#210
The Making of a Murderer -- Inside the Steven Avery and Brendon Dassey Fram
Created 16 Jan. 2016

Dr. Phil concluded that Brendon Dassey was easily manipulated, showed a clip from the detectives' "interview" with Brendan that supported that conclusion. But the average person can't believe that someone could be so suicidally impressionable because the average person is not so suicidally impressionable.

After being imprisoned based on his "confession", Brendan was moved out of one prison into a more isolated prison because, at the first prison, Brendan was being taken advantage of by other prisoners, sexually and otherwise. The scummy prisoners were talking Brendan into doing what they wanted.

Courts carefully scrutinized the testimony of children who are witnesses to/oh abuse to ensure that the children were not led to say something happened, which a child is inclined to do because he/she wants to please adults. For example, asking a child, "Did that man touch your butt?" suggests to a child that the adult wants to hear what the question informed the child of: a man touched his butt. Even worse would be to ask a child, "How many times did Sherman* touch your butt?" and worse still, "Sherman touched your butt, right?"

*I'm not talking about a guard named Sherman who works here, even though he looks like he'd touch a kid's butt. :)

In the clip Dr. Phil showed, detectives did ask Dassey super leading questions. "Tell us about her being shot in the head," while standing over Brendan whose body language was that of total submission.

Brendan's parents ought to be slapped, and his lawyer sued for legal malpractice and disbarred for not being in the room with Brendan while he was "interrogated". At least in theory, they could have ensured that Brendan was telling the truth, even if the truth wasn't what the several detectives looming over Brendan wanted to hear.

Dr. Phil showed Brendan's writing, which had no punctuation and misspellings that I would have scoffed at in the fourth grade. By the way, when I was in the fourth grade, I totally believed outrageous lies my mom told all of her kids to discourage us from wanting to communicate with her family. She said they were child-sacrificing Satan worshipers who wanted to kill us. I'm hardly gullible, but like everyone as a child, I was. I believed Mom. Brendan clearly remains as gullible or more gullible. Thus, the story that detectives instructed Brendan to tell cannot be believed.

Without Brendan's story, the only evidence that suggests Avery committed the crime is the physical evidence. But that physical evidence was... obtained by the same detectives who obtained Brendan's non credible story.

"But there's the jailhouse snitch's testimony!" an idiot might say, because only an idiot would consider that as evidence.

In my own murder case, multiple jailhouse snitches came forward, claiming I confessed. One said that I told him that the murder was done by me and my brother because we had some sorta homosexual love triangle going on (neither my brother nor myself were/are gay). Another said that I had a helicopter coming to bust me out of the state mental hospital, after my mom had sex with him (she was issued a trespassing citation for that, as he was in a community corrections apartment). I couldn't even pay for an attorney, let alone pay for a helicopter or persuade someone to fly it for me.

Yet the prosecutor chose to use the testimony of a jailhouse snitch who'd been given money by mother (she was insane, testified against me herself) and testified that I told him me and my brother tied up and tortured the victim before killing him (the evidence said otherwise). The trial judge, after the trial, said that guy wasn't credible. An obvious liar.

The jailhouse snitch in Avery's case said Avery told him that he planned to rape, torture, and kill women, but there's no way to verify any part of that story. But Avery's snitch is still not credible: he's under duress, in prison, in a position where the system he testified for can and will reward him for giving them something they clearly wanted.

The law says that evidence can be excluded for being too prejudicial (inciting a negative emotional response that blinds a rational decision) and not very probative (proving a fact). The jailhouse snitch's testimony was clearly such evidence. It didn't help prove that Avery killed Theresa, but it would incite a negative emotional response. The testimony should never have been allowed and it's yet more evidence that the prosecutor was scrounging for dirty, inadmissible evidence.

"If the evidence was inadmissible, how did the prosecutor get away with using it?" you might ask.

Simple: most Wisconsin judges, at all levels, favor the prosecution. They will misrepresent the facts and/or ignore the applicable law in order to justify their favoritism. Many judges were prosecutors. The guy who prosecuted for my case (Scott Horne) is now a judge. He replaced the judge who presided over my case. As is Todd Bjerke, another former prosecutor in La Crosse County. Wisconsin judges are politicians, elected, just like the head prosecutors. They know each other, work, and play golf with each other, cooperate with each other, and ain't about to step on the toes of another politician that might politick against them for being "soft on crime."

There is no independent judiciary in Wisconsin.

So when Avery's prosecutor said Brendan Dassey wasn't taken advantage of and the jailhouse snitch's testimony wasn't prejudicial, the prosecutor got what he wanted. And the appellate judges let it stand.

Steven Avery's case is not the only high profile case that was unfairly resolved. There's Theodore Oswald's case and my case. Take a look at the Wisconsin's Supreme Court's decision in State v. Lindell, 629 N.W.2d 223, 245 Wis. 2d 689 (2001), where they denied me a new trial, despite an unfair jury selection process that they'd previously ruled (seven times in three years!) entitled a defendant a new trial. Many more low-profile cases are unfairly resolved.

What's curious to me is that all the media hype is about Steven Avery's case, with little mention of Brendan Dassey's unjust conviction, functioning to make important decisions like whether or not to make a statement or to plead guilty.

I hate rapists because I love women. But I also hate bullies, hypocrites, those who abuse their authority. No sane person can say that Steven Avery or Brendan Dassey were fairly convicted. There's plenty of reason to doubt either are guilty.

Just another bump on the road in the home of the salve and the land of the greed.

Sincerely,

Nate A. Lindell #303724
WSPF
P.O. Box 9900
Boscobel, WI 53805

P.S. Readers, please share this with Dr.Phil.com, his Avery link. Also lacrossetribune.com (editor) and Madison.com. Thanks.