes, a vacutainer needle is inserted into the tube in order to fill it with blood, but it's not like there's a notably visible hole left behind, and definitely not a hole that leaves residual blood around the insertion point.

The inserted needle coupled with the vacuum pressure the empty tube has inside it is how the blood is drawn out of the line in the first place. But the issue was the visible blood speck at the top of the EDTA tube. I've drawn that type of tube 100 times and never left a blood spot. If there's a blood spot, either the person who drew it was inept (it is a prison nurse...) and was somehow dripping blood after finishing the draw or it was tampered with.

And none of her testimony would explain why the seal on the evidence container was broken in the first place.

Not saying Avery didn't do it, but someone tampered with that vial, and no amount of prison nurse testimony changes that. I'm not saying that from conjecture, I'm saying that because I dealt with literally thousands of these tubes every week as a medical laboratory processing tech, because I've drawn hundreds of these tubes myself, and because my wife's degree is in medical laboratory technology.