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Dead Certainty: How “Making a Murderer” Goes Wrong

67 points by cgoodmac 11y ago

chillingeffect 11y ago
1. In the American system, we are biased for innocence, so there's nothing wrong with the documentarians for operating on that assumption. 2. The documentarians omit, while the police fabricate. The documentarians are not mirroring the entity they set out to indict. 3. 3 to 4 days is not a terribly long time for a jury to deliberate on a case like this.
- bryanlarsen 11y ago
  In the American system, there are many biases for guilt that counteract the explicit "beyond a reasonable doubt" bias. For example: - prosecution presents first. (Google Anchoring, Confirmation Bias) - police are allowed to lie to witnesses to extract confessions, along with many other psychological tricks - prosecutorial immunity - election of prosecutors based on conviction rate And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
  - dpark 11y ago
    Prosecution presents first so that defense can rebut. You want prosecution to go first so that when they are done, defense can dismantle the prosecution's case effectively. If you let defense present first, what are they even going to say? "My client didn't do it. He was at home with his wife, who can corroborate. Uh, I guess the defense rests." There are lots of problems with our legal system. This isn't one of them.
    - pdabbadabba 11y ago
      You're exactly right--if the defense and prosecution each get one chance to present their evidence, it makes the most sense, and is most defendant friendly, for the defense to go second. But if we're thinking more broadly about how the system could be reformed, we should remember that there are more than two options here. For example, The defense could present first and then have an opportunity for rebuttal after the prosecution presents its case. I'm not sure this would be near the top of my list of proposed criminal justice reforms, though.
      - gherkin0 11y ago
        > I'm not sure this would be near the top of my list of proposed criminal justice reforms, though. Though, if it has a positive effect, it seems like it would be a cheap and easy reform to make. I think it's pretty reasonable that the defense be the first to speak and the last to speak to the jury in a criminal trial, even if its gets extra timeslots compared to the prosecution.
      - Retric 11y ago
        Each side does get to show opening remarks before presenting the bulk of evidence. And, each side can cross examine witnesses which create much more of a back and forth than you might think. IMO, the real bias is expert witnesses get preselected and paid, so they tend to favor a specific side. This has allowed a lot of pseudoscience to be shown a trial and enter the literature. Forensic science is rarely validated because that’s just not its job. Consider, two people that compare hair samples, but one always supports the prosecutors case. Now, which one do you think gets more work? When someone says something is inconclusive that's it they not going to get paid to show up at the trial just there initial 'investigation'.
        dpark 11y ago
        > Forensic science is rarely validated because that’s just not its job. And this is as terrifying as the fact that experts are selected specifically to support the side that pays them. Expert witnesses should probably be selected and paid by the court, which would at least help a bit. But the pseudoscience stuff horrifies me. The whole hair comparison thing is bunk and a lot of people were put in jail on the supposed strength of this "science". Ditto for so many other forensic "sciences". https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-fo...
    - bryanlarsen 11y ago
      Yes, it'd be illogical for defense to go first. Regardless, it's a huge advantage for prosecution to go first.
      - dpark 11y ago
        I just don't see how the alternative could even be workable. It's also an advantage to get the last word, so I'm not sure there's a problem here.
        aljones 11y ago
        Getting the first word does not imply that you don't get the last too.
        dpark 11y ago
        I never said it did. I'm not sure it's useful for defense to get the first word, though, since the entire point of the defense is to rebut the prosecution.
  - cli 11y ago
    > prosecution presents first. (Google Anchoring, Confirmation Bias) How else would you do this? There is a presumption of innocence; the defendant needs to defend against the arguments made by the prosecution.
  - kenbellows 11y ago
    Prosecution presents first because they have the burden of proof. They are the ones making a claim. The defense has no claim to make, they are simply responding to a claim by the prosecution, so of course the prosecution must present first.
  - aljones 11y ago
    This has a nice sampling of that iceberg. http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Preface.pdf http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Prefa...
- rhino369 11y ago
  >1. In the American system, we are biased for innocence, so there's nothing wrong with the documentarians for operating on that assumption. The presumption of innocence is different than only hearing one side of the story. And in journalism you aren't supposed to operate with blatant bias. Like the article explains, we allow the defense to zealously advocate because there is another side to counter it.
  - hellofunk 11y ago
    I don't think anyone is confusing this documentary with journalism. The movie was a work of entertainment, not investigation.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - rhino369 11y ago
      It sounds exactly like that is happening. People are creating letter campaigns to free the subject of the documentary.
- petilon 11y ago
  >> In the American system, we are biased for innocence Not enough, in my opinion. Watch this PBS show about the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, put to death by Texas for the arson-murder of his three little girls: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-by-fire/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-by-fire/ The sole basis of conviction was arson science, and as the PBS show explains it isn't much of a science at all. This is a sad story of an innocent man put to death by the state of Texas. Five years later, with a Texas commission working inexorably toward a formal acknowledgment that the state had executed an innocent man — surely a watershed in the history of American capital punishment — Governor Rick Perry pulled a bureaucratic maneuver that effectively stopped the investigation in its tracks. More on that here: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-cameron-todd-willingham-rick-perry-execution-20140806-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-cameron-todd...
- kbenson 11y ago
  > 2. The documentarians omit, while the police fabricate. The documentarians are not mirroring the entity they set out to indict. The point, as I see it, is that you need to also identify your source for your believe that the police fabricated. Is it entirely informed by the documentary? If so, then that's circular logic. If you believe the police fabricated evidence because of the documentary in question, then it's hardly a defense against the charge the documentary manipulated opinion through the careful curation of presented evidence. Personally, regardless of specific opinion, I'm a little startled at how many people here are using just the documentary to explain their view that the police obviously fabricated evidence, which is then used as evidence that the article in question, regarding the trustworthiness of the documentary in question, has less merit. It's disconcerting, but hopefully it's just a case of people not explaining their other sources of information.
felixgallo 11y ago
The article focuses too much on Avery's actual guilt or innocence, in my opinion. It's possible he murdered her. It's possible he didn't. But what the documentary really showed me was how utterly corrupt, venal, incompetent and evil the entire system of justice can be, from the 'court appointed lawyers' all the way up to the sheriffs that clearly, unequivocally framed Avery. And it's fundamental to the principles of the legal system that the police and the prosecution must not be permitted to do that; and that we, as a society, must find some way to make that impossible and to punish those who violate the trust. Even if one, or ten, or a hundred believed-murderers go free.
- toddmorey 11y ago
  I was also disappointed that the documentary took a bias towards Avery being innocent. I wish they'd left it more undecided, more murky, and more honest. Even if there was compelling video evidence, it would still be a fascinating story of incompetence and misconduct throughout the investigation. Even if you believe Avery to be guilty (as I lean towards), you can't help but to sit in awe as officials motivated to lock up their case almost cost themselves a verdict based on their own actions. It's a story with no heroes.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
  - kenbellows 11y ago
    Are you implying that this kind of corruption happens in every single investigation? No one should be prosecuted in cases where it is present, that's for sure. But I don't see how that leads to the conclusion that "no one should be prosecuted for anything so long as this kind of corruption exists". Plenty of investigations and prosecutions are conducted above board with no corruption to be found.
  - ssmoot 11y ago
    As far as is reasonable/moral. You're using a slippery slope fallacy.
  - 11y ago
rmacleod 11y ago
felixgallo - this is the point I've been making to all my friends and family - the no 1. point of the documentary was to shine a light on the broken system itself... the fact that everyone is talking about the case shows that ppl really don't care or don't get it...
- tptacek 11y ago
  Part of the point of the article is that people don't care because the creators of the series don't want them to; the documentary isn't structured to raise those questions.
seibelj 11y ago
Interesting article, but my opinion after seeing the documentary is that there is enough reasonable doubt to declare Avery not guilty. Maybe he did do it, but with all of the bullshit that happened during the investigation (the car key in plain sight, the cop calling in the license plate days before the car was officially found, the evidence tape cut on the blood vial, absence of blood in the bedroom despite the bloody and vicious confession from the nephew) the whole thing is beyond ridiculous.
- tptacek 11y ago
  Well, the point of the article is that the documentary is structured to ensure that's the attitude you come away from it with. If you've listened to Serial too, the comparison is pretty stark. In every episode, Koenig nurtures doubts about Syed's innocence, and continually returns to the most difficult challenges to the case for his innocence. Koenig does this for reasons beyond integrity: it's also the reason Serial is a more effective true crime story (you really want to hear the next episode because you have no idea where the story might go, which is just not the case for the Avery case). For me, the facts that Ricciardi and Demos left out are damning in pretty much the same way as the facts they reveal about misconduct in the Avery case: * Avery is forensically tied to Halbach's car in ways that do withstand scrutiny * Avery had repeatedly contacted Halbach, sometimes with caller ID blocked, and, despite Halbach's discomfort with him, had specifically requested that she come out to his place the day of the murder * There is physical evidence that corroborates specific, idiosyncratic details of the story Dassey told investigators
  - ZeroGravitas 11y ago
    > * There is physical evidence that corroborates specific, idiosyncratic details of the story Dassey told investigators Could you expand on this? The prosecution made this claim, but I've not found anything to back it up. The closest I've found is an interchange that went roughly Q: where in the car did he put the body, A: in the back. Which I think is more a case of that being the only place anyone would ever put a body in a car. If he'd said "on the roof" or "dragged behind in a trailer" then that might actually be unexpected info.
  - 11y ago
gizmo 11y ago
The article equates prosecutorial misconduct to force a guilty sentence with editorial choices in a documentary. Because both show "bias". In the one case it's utterly illegal and it undermines the moral validity of the justice system and in the other case we're talking about a simple exercise of free speech, but apparently this distinction isn't meaningful in the eyes of the author. The quote in question: "The point of being scrupulous about your means is to help insure accurate ends, whether you are trying to convict a man or exonerate him. Ricciardi and Demos instead stack the deck to support their case for Avery, and, as a result, wind up mirroring the entity that they are trying to discredit." This equivocation is morally repugnant. The article also gets their facts wrong. They claim: "Investigators subsequently found DNA from Avery’s perspiration on the hood latch—evidence that would be nearly impossible to plant.". This is a fabrication. There is no distinction between blood DNA, sweat DNA, skin DNA. DNA was found under the hood latch, but no blood was seen. Hence a logical conjecture is that the source is perspiration, but it could have been any other source. As for it being hard to plant, that's laughable. Simply swipe a t-shirt or dirty sock on any surface and it will leave DNA behind. None of Avery's finger prints were found on the car, and finger prints ARE hard to plant. In contrast to DNA, which IS trivial to plant if you have access to somebody's apartment. The charge that the documentary is bad because doesn't display a clear timeline of the events doesn't make sense, because it's the responsibility of the prosecution to explain what happened, and they didn't have a single narrative that was consistent with all the evidence. Which is why the prosecution's story of what happened was completely different in Avery's and Dassy's trials. Juries don't believe police officers would ever lie during testimony. They believe the police are the good guys who just want to catch the bad guys. The public has to let go of this naive view of the world, and look at all evidence presented during a trial with healthy skepticism. The 'Making a Murderer' documentary teaches people to be skeptical about claims by the police, which is a great public service. The article closes by reiterating the terrible equivocation they made earlier. That exposing prosecutorial misconduct is somehow only permissible in a completely unopinionated format. The New Yorker should be ashamed for publishing this trash.
- tptacek 11y ago
  You're fixated on the notion that DNA recovered from epithelial cells is the same as DNA recovered from blood. That's true, but the claim being made can simply be: "DNA was recovered, and testing did not indicate the presence of blood". You might not be able to distinguish "blood DNA" from "skin DNA", but forensic testing can identify the presence or absence of blood. Meanwhile, the reason the "skin DNA" evidence is so compelling is that the source of DNA the sheriff's department is alleged to have tampered with is blood. It's not clear how they could use that blood to place DNA under the hood of the car without it testing positive for blood.
mekal 11y ago
I think the real underlying problem here isn't film makers misleading people (which i agree is very annoying) its people believing what they see on tv and then acting on it (which is more annoying). So if you find yourself typing up a nasty email to a sheriff or whoever bc of something you saw on a tv show...please realize you are being a moron and stop typing...save as draft. Then, if you're willing to invest the time, do some real research and if you are still convinced your outrage is justified...by all means carry on with the nasty email. This way film makers can make their money, people can be entertained and/or inspired to better things, and nobody gets assaulted by an angry mob of stupid people.
mesozoic 11y ago
Throughout this whole article all I could think of is how was Erle Stanley Gardner writing in a magazine that ran from 1882 to 1891. when he was born in 1889. He was a very advanced toddler I suppose.
- notdonspaulding 11y ago
  It's poorly-worded in the article, but it does mention that ESG only wrote his column for a subset (~10 years) of that time. But maybe you saw that and were just making a joke? In which case, I'll just <whoosh> myself.
  - mesozoic 11y ago
    No I was and still am confused about it actually.
    - kbenson 11y ago
      > Argosy began in 1882 ... and ceased publication ninety-six years later ... but for ten years in between it was the home of a true-crime column by Erle Stanley Gardner. > To help investigate his cases, Gardner assembled a committee of crime experts, including a private detective, a handwriting analyst, a former prison warden, and a homicide specialist with degrees in both medicine and law. They examined dozens of cases between September of 1948 and October of 1958 So, the magazine was active from 1892 to ~1986. At some point, which appears to be between 1948 and 1958, Erle Stanley Gardner headed the feature in question.
solutionyogi 11y ago
I agree with other comment here where I don't know if Avery is guilty or not. However, the documentary absolutely showed how corrupt and evil the entire justice system can be and how one is at severe disadvantage if they are uneducated and poor. For me, personally, the ultimate proof of injustice is how Ken proposed two different theories in two trials. For Avery, murder was committed in garage. For Brendan, murder was committed in the bedroom. I have learned that as per the letter of the law, it is legal. However, by doing this, Ken Kratz has confirmed that all he cares about is prosecution and he is not out seeking truth/justice.
1024core 11y ago
What a load of drivel. There is a set of writers who will always (always) take the contrarian view, just to drive clicks. She spends the first 4 paragraphs talking about Perry Mason. And then just a couple, talking about Avery. Here's the problem with the case, as I saw it (I watched the entire 10 episodes over a week). The only physical evidence tying Avery to the murder was collected by the pair of detectives who least of everyone else were supposed to be there. How convenient! Secondly, to the evidence itself: if Avery did all the throat-slashing and raping, where is the evidence?? Surely they should find ONE speck of blood, or hair or skin cells or something??? Avery is such a genius that he can wipe all evidence of this massacre from a carpeted, cluttered bedroom (so badly cluttered that they couldn't find the key, sitting in plain sight, in 4 previous tries!), while leaving his own DNA around everywhere?? Same for the garage, where apparently she was shot: no blood, nothing. But there was blood from various deer carcasses of the past! And don't even get me started on the key! His DNA is on it ... but not hers, even though she drove it?!? And why is it the valet key? And how come the two suspect detectives immediately recognized it was the "right" key, even though they were in a f'in junkyard with a 1000 vehicles around? And his blood in the vehicle: even if you accept that it's his blood, where are the fingerprints?? Oh right: when it came to fingerprints, he was wearing a glove. Which, conveniently once again, allowed the blood to seep through in the right places. The author uses Brendan's statement that he helped his uncle put the body in the RAV4, hence the "sweat DNA", AFTER admitting that the confession was fake! Anyone who has watched the "confession" would be left with boiling rage at the interrogators. And she doesn't mention Len Kachinsky, the public "defender" who effectively railroaded Brendan? I could go on and on, but this article is pure drivel.
tyingq 11y ago
What's really scary to me is that very, very few defendants actually go to trial in the US. For a variety of troubling reasons[1], most defendants take a plea bargain. I would guess the risks associated with planting evidence and other misconduct by police is pretty low when you use it to coerce a plea. There's not any sort of venue to expose it. [1]http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...
- xixi77 11y ago
  Exactly! This is really the biggest issue that makes the whole misconduct problem so many times worse (judging by numbers in the article, "so many" is at least around 97/3 ~= 30x, putting cases like the one in question here within a margin of statistical error -- and that is not even accounting for the fact that, as you noted, misconduct is much easier and for that reason likely to be more common in pleaded cases). And it still stays hidden in plain sight: no court proceedings to generate public interest, no doubt in public opinion, no documentaries, no nothing. And indeed very little risk in case you decide to embellish your case with a little misconduct -- after all, even if plea bargain doesn't work, you can always skip presenting the most questionable evidence at trial. It is really quite disgusting how much discretion prosecution currently has in terms of charges to bring, and the associated range of penalties.
1024core 11y ago
One point that is glossed over, and that destroys the whole foundation of the article: the filmmakers started filming the doc 12 years ago when he was acquitted after the DNA test. They just naturally followed him around, and happened to be at the right place at the right time when the murder charges came along. So no, the makers did not just wake up one day after the conviction and tried to make him innocent. They were there the whole time.
stillsut 11y ago
What's the real story behind the following: The short haired sheriff who called in Theresa's licence plate + Make/Model two days before it was discovered... + The licence plates were discovered separately hidden from the car
- fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
  The only sort of maybe non-sketchy theory I have is that the deputy had that information from a flyer, or a BOLO (Be On the Look Out), or that it had somehow been transmitted to him by people searching for the Theresa, and he wanted to confirm it. It's a pretty thin sort of maybe justification. I can't think of why he would need it confirmed.
stult 11y ago
>But neither “Serial” (which is otherwise notable for its thoroughness) nor “Making a Murderer” ever addresses the question of what rights and considerations should be extended to victims of violent crime, and under what circumstances those might justifiably be suspended. Instead, both creators and viewers tacitly dismiss the pain caused by such shows as collateral damage, unfortunate but unavoidable. Here, too, the end is taken to justify the means; someone else’s anguish comes to seem like a trifling price to pay for the greater cause a documentary claims to serve. Aww come the hell on! The public has a very strong interest in monitoring the criminal justice system. We cannot do that without knowledge of the crimes and the victims. Yes, it sucks for them. Crime is bad. But the public cannot hope to establish and direct a justice system capable of deterring crime without learning facts about actual prosecutions, which unfortunately includes information about the victim and what was done to them. Besides, the vast majority (possibly all, IIRC) of the footage of Hallbach's family consisted of public interviews of her brother. You can't repeatedly and voluntarily thrust yourself into the media spotlight and then cry foul when people use that footage. What serious journalist really thinks this is a reasonable argument to make? Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to police corruption and inadequate due process because it makes one person and their family uncomfortable?

67 points by cgoodmac 11y ago

1. In the American system, we are biased for innocence, so there's nothing wrong with the documentarians for operating on that assumption. 2. The documentarians omit, while the police fabricate. The documentarians are not mirroring the entity they set out to indict. 3. 3 to 4 days is not a terribly long time for a jury to deliberate on a case like this.

bryanlarsen 11y ago
In the American system, there are many biases for guilt that counteract the explicit "beyond a reasonable doubt" bias. For example: - prosecution presents first. (Google Anchoring, Confirmation Bias) - police are allowed to lie to witnesses to extract confessions, along with many other psychological tricks - prosecutorial immunity - election of prosecutors based on conviction rate And that's just the tip of the iceberg.
- dpark 11y ago
  Prosecution presents first so that defense can rebut. You want prosecution to go first so that when they are done, defense can dismantle the prosecution's case effectively. If you let defense present first, what are they even going to say? "My client didn't do it. He was at home with his wife, who can corroborate. Uh, I guess the defense rests." There are lots of problems with our legal system. This isn't one of them.
  - pdabbadabba 11y ago
    You're exactly right--if the defense and prosecution each get one chance to present their evidence, it makes the most sense, and is most defendant friendly, for the defense to go second. But if we're thinking more broadly about how the system could be reformed, we should remember that there are more than two options here. For example, The defense could present first and then have an opportunity for rebuttal after the prosecution presents its case. I'm not sure this would be near the top of my list of proposed criminal justice reforms, though.
    - gherkin0 11y ago
      > I'm not sure this would be near the top of my list of proposed criminal justice reforms, though. Though, if it has a positive effect, it seems like it would be a cheap and easy reform to make. I think it's pretty reasonable that the defense be the first to speak and the last to speak to the jury in a criminal trial, even if its gets extra timeslots compared to the prosecution.
    - Retric 11y ago
      Each side does get to show opening remarks before presenting the bulk of evidence. And, each side can cross examine witnesses which create much more of a back and forth than you might think. IMO, the real bias is expert witnesses get preselected and paid, so they tend to favor a specific side. This has allowed a lot of pseudoscience to be shown a trial and enter the literature. Forensic science is rarely validated because that’s just not its job. Consider, two people that compare hair samples, but one always supports the prosecutors case. Now, which one do you think gets more work? When someone says something is inconclusive that's it they not going to get paid to show up at the trial just there initial 'investigation'.
      - dpark 11y ago
        > Forensic science is rarely validated because that’s just not its job. And this is as terrifying as the fact that experts are selected specifically to support the side that pays them. Expert witnesses should probably be selected and paid by the court, which would at least help a bit. But the pseudoscience stuff horrifies me. The whole hair comparison thing is bunk and a lot of people were put in jail on the supposed strength of this "science". Ditto for so many other forensic "sciences". https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-forensic-hair-matches-in-nearly-all-criminal-trials-for-decades/2015/04/18/39c8d8c6-e515-11e4-b510-962fcfabc310_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/fbi-overstated-fo...
  - bryanlarsen 11y ago
    Yes, it'd be illogical for defense to go first. Regardless, it's a huge advantage for prosecution to go first.
    - dpark 11y ago
      I just don't see how the alternative could even be workable. It's also an advantage to get the last word, so I'm not sure there's a problem here.
      - aljones 11y ago
        Getting the first word does not imply that you don't get the last too.
        dpark 11y ago
        I never said it did. I'm not sure it's useful for defense to get the first word, though, since the entire point of the defense is to rebut the prosecution.
- cli 11y ago
  > prosecution presents first. (Google Anchoring, Confirmation Bias) How else would you do this? There is a presumption of innocence; the defendant needs to defend against the arguments made by the prosecution.
- kenbellows 11y ago
  Prosecution presents first because they have the burden of proof. They are the ones making a claim. The defense has no claim to make, they are simply responding to a claim by the prosecution, so of course the prosecution must present first.
- aljones 11y ago
  This has a nice sampling of that iceberg. http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Preface.pdf http://georgetownlawjournal.org/files/2015/06/Kozinski_Prefa...
rhino369 11y ago
>1. In the American system, we are biased for innocence, so there's nothing wrong with the documentarians for operating on that assumption. The presumption of innocence is different than only hearing one side of the story. And in journalism you aren't supposed to operate with blatant bias. Like the article explains, we allow the defense to zealously advocate because there is another side to counter it.
- hellofunk 11y ago
  I don't think anyone is confusing this documentary with journalism. The movie was a work of entertainment, not investigation.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - rhino369 11y ago
    It sounds exactly like that is happening. People are creating letter campaigns to free the subject of the documentary.
petilon 11y ago
>> In the American system, we are biased for innocence Not enough, in my opinion. Watch this PBS show about the story of Cameron Todd Willingham, put to death by Texas for the arson-murder of his three little girls: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-by-fire/ http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/death-by-fire/ The sole basis of conviction was arson science, and as the PBS show explains it isn't much of a science at all. This is a sad story of an innocent man put to death by the state of Texas. Five years later, with a Texas commission working inexorably toward a formal acknowledgment that the state had executed an innocent man — surely a watershed in the history of American capital punishment — Governor Rick Perry pulled a bureaucratic maneuver that effectively stopped the investigation in its tracks. More on that here: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-cameron-todd-willingham-rick-perry-execution-20140806-story.html http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-cameron-todd...
kbenson 11y ago
> 2. The documentarians omit, while the police fabricate. The documentarians are not mirroring the entity they set out to indict. The point, as I see it, is that you need to also identify your source for your believe that the police fabricated. Is it entirely informed by the documentary? If so, then that's circular logic. If you believe the police fabricated evidence because of the documentary in question, then it's hardly a defense against the charge the documentary manipulated opinion through the careful curation of presented evidence. Personally, regardless of specific opinion, I'm a little startled at how many people here are using just the documentary to explain their view that the police obviously fabricated evidence, which is then used as evidence that the article in question, regarding the trustworthiness of the documentary in question, has less merit. It's disconcerting, but hopefully it's just a case of people not explaining their other sources of information.

felixgallo 11y ago

The article focuses too much on Avery's actual guilt or innocence, in my opinion. It's possible he murdered her. It's possible he didn't. But what the documentary really showed me was how utterly corrupt, venal, incompetent and evil the entire system of justice can be, from the 'court appointed lawyers' all the way up to the sheriffs that clearly, unequivocally framed Avery. And it's fundamental to the principles of the legal system that the police and the prosecution must not be permitted to do that; and that we, as a society, must find some way to make that impossible and to punish those who violate the trust. Even if one, or ten, or a hundred believed-murderers go free.

toddmorey 11y ago
I was also disappointed that the documentary took a bias towards Avery being innocent. I wish they'd left it more undecided, more murky, and more honest. Even if there was compelling video evidence, it would still be a fascinating story of incompetence and misconduct throughout the investigation. Even if you believe Avery to be guilty (as I lean towards), you can't help but to sit in awe as officials motivated to lock up their case almost cost themselves a verdict based on their own actions. It's a story with no heroes.
deleted 11y ago
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- kenbellows 11y ago
  Are you implying that this kind of corruption happens in every single investigation? No one should be prosecuted in cases where it is present, that's for sure. But I don't see how that leads to the conclusion that "no one should be prosecuted for anything so long as this kind of corruption exists". Plenty of investigations and prosecutions are conducted above board with no corruption to be found.
- ssmoot 11y ago
  As far as is reasonable/moral. You're using a slippery slope fallacy.
- 11y ago

rmacleod 11y ago

felixgallo - this is the point I've been making to all my friends and family - the no 1. point of the documentary was to shine a light on the broken system itself... the fact that everyone is talking about the case shows that ppl really don't care or don't get it...

tptacek 11y ago
Part of the point of the article is that people don't care because the creators of the series don't want them to; the documentary isn't structured to raise those questions.

seibelj 11y ago

Interesting article, but my opinion after seeing the documentary is that there is enough reasonable doubt to declare Avery not guilty. Maybe he did do it, but with all of the bullshit that happened during the investigation (the car key in plain sight, the cop calling in the license plate days before the car was officially found, the evidence tape cut on the blood vial, absence of blood in the bedroom despite the bloody and vicious confession from the nephew) the whole thing is beyond ridiculous.

tptacek 11y ago
Well, the point of the article is that the documentary is structured to ensure that's the attitude you come away from it with. If you've listened to Serial too, the comparison is pretty stark. In every episode, Koenig nurtures doubts about Syed's innocence, and continually returns to the most difficult challenges to the case for his innocence. Koenig does this for reasons beyond integrity: it's also the reason Serial is a more effective true crime story (you really want to hear the next episode because you have no idea where the story might go, which is just not the case for the Avery case). For me, the facts that Ricciardi and Demos left out are damning in pretty much the same way as the facts they reveal about misconduct in the Avery case: * Avery is forensically tied to Halbach's car in ways that do withstand scrutiny * Avery had repeatedly contacted Halbach, sometimes with caller ID blocked, and, despite Halbach's discomfort with him, had specifically requested that she come out to his place the day of the murder * There is physical evidence that corroborates specific, idiosyncratic details of the story Dassey told investigators
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  > * There is physical evidence that corroborates specific, idiosyncratic details of the story Dassey told investigators Could you expand on this? The prosecution made this claim, but I've not found anything to back it up. The closest I've found is an interchange that went roughly Q: where in the car did he put the body, A: in the back. Which I think is more a case of that being the only place anyone would ever put a body in a car. If he'd said "on the roof" or "dragged behind in a trailer" then that might actually be unexpected info.
- 11y ago

gizmo 11y ago

The article equates prosecutorial misconduct to force a guilty sentence with editorial choices in a documentary. Because both show "bias". In the one case it's utterly illegal and it undermines the moral validity of the justice system and in the other case we're talking about a simple exercise of free speech, but apparently this distinction isn't meaningful in the eyes of the author. The quote in question: "The point of being scrupulous about your means is to help insure accurate ends, whether you are trying to convict a man or exonerate him. Ricciardi and Demos instead stack the deck to support their case for Avery, and, as a result, wind up mirroring the entity that they are trying to discredit." This equivocation is morally repugnant. The article also gets their facts wrong. They claim: "Investigators subsequently found DNA from Avery’s perspiration on the hood latch—evidence that would be nearly impossible to plant.". This is a fabrication. There is no distinction between blood DNA, sweat DNA, skin DNA. DNA was found under the hood latch, but no blood was seen. Hence a logical conjecture is that the source is perspiration, but it could have been any other source. As for it being hard to plant, that's laughable. Simply swipe a t-shirt or dirty sock on any surface and it will leave DNA behind. None of Avery's finger prints were found on the car, and finger prints ARE hard to plant. In contrast to DNA, which IS trivial to plant if you have access to somebody's apartment. The charge that the documentary is bad because doesn't display a clear timeline of the events doesn't make sense, because it's the responsibility of the prosecution to explain what happened, and they didn't have a single narrative that was consistent with all the evidence. Which is why the prosecution's story of what happened was completely different in Avery's and Dassy's trials. Juries don't believe police officers would ever lie during testimony. They believe the police are the good guys who just want to catch the bad guys. The public has to let go of this naive view of the world, and look at all evidence presented during a trial with healthy skepticism. The 'Making a Murderer' documentary teaches people to be skeptical about claims by the police, which is a great public service. The article closes by reiterating the terrible equivocation they made earlier. That exposing prosecutorial misconduct is somehow only permissible in a completely unopinionated format. The New Yorker should be ashamed for publishing this trash.

tptacek 11y ago
You're fixated on the notion that DNA recovered from epithelial cells is the same as DNA recovered from blood. That's true, but the claim being made can simply be: "DNA was recovered, and testing did not indicate the presence of blood". You might not be able to distinguish "blood DNA" from "skin DNA", but forensic testing can identify the presence or absence of blood. Meanwhile, the reason the "skin DNA" evidence is so compelling is that the source of DNA the sheriff's department is alleged to have tampered with is blood. It's not clear how they could use that blood to place DNA under the hood of the car without it testing positive for blood.

mekal 11y ago

I think the real underlying problem here isn't film makers misleading people (which i agree is very annoying) its people believing what they see on tv and then acting on it (which is more annoying). So if you find yourself typing up a nasty email to a sheriff or whoever bc of something you saw on a tv show...please realize you are being a moron and stop typing...save as draft. Then, if you're willing to invest the time, do some real research and if you are still convinced your outrage is justified...by all means carry on with the nasty email. This way film makers can make their money, people can be entertained and/or inspired to better things, and nobody gets assaulted by an angry mob of stupid people.

mesozoic 11y ago

Throughout this whole article all I could think of is how was Erle Stanley Gardner writing in a magazine that ran from 1882 to 1891. when he was born in 1889. He was a very advanced toddler I suppose.

notdonspaulding 11y ago
It's poorly-worded in the article, but it does mention that ESG only wrote his column for a subset (~10 years) of that time. But maybe you saw that and were just making a joke? In which case, I'll just <whoosh> myself.
- mesozoic 11y ago
  No I was and still am confused about it actually.
  - kbenson 11y ago
    > Argosy began in 1882 ... and ceased publication ninety-six years later ... but for ten years in between it was the home of a true-crime column by Erle Stanley Gardner. > To help investigate his cases, Gardner assembled a committee of crime experts, including a private detective, a handwriting analyst, a former prison warden, and a homicide specialist with degrees in both medicine and law. They examined dozens of cases between September of 1948 and October of 1958 So, the magazine was active from 1892 to ~1986. At some point, which appears to be between 1948 and 1958, Erle Stanley Gardner headed the feature in question.

solutionyogi 11y ago

I agree with other comment here where I don't know if Avery is guilty or not. However, the documentary absolutely showed how corrupt and evil the entire justice system can be and how one is at severe disadvantage if they are uneducated and poor. For me, personally, the ultimate proof of injustice is how Ken proposed two different theories in two trials. For Avery, murder was committed in garage. For Brendan, murder was committed in the bedroom. I have learned that as per the letter of the law, it is legal. However, by doing this, Ken Kratz has confirmed that all he cares about is prosecution and he is not out seeking truth/justice.

1024core 11y ago

What a load of drivel. There is a set of writers who will always (always) take the contrarian view, just to drive clicks. She spends the first 4 paragraphs talking about Perry Mason. And then just a couple, talking about Avery. Here's the problem with the case, as I saw it (I watched the entire 10 episodes over a week). The only physical evidence tying Avery to the murder was collected by the pair of detectives who least of everyone else were supposed to be there. How convenient! Secondly, to the evidence itself: if Avery did all the throat-slashing and raping, where is the evidence?? Surely they should find ONE speck of blood, or hair or skin cells or something??? Avery is such a genius that he can wipe all evidence of this massacre from a carpeted, cluttered bedroom (so badly cluttered that they couldn't find the key, sitting in plain sight, in 4 previous tries!), while leaving his own DNA around everywhere?? Same for the garage, where apparently she was shot: no blood, nothing. But there was blood from various deer carcasses of the past! And don't even get me started on the key! His DNA is on it ... but not hers, even though she drove it?!? And why is it the valet key? And how come the two suspect detectives immediately recognized it was the "right" key, even though they were in a f'in junkyard with a 1000 vehicles around? And his blood in the vehicle: even if you accept that it's his blood, where are the fingerprints?? Oh right: when it came to fingerprints, he was wearing a glove. Which, conveniently once again, allowed the blood to seep through in the right places. The author uses Brendan's statement that he helped his uncle put the body in the RAV4, hence the "sweat DNA", AFTER admitting that the confession was fake! Anyone who has watched the "confession" would be left with boiling rage at the interrogators. And she doesn't mention Len Kachinsky, the public "defender" who effectively railroaded Brendan? I could go on and on, but this article is pure drivel.

tyingq 11y ago

What's really scary to me is that very, very few defendants actually go to trial in the US. For a variety of troubling reasons[1], most defendants take a plea bargain. I would guess the risks associated with planting evidence and other misconduct by police is pretty low when you use it to coerce a plea. There's not any sort of venue to expose it. [1]http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-people-plead-guilty/ http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/11/20/why-innocent-peop...

xixi77 11y ago
Exactly! This is really the biggest issue that makes the whole misconduct problem so many times worse (judging by numbers in the article, "so many" is at least around 97/3 ~= 30x, putting cases like the one in question here within a margin of statistical error -- and that is not even accounting for the fact that, as you noted, misconduct is much easier and for that reason likely to be more common in pleaded cases). And it still stays hidden in plain sight: no court proceedings to generate public interest, no doubt in public opinion, no documentaries, no nothing. And indeed very little risk in case you decide to embellish your case with a little misconduct -- after all, even if plea bargain doesn't work, you can always skip presenting the most questionable evidence at trial. It is really quite disgusting how much discretion prosecution currently has in terms of charges to bring, and the associated range of penalties.

1024core 11y ago

One point that is glossed over, and that destroys the whole foundation of the article: the filmmakers started filming the doc 12 years ago when he was acquitted after the DNA test. They just naturally followed him around, and happened to be at the right place at the right time when the murder charges came along. So no, the makers did not just wake up one day after the conviction and tried to make him innocent. They were there the whole time.

stillsut 11y ago

What's the real story behind the following: The short haired sheriff who called in Theresa's licence plate + Make/Model two days before it was discovered... + The licence plates were discovered separately hidden from the car

fnordfnordfnord 11y ago
The only sort of maybe non-sketchy theory I have is that the deputy had that information from a flyer, or a BOLO (Be On the Look Out), or that it had somehow been transmitted to him by people searching for the Theresa, and he wanted to confirm it. It's a pretty thin sort of maybe justification. I can't think of why he would need it confirmed.

stult 11y ago

>But neither “Serial” (which is otherwise notable for its thoroughness) nor “Making a Murderer” ever addresses the question of what rights and considerations should be extended to victims of violent crime, and under what circumstances those might justifiably be suspended. Instead, both creators and viewers tacitly dismiss the pain caused by such shows as collateral damage, unfortunate but unavoidable. Here, too, the end is taken to justify the means; someone else’s anguish comes to seem like a trifling price to pay for the greater cause a documentary claims to serve. Aww come the hell on! The public has a very strong interest in monitoring the criminal justice system. We cannot do that without knowledge of the crimes and the victims. Yes, it sucks for them. Crime is bad. But the public cannot hope to establish and direct a justice system capable of deterring crime without learning facts about actual prosecutions, which unfortunately includes information about the victim and what was done to them. Besides, the vast majority (possibly all, IIRC) of the footage of Hallbach's family consisted of public interviews of her brother. You can't repeatedly and voluntarily thrust yourself into the media spotlight and then cry foul when people use that footage. What serious journalist really thinks this is a reasonable argument to make? Are we supposed to turn a blind eye to police corruption and inadequate due process because it makes one person and their family uncomfortable?