Sacrificing Brendan Dassey

Brendan with his mother Barb and father Peter

[–]GrowingHumansIsHard wrote at Reddit:

I actually am a pen pal of Brendan Dassey [who turned 28 on October 19, 2017].

His IQ is around 70, and he graduated with his GED in December 2015.

He has someone help write his letters because he often doesn't understand questions his fans write him, nor is he that strong of a writer. He will often say his writer had to ask him the question repeatedly in different ways for him to comprehend it.

He is a very sweet kid. He's always wanting to try and help anyone as much as possible. He said he writes to literally anyone who writes him because they deserve a letter back for taking time out of their day to write him.

So if anyone has ever considered writing him, please do so. He loves to hear about where you travel to, tell jokes, and he loves to talk about eating different kinds of foods. He especially loves hearing about pizza and hamburger places he should try once he gets out.

Here is his address to send letters only to:

Brendan Dassey #516985
Columbia Correctional Institution
PO Box 900
Portage, WI 53901

Honestly, I am surprised by the lack of information on a lot of people's parts.

Brendan is very simple. What you see is what you get. I can't imagine he ever did this crime. Not even if he was forced into doing it. He just is so simple. All he wants to do is play video games and have a girlfriend.

I think perhaps sometimes the rest of us look too much into things, when they don't look enough into things.

Was anyone in here part of the Brendan Dassey Facebook group the family set up? They did a live Q&A last year where supporters could ask questions, and Barb and Scott Tadych and family friends would answer questions.

They were asked what their favorite childhood memory of Brendan was; they had no answer.

They asked what his favorite movie was; no answer.

They asked at one point if he was a playful kid who ever hurt himself; they said no.

If you know Brendan you know he hit his head hard on the back of a truck tow hitch as a kid and was sent to the hospital.

It's simple things like those questions that make me wonder, do they even know Brendan?

I was a member of the family's Facebook group and watched that heartbreaking interaction. It sickened me and within a week I was off that Facebook page, never to look back.

They gave me the impression that Brendan was left out of a lot of things growing up.

Brendan often talks about how his brothers were asked to do fun stuff, but he never was.

So the idea of Bobby and Scott hunting without him that day doesn't surprise me.

I feel like Bobby and Scott Tadych have inconsistent alibis because they were trying to make sure they were distanced from the events that took place and that Bobby may have been trying to help Steven Avery's alibi. But they did a poor job at planning.

Scott had only been dating Brendan's mom Barb for a year when this took place, so he may have easily thought Steve Avery was a creeper and belonged in prison. I dunno. I just don't get why people think the brother and stepdad did it.

Is the stepdad a good guy? I don't know, but he sure does know more about Brendan than his own family.

When the family did the live Facebook Q&A session, they couldn't tell you shit about Brendan's interests, life in prison over the years, etc., but the stepdad could tell you stuff. How freakin sad is that? Dude deserves a gold star for at least trying to make it look like he talks to the kid.

In my mind, I just think they were "simple" country folk.

Brendan was a little different than the rest of the kids, and they never paid him any mind.

Lots of people think Bobby and Scott were up to trouble when they went hunting without Brendan, but if you know Brendan, they left him behind ALL THE TIME.

I pray to the gods that Brendan is not returned to that home until massive therapy for everyone is completed. Otherwise, Barb will have him pimped out like a circus monkey on every talk show willing to give her gas cards or stamps. Unfortunately, he will return to live with her.

There have been discussions of having him go on speaking tours to talk about his situation and inspire other people. I personally can’t see Brendan as a motivational speaker. He’s very reserved.

It’s my personal opinion that Barb will try to pimp him out and he will go along with it. Because, to him, he loves his mom and loves the attention he is finally getting from her.

I remember people would send Barb money to help Brendan buy commissary. Yet, if you read his letters, he’d always ask for items, saying he was low on stuff. What was that about?

That’s a whole other can of worms, though, because I believe Brendan was being played by another inmate who was helping write his letters for him. This inmate kept a notebook of details about Brendan's supporters and would stay up till 2 AM typing letters “as BD.” And Brendan would read and approve them. It’s quite a bigger mess than people realize because this inmate's crime is not pretty, and he’s also a registered sex offender.

Brendan has unfortunately been played by almost everyone around him. Again. Just my opinion.

I know how much he adores his mom. He really does. He is always telling me when she will visit and how excited he is. He's a momma's boy, through and through.

I'd be very curious to see the visitor log for Brendan, as I've heard several people close to the family say he was rarely visited. Which is why in the documentary they only show recent photos of Brendan with his family, as opposed to photos of him throughout the 10 years he's been in there. I've only ever seen one photo of him from when he was at Green Bay, I believe during Christmas time. He was approximately 19. Other than that all the other photos with "family" were recent.

Brendan as a child; Brendan receiving his GED in prison in December 2015; and Brendan with stepdad Scott Tadych, mom Barb, and brother Bobby in 2016


Brendan in court and photos of his brother Blaine, 2006-2007 time period

'Making a Murderer': Avery Lawyer Adds Allegations in New Court Motion

Kathleen Zellner filed further court documents, now alleging that Steven Avery's sister Barbara and her husband know more than they're letting on

Rolling Stone

November 2, 2017

There's still no word on when Netflix plans to drop Making a Murderer's second season, but there's been plenty of legal drama in recent weeks surrounding Steven Avery's case. Last week, Avery's attorney, Kathleen Zellner filed court documents that, amongst other legal issues, implicate Avery's nephew Bobby Dassey – older brother to Avery's co-defendant, Brendan Dassey – in the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach. The Avery and Dassey families were reportedly kept in the dark about the attorney's plan to present Bobby as a suspect, and it's provoked shock, anger and, it seems, additional revelations. Yesterday, Zellner filed yet another supplement with further evidence to support both allegations – and all of it came from statements made by members of the Avery/Dassey clan in just the last few days.

In new court filing, attorney Kathleen Zellner says damning evidence shows Bobby Dassey could have been involved in Teresa Halbach's murder

First, a quick refresher: In September, Wisconsin Circuit Court Judge Angela Sutkiewicz denied Avery's request for a new trial in a six-page decision that didn't address many of the issues Zellner raised in her 1,200 page brief. At the beginning of October, Zellner responded with a motion to reverse that decision on the grounds that the record was incomplete at the time of the ruling, and an evidentiary hearing on all the new findings was warranted. Last week, Zellner filed a 54-page supplement that mostly focused on new evidence that Bobby Dassey had given false testimony – which was key to the State's theory that Halbach never left the Avery property — and had the motive, means and opportunity to be a viable alternative suspect.

That evidence included a signed affidavit from a third Dassey brother, Bryan, confirming what he told police during his 2005 interview. "I distinctly remember Bobby telling me, 'Steven could not have killed her because I saw her leave the propery," Bryan's affidavit states. At trial, Bobby testified that he did not see Halbach leave and instead saw her walking in the direction of Avery's trailer. Prosecutors repeatedly emphasized the importance of Bobby's testimony to their case.

Perhaps most damning, however, are Zellner's allegations about the contents of the Dassey family's computer hard drive. Investigators seized the laptop in April 2006, believing it could contain evidence relevant to Halbach's murder. Zellner says that it does – police recovered pictures of Halbach, as well as "many images of violent pornography involving young females being raped and tortured." However, they were all allegedly accessed via the Internet at times when Brendan Dassey was at school and Bobby Dassey was home alone. It's understandable then why the prosecution wouldn't use this evidence at trial, but Zellner believes this further illustrates yet another missed opportunity by Avery's trial counsel.

"There is a paragraph in a police report from 2006 describing what we were able to find with more clarity," Zellner tells Rolling Stone. "All of this demented violent material was there and [the State] found it. [Avery trial attorneys Dean] Strang and [Jerry] Buting received the reports on this violent porn about 7-10 days before trial. Clearly, they should have investigated, gotten a forensic expert and pinned it to when only Bobby was home. But the State had no real interest in outing Bobby's perversions and obsession with dead female bodies – after all, they didn't want the jury to see their star witness was a developing sexual psychopath." (Bobby did not respond to requests for comment when Rolling Stone reached out after Zellner initially made these allegations last week.)

Zellner's new filing includes a new affidavit given earlier this week by a fourth Dassey brother, Brad, Brendan and Bobby's half-brother. (There are five Dassey brothers.) According to Brad, in 2006, Barbara told him that she had hired someone to "reformat" the computer, and specifically to delete "pornography," before the authorities seized it. Zellner has already filed an affidavit from a computer forensics expert who analyzed a copy of the laptop hard drive and discovered that numerous files accessed in the months prior to the murder had been deleted.

"[Barbara] said she did not want anyone to get what was on her computer," Brad Dassey states in the affidavit. Concerned that she was "trying to remove evidence related to Halbach's murder," Brad contacted authorities – but he was never called to testify at Avery or Brendan Dassey trials, and the computer or the pornography was never mentioned. It's not clear if investigators ever questioned Barbara about Brad's allegations, but Zellner tells Rolling Stone, "There is no proof that the State's forensic examiner had the technology to figure out the deletions."

Barbara Avery was credited as Barbara Janda – her now ex-husband's last name – on MaM, but she has since married Scott Tadych, who was also featured in the series. Tadych and Bobby Dassey were each other's alibis, leading Zellner to posit that they both could be involved in Halbach's murder. Her latest filing contends that "additional new evidence continues to develop."

Two of the exhibits attached to Zellner's latest filing are an audio file and transcript documenting a call between Avery, Barbara and Tadych that occurred just last week. According to Zellner, the conversation proves Barbara's "lack of credibility" in regards to the laptop, contains admissions from Barbara and Tadych that Halbach did leave the Avery property before her disappearance/murder, and demonstrates that Tadych "has violent, homicidal propensities manifested by his uncontrollable temper."

On the call, when Avery asks his sister about "all that shit on the computer," Barbara repeatedly denies having Internet service back in 2005 and 2006, which Zellner alleges is a lie, as there is ample evidence to the contrary. Later in the conversation, Barbara changes her tune when Avery says that only Bobby would have been home when the disturbing material was accessed. "Then somebody else was in my fucking house and was on it," Barbara responds, seemingly confirming that the household did indeed have Internet service.

And then there's this exchange, where Avery references Bobby's conflicting statements about whether he saw Halbach leave the Avery property.

AVERY: And he said he left. She left.
SCOTT TADYCH: That's right.
BARBARA TADYCH: Yeah. She left.
AVERY: Yeah.
BARBARA TADYCH: Yeah.
AVERY: Well, he [Bobby] didn't testify for that.



Zellner says this is further evidence that Bobby did see Halbach leave the Avery Salvage Yard on the day of her disappearance, and Barbara knew it and thus would have known that Bobby was lying in his trial testimony. Zellner contends that Tadych's response indicates that either he was also told this information, or he "observed and/or had contact with Ms. Halbach after she left the property." Zellner also included a screenshot of a recent Facebook exchange in which Barbara acknowledges that Bobby's testimony about seeing Halbach walking towards Avery's trailer is also false.

Throughout the call, Scott Tadych uses abusive language and insults, threatens to assault Avery, and tell him he's going to put him "in the fucking ground."

"The phone call captures the great tragedy of Steven's life," Zellner tells Rolling Stone. "The people who should be helping him want him to shut up and quietly accept that he will die in prison. … I ask myself what would motivate Tadych and Bobby to be such obstructionists, and I have reached the inevitable conclusion, as our court filings state, that they were involved in the crime and Barb, was and is involved, even unwittingly, in its coverup. … Tadych thinks he can intimidate us into looking away, but he has only succeeded in placing himself front and center in our investigation. Quite frankly, he is no match for our abilities, experience, resources or boundless commitment to freeing Steven Avery."

Multiple requests for comment from Barbara and Scott Tadych went unanswered, but Avery and Dassey family cousin, Carla Chase, gave Rolling Stone permission to republish a statement she posted in a private Facebook group: "Kathleen Zellner's supplement to the motion filed yesterday is difficult to read. My family appears to have been targeted and pushed to turn on each other, but no one in our family had anything to do with [Halbach's] disappearance. Not Steven. Not Brendan. Not Barb. Not Bobby. Not Scott. Please let Kathleen Zellner do her job and wait to pass any judgement on our family. Steven and Brendan have paid the ultimate price of being locked away, but all of my family has been victimized by this horrible injustice. Barb and her family, all of us are doing what we can to get Steven and Brendan released. Please support our family while we get to the bottom of it."






Photos of Bobby and Blaine and their toys in the 2006-2007 time period


Brendan and Steven Avery in November 2005

JODI states STEVEN has no friends that stop over at the property. She states the only visitors to STEVEN's mobile home would be his sister, BARBARA, and BARBARA's children. [CASO page 84]

We asked BARBARA about an argument she had with STEVEN about selling her red van. BARBARA said she had disagreed with him putting it in the AUTO TRADER because she did not feel she needed to sell it, she was going to keep it for one of her sons who was getting their driver license. BARBARA said she thought it was a waste of money to spend the $40.00 to run an ad for the van. We asked BARBARA how much she thought the van was worth and she said about $1,000.00. We asked BARBARA if she has ever gotten into an argument with STEVEN particularly in the last couple of days prior to 10/31/05. She said she and STEVEN had gotten into an argument and he had told her her kids are stupid and she needs to spend more time with them and be a mom. BARBARA said STEVEN was very demanding and stating she was doing a bad job raising her kids. [CASO page 264]

We asked BARBARA who the other person may have been that was standing out by the fire and she said she did not know; however, BRENDAN did spend quite a bit of time with STEVEN because he was the only child who did not have a lot of friends at the time and he did help STEVEN with stuff around his house. [CASO page 264]

Brendan Dassey with his father Peter Dassey and his half-brother Brad Dassey

We asked BARBARA who the biggest influence in her son's life would have been and she said TOM JANDA was good with her kids and took them fishing a lot; however, he had moved out in October. I asked BARBARA if STEVEN has ever come on to her sexually and she said just stupid comments and pushing and shoving. BARBARA stated she did not feel there was anything unusual or out of the ordinary with her relationship with STEVEN... I asked BARBARA who STEVEN said the handcuffs and leg cuffs were for and she said he told her it was for JODI. I asked BARBARA when JODI was due to be released from jail and she said March. I asked BARBARA if she really thought those items were really going to be used for her and she said no. [CASO page 264]

We asked BARBARA about her son, BLAINE's, relationship with his boss, MICHAEL, and she said it was fine, that he did a lot of landscaping for him and she thought he treated him like a son. We informed BARBARA of our concerns with his boss and the way he was treating him and touching him during an interview that one of the other agents had with BLAINE earlier. [CASO page 264]

The State of Wisconsin took advantage of a vulnerable mother and her teenage sons (she needs to finally tell the whole truth).

Need a certain abused woman to stop kidding herself, break away & start telling the truth. #MakingaMurderer pic.twitter.com/UVG6suEcvD

— Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) October 28, 2017

Testing the integrity of the State’s witnesses. They swore to it. So was it true? #MakingaMurderer https://t.co/6HmbgIGQR5

— Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) November 3, 2017

A verdict based on perjury & fabricated evidence will never survive once fear subsides & truth told. #CourageToStandForJustice #CoverupsFail

— Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) November 5, 2017

The following is the end of Brendan's interrogation on March 1, 2006. It starts around page 670 of the CASO file.

(door opens and closes)

BARB JANDA: Why didn't you tell me? Huh?

FASSBENDER: Barbara give me your coffee, it's in your hands right now.

BARB JANDA: Huh? Did he make you do it? (Brendan nods "yes") I woulda walked out. That's what I woulda did. (crying during pause) Why didn't you just tell 'em, no? Huh?

BRENDAN: I don't know.

BARB JANDA: You knew it was wrong, right? (Brendan nods "yes") (pause) Do you know you can't come home? Do you know where you're going? (pause)

BRENDAN: How long is it though?

BARB JANDA: I don't know. I do not know. (pause) Do I have ta get some him an attorney, or will they do it for me?

FASSBENDER: The court will assign one for him or the state will pay for his attorney if he can't pay for it, but obviously you have a right at any time to try and get him one or get him one.

BARB JANDA: I tried for a public defender not too long ago and I couldn't get cuz l've got a house.

FASSBENDER: Well there's different, different ways that they determine, you know, based on, on what you've been arrested for and stuff like that. There's different levels of, of money that you need, you need, they, they will determine and I don't know what that is or how they determine that. (pause)

BARB JANDA: Are you gonna be OK, are you sure? Huh. Look at me. Why didn't you tell me? Stuff like that is not no secret. I don't care if he told you if he said to keep it a secret, it's still not a secret. I don't keep secrets from yous. Do I? Don't worry about my belly, I haven't eaten in two days.

FASSBENDER: I didn't even hear it. Did you want a sandwich, Barb?

BARB JANDA: No.

FASSBENDER: We have some here.

BARB JANDA: No. I'd probably just throw it up anyhow. Am I gonna be able to see him? Later on, after he gets where he's gotta go?

FASSBENDER: I don't know, ah, on their policies and when they allow visitation and stuff like that. We can check with Mark. He's gonna know Sheboygan's polices or whatever. With, with juveniles there's probably a good chance but I just don't wanna say right now.

FASSBENDER ON THE PHONE: Hello, Tom here. Good how are you?

BARB JANDA: Why.

BRENDAN:

BARB JANDA: Huh?

FASSBENDER ON THE PHONE: It's on for tomorrow?

BARB JANDA: What?

BRENDAN:

BARB JANDA: I said why?

FASSBENDER ON THE PHONE: OK.

BARB JANDA: Mh huh. What did he do to you to make you do it?

BRENDAN: Nothin'

BARB JANDA: Did he force you to do it? (Brendan shakes head "no")

FASSBENDER ON THE PHONE: All right if, if we go in tomorrow and I think we need someone, I'll call you. All right?

BARB JANDA: Mh huh.

FASSBENDER ON THE PHONE: All right, thanks. Bye.

BRENDAN:

BARB JANDA: Mh.

BRENDAN: You don't want to.

BARB JANDA: What?

BRENDAN: I didn't want to.

BARB JANDA: Ohh. (door opens and closes) Are you regrettin' it now? (pause) You had a whole life ahead of you Brendan. Just because he's so demanding, doesn't mean you gotta do the stuff he says. Right?

BRENDAN: Where am I going?

BARB JANDA: Where do you think you're going?

BRENDAN: I don't know?

BARB JANDA: You're goin' to juvie, that's where you're going, to a juvie jail. About 45 minutes away.

BRENDAN: Yeh, but I gotta question?

BARB JANDA: What's that?

BRENDAN: What'd happen if he says something, his story's different? Wh-he says he, he admits to doing it?

BARB JANDA: What do you mean?

BRENDAN: Like if his story's like different, like I never did nothin, or somethin.

BARB JANDA: Did you? Huh?

BRENDAN: Not really.

BARB JANDA: What do you mean not really?

BRENDAN: They got to my head.

BARB JANDA: Huh?

BRENDAN: ......say anything.

BARB JANDA: What do you mean by that? (pause) What do you mean by that Brendan? (pause) I have a question for yous two. Is there any way that l can talk to him. Not him, the other one.

WIEGERT: As in Steve you mean?

BARB JANDA: Yes.

WIEGERT: The only way we can have you talk to him is if he calls you or if it's, you know, you go there for visiting.

BARB JANDA: I won't go there and visit.

WIEGERT: OK. That's the only way. I-I have no other way of, you know, I-I can't hook you up to him or anything like that. I'm not allowed to do that. If he calls you, you can do what you want or if you go there for visiting, you know, that's up to you.

BARB JANDA: Were you pressuring him?

WIEGERT: Who are you talking about?

BARB JANDA: Him.

WIEGERT: What do you mean, pressuring him?

BARB JANDA: In talking to him.

WIEGERT: No, we told him we needed to know the truth. We've been doing this job a long time Barb and we can tell when people aren't telling the truth. And, in my opinion, he'd never be able to live with himself if he didn't tell somebody. There's no way he could've live with that. Nobody could live with that. I think Brendan knows that.

WIEGERT: Brendan, you need to use the bathroom or anything? (Brendan shakes head "no")

BARB JANDA: When are you going out to my house then?

WIEGERT: As soon as we can leave here, we'll go out there. I don't think we're gonna bring Brendan out there though. I-I just don't think that's a good idea. I don't think he needs to be exposed to that or be out there anymore. (door opens and closes) It's not gonna do him any good.

BARB JANDA: So what you're sayin' is if, when he gets out, it wouldn't be a good idea for him to be there, at all.

WIEGERT: I-You know, I can't tell you where for you guys to live, but what do you think? Do you think it's a good idea for him to be next to where this stuff occurred?

BARB JANDA: I-I don't wanna be there, but I can't afford another place.

WIEGERT: I know.

BARB JANDA: I mean, that's $80,000 I owe yet.

WIEGERT: I understand.

WIEGERT: It's a shitty, shitty spot to be in.

BARB JANDA: And nobody's gonna buy it.

WIEGERT: You're in a bad spot an -- and I wish I had some answers for you. If there's somethin' I can do to help ya, I certainly will. (pause) Maybe you should look into movin' the house.

BARB JANDA: I can't afford it.

WIEGERT: We -- who knows, you don't even know what it'll cost, depends on where you move it.

BARB JANDA: Quite a bit. (pause) An extra $16,000 for another basement. (pause) So what did you all help him with? Can I ask? Will you tell me? Brendan? Did you do it willingly? Huh? (Brendan shakes head "no") ( pause) He did tell me one time, Steven, he told me that probably one or two of my kids would not graduate.

WIEGERT: Steven told you that?

BARB JANDA: Yeah. This was before this all even happened. So he must have had it all planned.

WIEGERT: That's very possible, very possible. (pause)

BARB JANDA: You don't know how much hatred I got right now.

WIEGERT: You're right, I don't. I can only imagine. I-I can't even put myself in your shoes Barb, I can't.

BARB JANDA: My oldest son is gonna flip. I can't even tell him. I can't.

WIEGERT: I think you better because

BARB JANDA: I can't. He's on a heart monitor now.

WIEGERT: This is gonna be on the media tonight.

BARB JANDA: Oh god.

WIEGERT: There's no way to stop it.

BARB JANDA: He's not gonna be on, is he?

WIEGERT: Brendan?

BARB JANDA: Yeah.

WIEGERT: No.

BARB JANDA: Well they can't anyhow.

WIEGERT: No, he's not gonna be on.

BARB JANDA: How long do we have to stay here?

WIEGERT: Well, as soon as you guys are done talkin'.

BARB JANDA: No and he's not talking too much so.

WIEGERT: You know, I can leave you alone but this is all recorded and videotaped,

BARB JANDA: I don't care.

WIEGER: OK, All right, do you want to be left alone with him for five minutes or it doesn't matter at this point?

BARB JANDA: It doesn't matter.

WIEGERT: OK.

BARB JANDA: I just don't know if I'm really able to handle it.

WIERGERT: You have to. Barb you have to. You've got other children you've gotta worry about.

BARB JANDA: I know.

WIEGERT And you got Brendan to worry about too. Brendan's gonna need you through this. (pause) OK, let's go. Barb, is this yours?

BARB JANDA: Yeah.

WIEGERT: Let's go in the other room. Brendan, I'll be back, OK? (door opens and closes) (pause) (door opens and close)

FASSBENDER: Did you want another water Brendan? (Brendan shakes head "no") (long pause) (door opens)

WIEGERT: She wants to give him a hug.

BARB JANDA: Stand up. (background voices) (door opens and closes) (pause) (door opens and closes)

JACOBS: Brendan, my name is Dennis Jacobs and I-l'm a detective with Manitowoc County. Do you have any weapons or anything on you?

BRENDAN:

JACOBS: Anything like that?

BRENDAN: Just some stuff that I can give to my mom, like a CD player and that.

JACOBS: That wouldn't be a weapon though. You have like a little pocket knife, anything like that?

BRENDAN: (Shakes head "no") No.

JACOBS: Can you stand up, I just want to pat you down real quick, just to make sure. Well that's nothing that gonna hurt me an, OK that's fine. OK. There's nothin', nothin' else in your pockets at all? OK. You have a shirt, you have a pocket up here.

BRENDAN: No.

JACOBS: OK, you can have a seat.

BRENDAN: .....do somethin'?

JACOBS: Yeah, yo-you can put it back in your pockets too if you want, it's up to you. Whatever you wanna do. Actually if you wanna listen to your headphones, you can go ahead and do that too.

(door closes) (music playing in background during pause) (door opens)

WIEGERT Brendan, this what's gonna happen, OK. We're gonna take ya downstairs (door closes) and they're gonna fingerprint ya and stuff here. (Brendan nods "yes") OK, and then you'll be taken over to down to Sheboygan County jail. (Brendan nods "yes") So, is that your's?

BRENDAN: (Nods "yes") mm huh

WIEGERT: Where did ya have it, in your pocket? Holy Christmas. All right. Why don't we go. OK. Bring that along.

FASSBENDER: ........side or

WIEGERT: OK........

FASSBENDER: Are we going outside?

WIEGERT: No. (door closes)

This is the end of the interview with Brendan Dassey at Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department.

Scott and Barb bought a new home for $195,000 on 5.1 acres, across the East Twin River from the turnaround on Highway 147 (area highlighted in red in the image above); they signed the deed on February 27, 2007 (images below), the day Scott testified for the prosecution at Avery's trial.







Kathleen Zellner filed a "Motion for Reconsideration" with 20 new exhibits on October 23, 2017, and in it she revealed that Bryan Dassey, Barb Tadych's oldest son, told DCI agents on November 6, 2005 that Bobby Dassey saw Teresa leave the Avery property on October 31, 2005 (image below).

The following image is from Byran's affidavit attached as Exhibit G to Zellner's October 23, 2017 motion.

How to send money to Brendan to purchase items in the prison commissary:

Sending Money to canteen pic.twitter.com/TSkeLKIM18

— Carla Chase (@averydassey) February 22, 2016

Kathleen Zellner – Where The Rubber Meets The Road
BY GRACE WINTERWOOD 
NOVEMBER 2, 2017

Federal Court of Appeals Rules That Brendan Dassey's Confession Was Not Coerced and His Conviction Should Stand [Updated 12/8/2017]

Making A Murderer Xmas Message

Making a Murderer Update: Brendan Dassey Release BLOCKED (Brad Schimel & Judges EXPOSED)

Much of the Dassey-focused portion of Making a Murderer illustrates how Dassey's first lawyer did a terrible job. The lawyer seems to have concluded that Dassey was guilty without even meeting with him and without ever considering the possibility that he might be innocent, gave damning statements to the press, and hired a private investigator who was more or less working for the police. However, the key evidence against Dassey was the video of an interview before his ineffective lawyer began representing him. On the basis of Dassey's recorded confession, the jury convicted him of murder, and his state court appeals failed. Despite the very high burden, Dassey obtained habeas relief from a federal district judge, who concluded that the confession was involuntary. A panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed, but last week the en banc Seventh Circuit reversed by a vote of 4-3. [Source]

Brendan Dassey’s confession was coerced. In a society that values the presumption of innocence and the reasonable-doubt standard before an individual can be deprived of his freedom, Brendan Dassey’s story is disturbing; indeed, frightening. There is enough reasonable doubt here to drive a tractor-trailer through. [Source]

When Finality Trumps Common Sense: Brendan Dassey Denied
By Justin Brown, Brown and Nieto Law Firm

December 13, 2017

This week the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the legality of Brendan Dassey’s confession to the 2005 killing of Teresa Halbach, finding that it was voluntary and could be used against him at trial. To many of the millions of people who watched video of the confession in the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer,” the appellate court’s conclusion was incomprehensible.

Dassey was 16 years old at the time and it was apparent that he had an intellectual deficit. The police spoon-fed him a confession that he barely seemed to understand; they led, and he unwittingly followed. At one point, Dassey, oblivious to the extent of the trouble he was in, poignantly asked whether he would be home in time to see Wrestlemania. The scene made viewers cringe.

Most of us know how all of this played out for Dassey: following his so-called confession, he was arrested, tried and, based almost entirely on what he had told police, he was convicted of murder. Now that the Seventh Circuit has rejected his claim, by a 4-3 vote, it would take the improbable intervention of the Supreme Court to grant him any relief.

So how could the court system uphold Dassey’s conviction and affirm his sentence of life in prison? The answer lies in a powerful tenet of criminal law that is as much to blame as anything else for wrongful convictions.

Our criminal justice system values “finality” above virtually all else. It is enumerated in our statutes and embedded in our Supreme Court jurisprudence. As the argument goes, litigation cannot drag on forever, and, for the sake of judicial economy, our system needs to reach a conclusion. Judges, juries, victims and even defendants need to put the past behind them, according to the principle of finality, and only then does society reap the benefits of closure.

Yet, this notion of finality has very real dangers – and these dangers are played out in courts all around the country. Overly strict adherence to the tenet of finality can mean that preservation of convictions takes precedence over ascertaining the truth. 

When this powerful legal principle is put in the hands of aggressive prosecutors, with receptive judges, it can act as a trump card more compelling than even the most egregious constitutional violation. 

Making matters worse, most inmates are poor and distrusted, making it even more unlikely that they can mount the type of legal challenge that can overcome a settled conviction.

The Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA) – the statute under which Dassey petitioned the federal courts for relief – is partially to blame. The law erects so many obstacles in the name of finality that even an innocent petitioner is unlikely to be granted relief. 

In fact, while actual innocence can help an inmate clear some of ADEPA’s procedural hurdles, it does not in and of itself entitle a petitioner to relief.

The legal system’s deference to finality is particularly troubling as we increasingly become aware of the prevalence of wrongful convictions. 

DNA testing has taught us that sometimes – more often that we would like to admit – the criminal justice system gets things wrong. Innocent people get convicted. Unfortunately most wrongful convictions cannot be cured by DNA evidence. 

Criminal defendants are wrongly convicted based on mistaken identifications, junk science, lying witnesses and, yes, false confessions. 

While some wrongful convictions are overturned, most are not.

It is undeniable that the need for finality in criminal convictions is legitimate, even important. But so too is the need for justice and fairness. It is heartbreaking to think that even one person would wrongly spend his life in prison for a crime he did not commit. There is wisdom in what Benjamin Franklin once said: “It is better 100 guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer.”

Our system fails us all when it favors archaic rules and obscure technicalities over truth. 

The case of Brendan Dassey is one instance in which the criminal justice system has gotten it wrong. 

Upon viewing the video recording of his interview, common sense tells us that the police coerced him. His confession was involuntary and it should have been thrown out of court. Yet, the further along in the legal process Dassey goes, the more unlikely it becomes that the problem will be corrected. At some point, the rigors of our law, and the premium placed on finality, become too much to overcome.

The outcome of the Dassey case is not something we can be proud of. Rather, it underscores a problem with our system that we need to fix.

The Tragic, Real-Life Epilogue to Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” (Excerpt)
By James Warren, Vanity Fair

December 11, 2017 

A federal appeals court in Chicago has released a rather astonishing 4-3 decision in the case of Brendan Dassey.

(A version of this column originally appeared on Poynter.org.)

The press evince justifiable pride these days over so much great work—on sexual harassment, Donald Trump and myriad other topics. For sure, it's mixed with anxiety over shaky business models, a Trump-fueled decline in public esteem and painful screw-ups, such as those of late by CNN and ABC News.

And then there's this frequent occupational reality: press achievements that come crashing or go unacknowledged. Those limits of journalism are typified by an engrossing and controversial Netflix series and its account of a troubled young man named Brendan Dassey.

On Friday a federal appeals court in Chicago released a rather astonishing 4-3 decision in which it overturned a lower court and upheld a murder conviction against Dassey, a learning disabled Wisconsin man who was badgered by cops (at age 16) into a murder confession. The interrogation video was a central element of the Netflix series, Making a Murderer, an exploration of apparent police and prosecutorial misconduct that got tons of attention after it premiered on Dec. 18, 2015. Here's a Rolling Stone piece, one of many.

As much anger and conflict as the 10-part series generated about the conviction of the central figure, Steven Avery, there was virtual consensus that his nephew, Dassey, was screwed.

Even the reviews that underscored ambiguity about the whole Netflix project, such as in The New Yorker, were taken aback by Dassey's fate. The New Yorker, for one, tagged him "a stone-quiet, profoundly naïve, learning-disabled teen-ager with no prior criminal record, who is interrogated four times without his lawyer present. In the course of those interrogations, the boy, who earlier claimed to have no knowledge of (the murder victim), gradually describes an increasingly lurid torture scene that culminates in her murder by gunshot. The gun comes up only after investigators prod Dassey to describe what happened to (the victim's) head."

So he was indicted and convicted. It was upheld in state court, then moved to federal courts where it was reversed. Now the entire appeals court decides the confession was legitimate and upholds a life sentence. Even the majority opinion, written by Indiana moderate David Hamilton (President Obama's first judicial appointee, in 2009), concedes, "He was young. He was alone with the police. He was somewhat limited intellectually. The officers’ questioning included general assurances of leniency if he told the truth, and Dassey may have believed they promised more than they did."

In fact, his I.Q. was 83. And he plaintively asked if he be back at school by 1:29 because he had a project due for 6th period.

But in what could be part of law school class on the profound criminal justice issues, notably confessions, Hamilton says he looks guilty. Those who concur are law and order conservatives Frank Easterbrook, Michael Kanne and Diane Sykes, who was briefly a Milwaukee Journal reporter before heading into the law. She was considered by Trump for the Supreme Court vacancy he filled with Neil Gorsuch, and her-ex husband, Charlie Sykes, is a longtime conservative radio talk host (and Trump critic from the right).

The majority take prompts two rather astonishing dissents by one or more of three judges: Diane Wood (who was always on Obama's short list for the Supreme Court), Ann Williams (a Ronald Reagan appointee who was the first black female on the Chicago federal bench) and Ilana Rovner (a Reagan appointee and saint of a person who escaped the Nazis in her native Latvia as a child with her mother).

Here's Wood: "His confession was coerced, and thus it should not have been admitted into evidence. And even if we were to overlook the coercion, the confession is so riddled with input from the police that its use violates due process. Dassey will spend the rest of his life in prison because of the injustice this court has decided to leave unredressed. I respectfully dissent."

And Rovner: "He was young, of low intellect, manipulable, without a friendly adult, and faced repeated accusations, deception, fabricated evidence, implic‐ it and explicit promises of leniency, police officers disingenuously assuming the role of father figure, and assurances that it was not his fault...Even under our current, anachronistic under‐ standing of coercion, Dassey’s confession was so obviously and transparently coercively obtained that it is unreasonable to have found otherwise."

It's ironic—maybe more—that Richard Posner, who was generally conceded to be the most influential judge-academic of his generation and the most influential judge not on the Supreme Court, suddenly and surprisingly quit the Chicago appeals court in September at a still prolific 78. If he were around, odds are that he would have voted with the dissenters, made it 4-4 and thus affirmed the earlier reversal of Dassey's conviction.

But no. Dassey will remain in prison, it would appear, until he dies. So you've got time to download Making a Murderer. And, as you watch, be reminded of the strengths of journalism—but how even the most meticulously detailed conclusions can lead ultimately to exasperation, not satisfaction, and precious little attention.

MAKING A MURDERER CONTINUED: WILL BRENDAN DASSEY EVER RECEIVE JUSTICE? (OPINION)

By Michael C. Dorf, Newsweek 

December 15, 2017 

This article first appeared on Dorf on Law.

In 1970, the University of Chicago Law Review published an article titled Is Innocence Irrelevant? Collateral Attack on Criminal Judgments by federal appeals court judge Henry Friendly.

Judge Friendly was a judicial conservative in the small-c sense, non-ideological, committed to deciding cases narrowly, and an expert legal craftsman.

As a young lawyer, Chief Justice John Roberts clerked for Friendly during Friendly's later years, and Roberts is fond of quoting (though not always abiding by) Friendly's aphorism that if it is not necessary to decide an issue to decide a case, it is necessary not to decide the issue.

Is Innocence Irrelevant? Was somewhat uncharacteristic of Friendly in that it offered a controversial policy proposal on a politically contentious issue.

Writing in a period of transition from the Warren Court to the Burger Court, Friendly lamented that federal habeas corpus petitions by prisoners sentenced under state law were too often succeeding based on procedural irregularities that had no connection to innocence.

To use the more nakedly political argot, federal courts were letting guilty state prisoners off on technicalities.

Quoting Justice Hugo Black's dissent in a then-recently-decided case, Judge Friendly offered what he regarded—and what many still regard—as a self-evidently sensible proposition: "The defendant's guilt or innocence is at least one of the vital considerations in determining whether collateral relief should be available to a convicted defendant."

The ensuing nearly five decades have proven Judge Friendly prophetic—but probably not in a way that he would have approved.

In 1976, the Supreme Court held that habeas corpus would not be available at all for petitioners claiming that otherwise-reliable evidence obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment was used to convict them.

The next year, the Court would make it considerably harder for petitioners who had failed to raise their objections in compliance with state court rules to obtain relief in federal court on otherwise meritorious claims.

Other judicial narrowings followed and then, in 1996, Congress passed and President Bill Clinton signed the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA), which further limited habeas corpus.

The Court decisions and AEDPA have made it much more difficult for prisoners without plausible constitutional claims that bear on innocence to obtain relief via habeas corpus.

To my mind, that is understandable if not ideal: understandable because innocents serving prison sentences or awaiting execution suffer a much graver injustice than guilty parties whose proceedings were tainted by constitutional error; not ideal because habeas review once served, but no longer serves, as a means of ensuring that state court judges under political pressure to be tough on crime give full effect to the constitutional rights of criminal defendants.

But even if one thinks that Congress and the courts were right to cut back on habeas in cases where prisoners raise claims that speak only to the fairness of the proceedings, not to guilt or innocence, there is cause for alarm.

Modern habeas law honors only half of Judge Friendly's agenda. It makes the bringing of habeas petitions by guilty defendants considerably harder than in the Warren Court era.

But it also makes it extremely difficult for the innocent to obtain habeas relief. That proposition was on full display late last week in an en banc ruling by the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Spoiler Alert: I will now discuss a case that figures in the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer. If you intend to watch it but have not yet done so, you might want to bookmark the column and come back here after viewing.

For those readers who did not (and do not intend to) watch or have forgotten the basic story of Making a Murderer, it goes like this:

(1) From 1985 to 2003, Steven Avery of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, served a prison sentence for a sexual assault he did not commit;

(2) after he was exonerated, Avery sued the county and various police officials who were, the documentary indicates, at least grossly negligent in the handling of his case;

(3) while the civil suit was pending, Avery was arrested for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach;

(4) the case against Avery was largely circumstantial, including evidence that appeared to result from police tampering and other improper procedure;

(5) that said, the police sometimes try to frame guilty people, and I came away from Making a Murderer thinking that Avery might be guilty of murdering Halbach, even if the evidence was thin;

(6) the thinnest evidence was the confession of Avery's nephew Brendan Dassey, who is close to intellectually disabled, who was interviewed by police in an extremely suggestive manner, and who told a story that was internally inconsistent and did not match the physical evidence on key points;

(7) if the conviction of Avery appears dubious—I think the jury ought to have found reasonable doubt, but at least he might be guilty—the conviction of Dassey as an accomplice in the murder seems like a grave injustice, because Dassey is very likely innocent.

Much of the Dassey-focused portion of Making a Murderer illustrates how Dassey's first lawyer did a terrible job. The lawyer seems to have concluded that Dassey was guilty without even meeting with him and without ever considering the possibility that he might be innocent, gave damning statements to the press, and hired a private investigator who was more or less working for the police.

However, the key evidence against Dassey was the video of an interview before his ineffective lawyer began representing him.

On the basis of Dassey's recorded confession, the jury convicted him of murder, and his state court appeals failed.

Despite the very high burden, Dassey obtained habeas relief from a federal district judge, who concluded that the confession was involuntary. A panel of the Seventh Circuit affirmed, but last week the en banc Seventh Circuit reversed by a vote of 4-3.

There is a difference between a documentary film and a full trial record, so I read the majority opinion with an open mind, expecting to learn that Making a Murderer had perhaps left out key details of the case against Dassey.

To my surprise, I found none. Indeed, to the contrary, Judge Hamilton's opinion for the court dutifully recites the inconsistencies in Dassey's story, his seeming not to realize the nature of the interrogation (indicating he was eager most of all to get back to class even after he had confessed to a murder), the language used by the officers to indicate that if only Dassey told them what they wanted to hear he would be free, and . . . nothing else.

Although the written account in the en banc opinion lacks the full drama of Making a Murderer, like the documentary, the opinion paints a picture of the events that strongly suggests that Dassey is innocent.

So why does the majority allow to stand a conviction based on a confession that is at best of questionable reliability when there is no other real evidence tying Dassey to the crime?

Because Dassey's likely innocence is, in a word, irrelevant.

Unlike the Fourth Amendment, which protects values like privacy and property, which are not linked to a defendant's guilt or innocence of the crime for which he is accused, the Fifth Amendment right against a coerced confession is linked to guilt or innocence.

That's one reason why, in a 1993 case, the Supreme Court refused to extend the no-Fourth-Amendment-exclusionary-rule-claims-on-habeas rule to habeas petitions based on a claimed Miranda violation.

The Miranda warnings serve to mitigate the inherent coerciveness of custodial interrogation with the aim of preventing coerced confessions, and coerced confessions are unreliable evidence.

Strong evidence of guilt might be obtained in violation of the Fourth Amendment, but evidence obtained via a coerced confession is not strong evidence of guilt because the coercion, rather than the suspect's conscience, will have been the basis for the confession.

Yet even though petitioners can bring Fifth Amendment claims on habeas, the restrictive rules that were adopted by the Court beginning in the early 1970s and then tightened further by Congress in AEDPA make it difficult to prevail on Fifth Amendment claims, just as they make it difficult to prevail on more "technical" claims that do not correlate with guilt or innocence.

The Court and Congress heeded Judge Friendly's call to make habeas relief much more difficult for guilty prisoners to obtain, but in so doing they threw the baby out with the bathwater by also making habeas relief much more difficult for innocent prisoners to obtain.

Thus, Judge Hamilton's en banc opinion notes that AEDPA sets a high standard for relief and that Dassey hasn't met that standard. End of story.

Is that right? Not necessarily. Here's how Judge Wood begins her dissent:

Psychological coercion, questions to which the police furnished the answers, and ghoulish games of ”20 Questions,” in which Brendan Dassey guessed over and over again before he landed on the “correct” story (i.e., the one the police wanted), led to the “confession” that furnished the only serious evidence supporting his murder conviction in the Wisconsin courts.

Turning a blind eye to these glaring faults, the en banc majority has decided to deny Dassey’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. They justify this travesty of justice as something compelled by AEDPA.

If the writ, as limited by AEDPA, were nothing more than a dead letter, perhaps they would be correct. But it is not. Instead, as the Supreme Court wrote in Harrington v. Richter, “the writ of habeas corpus stands as a safeguard against imprisonment of those held in violation of the law.” 

It is, the Court went on to say, “a guard against extreme malfunctions in the state criminal justice systems.”

As the district court and the panel majority recognized, we have before us just such an extreme malfunction. Dassey at the relevant time was 16 years old and had an IQ in the low 80s. His confession was coerced, and thus it should not have been admitted into evidence.

And even if we were to overlook the coercion, the confession is so riddled with input from the police that its use violates due process.

Dassey will spend the rest of his life in prison because of the injustice this court has decided to leave unredressed. I respectfully dissent.

Kudos to Judge Wood for trying to make lemonade from a lemon, in particular Harrington v. Richter , in which the rhetoric she quotes begins an opinion that goes on to deny relief to the habeas petitioner.

Kudos as well for strongly suggesting--even without exactly saying--that Dassey should be granted relief because he is probably innocent. Judge Wood only just barely failed.

The case was 4-3, after all. But Dassey would have had a better chance of obtaining habeas relief if the full Friendly program had been implemented and innocence were made an explicit basis for placing a thumb, or better yet, an entire arm, on the scale in favor of relief.

Is this the end of the habeas road for Dassey?

Technically not. He could file a cert petition with the Supreme Court, but his prospects there are doubtful. Ex ante, one would have predicted a better chance of success before the Seventh Circuit.

Moreover, Dassey's case is mostly about the application of law to facts and evidence, and thus not obviously cert-worthy on any issue of larger importance.

Sure, it presents the larger question whether, as Friendly asked, innocence is irrelevant, but the Supreme Court doesn't seem much interested in that question.

There remains the desperate possibility that Dassey could obtain federal habeas relief by filing an "actual innocence" claim. The Supreme Court suggested the possibility of such a claim in Herrera v. Collins in 1993, but it is not clear that actual innocence is a basis for relief from a sentence of life imprisonment rather than only from a death sentence.

And even if so, the Court has set an almost impossibly high standard for relief based on actual innocence.

In the one case in which a habeas petitioner obtained any relief from the SCOTUS on a Herrera claim, the Court said his lawyers needed to go back to the district court and produce "evidence that could not have been obtained at the time of trial [that] clearly establishes petitioner’s innocence."

That petitioner, Troy Davis, was subsequently found not to have produced such evidence and was executed.

Dassey could not, in any event, take advantage of the Herrera/Davis opening, even if it were broader than a pinhole, because he is not adducing new evidence.

Dassey's lawyers claim that the evidence that was adduced at trial should not have been deemed adequate to convict him because his confession was coerced and thus unreliable.

All that is left for Dassey, it seems, is the hope that lightning strikes twice--that once again someone wholly unconnected to Steven Avery is shown to have committed the crime for which Avery (and this time Dassey as well) was convicted.

Michael C. Dorf is the Robert S. Stevens professor of law at Cornell University. He blogs at DorfOnLaw.org.

Homicide detective’s book describes ‘How the Police GenerateFalse Confessions’

By Tom Jackman, Washington Post 

October 20, 2016

James L. Trainum, retired Washington, D.C., homicide detective and author of the book “How the Police Generate False Confessions.

“If you plan on being arrested for a felony, you must read this book.”— Tom Jackman, The Washington Post 

Also, if you have an interest in fairness, justice and preventing wrongful convictions, then the new book “How the Police Generate False Confessions,” by former Washington, D.C., homicide detective James Trainum is an important read. It takes you inside the interrogation room to see how investigators extract admissions from innocent people, and how the justice system can fix this persistent problem, seen in high profile cases such as the Central Park Five, the Norfolk Four and the teenaged suspect from Wisconsin in the Netflix series “Making a Murderer.”

It’s a phenomenon that remains, understandably, incomprehensible to many. Someone “admits” to a crime they did not actually commit, to a police detective of all people, knowing they face a long prison sentence for doing so. Who would do such a thing? In all three of the cases above, young men admitted to committing rape, and in two of them to gruesome murders.

Trainum, 61, spent 17 years in homicide for the Metropolitan Police Department, retiring in 2010. He was the lead detective on the high-profile Starbucks triple murder in Georgetown in 1997, which he eventually helped solve in 1999. But in 1994, Trainum had an eye-opening experience when he obtained his own false confession. After a 16-hour interrogation, a woman told him she and two men had killed a man whose body was found, bound and beaten, near the Anacostia River. She was charged with first-degree murder. But she recanted weeks later, and Trainum found proof that she couldn’t have been where she originally claimed at the time of the slaying. The charges were dismissed.

“What did I do,” Trainum asked himself, “to convince this person to tell me something she didn’t do? How did she get all those details she shouldn’t have known?” He realized that implying that her cooperation would get her better treatment from the prosecutors, and minimizing her role in the case to obtain her testimony against co-defendants, as well as a mistaken handwriting analysis and a bogus “voice stress test,” got her to confess.

Trainum began researching the concept of false confessions, not widely discussed in the 1990s. At that time, five New York teenagers were in prison for allegedly raping a woman in Central Park in 1989. Though DNA later proved an unrelated man had committed the crime, some people still believe the Central Park Five are guilty, including presidential candidate Donald Trump. “It just shows you what the power of a confession is,” Trainum said. “In spite of the overwhelming evidence, physical and otherwise, people still believe a confession trumps everything. No pun intended.”

False confessions are now understood to be a significant contribution to wrongful convictions. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, of 1,900 wrongful convictions in their data base, 234 were caused by false confessions, or about 12 percent.

Trainum said detectives are just following their training, which is often minimal, and which allows for not only unethical tactics but lying by investigators, who can falsely tell a suspect they failed a polygraph, that other people identified him as a suspect and that evidence indicates he committed the crime. Trainum summarizes the approach that most detectives take to a suspect in “the box”:

1. Conclude that the suspect is guilty

2. Tell them that there is no doubt of their guilt

3. Block any attempt by the suspect to deny the accusation

4. Suggest psychological or moral justifications for what they did

5. Lie about the strength of the evidence that points to the suspect’s guilt

6. Offer only two explanations for why he committed the crime. Both are admissions, but one is definitely less savory than the other

7. Get them to agree with you that they did it

8. Have them provide details about the crime

Now Trainum repeatedly acknowledges that police often elicit confessions from actually guilty people, sometimes after long or difficult sessions. But he said everyone in the system — detectives, defense attorneys, prosecutors and judges — must be aware of the possibility of false confessions, and be certain to do the legwork which corroborates or disproves such statements. 

In 1995, Washington, D.C., homicide detective Jim Trainum was shown using the latest technology, and a new crime data base, to solve cases. (Robert Reeder/The Washington Post)

Trainum writes that suspects often make false confessions because they make a bad cost-benefit analysis. They think that confessing will allow them to go home, or allow them to face lesser charges, or protect other people. In “Making a Murderer,” 16-year-old Brendan Dassey confesses to murder and then asks if he can return to class at his high school. That confession and others were later used against him at trial and he was convicted, though in August of this year the case was overturned after a federal judge ruled the confessions were coerced and involuntary. “Thank God for videotape,” Trainum said of the confession. “Those detectives were not seeking the truth. They’re seeking a confession.”

But Dassey’s multiple confessions, including one in which the detectives tell him how the victim was killed after he repeatedly provides the wrong causes, had held up through trial and appeals court rulings for years. “One of the biggest problems,” Trainum said, “is the judges don’t worry about reliability [of a confession]. They say it’s up to the jury to decide that. They only worry about if it is admissible. There’s kind of a movement to shift the reliability back to the judges.” He noted that judges will hold hearings on the reliability of eyewitnesses or the reliability of jailhouse informants. “They don’t do that with confession evidence. And they really should. Once a confession gets in front of a jury, the defense attorney has an uphill battle. The jurors think, ‘I would never confess to something I didn’t do.'”

The National Registry of Exonerations shows that 15 percent of wrongful convictions occurred with guilty pleas. That was the case with Danial Williams and Joseph Dick, two sailors in the Norfolk Four who falsely confessed and pleaded guilty in the rape and murder of a woman in Norfolk in 1997. Another man’s DNA later linked him to the crime and he said he committed it alone. Williams’ and Dick’s sentences were commuted but not fully pardoned by then-Gov. Tim Kaine (now a vice presidential candidate) in 2009, and in an appeal to have their convictions vacated, U.S. District Court Judge John A. Gibney Jr. ruled last month that, “By any measure, the evidence shows the defendants’ innocence…Stated more simply, no sane human being could find them guilty.”

So what to do about false confessions? Trainum has many suggestions, starting with police videotaping all interrogations. Many departments still don’t do it. “Law enforcement doesn’t want you in that interrogation room,” Trainum said. “They don’t want you to see what they’re doing, because some of the stuff they know is not appropriate.”

But the ex-detective also advocates adopting the British method of investigation, in which the questioning is not adversarial and is instead focused on eliciting the truth, as opposed to only a confession. It is known as P.E.A.C.E., for preparation, engagement, accounting, closure and evaluation. It was imposed on British police after a spate of false confessions, and Trainum said it can be used just as effectively as the current American method.

The P.E.A.C.E. model is only starting to make inroads in the U.S., and it would require extensive training and money. He thinks the skill of interviewing is undervalued. “People think talking to people is a natural thing,” Trainum said. “It’s not. That’s why psychiatrists undergo so many years of training. You have to be able to build a rapport without threats or promises. Cops make the worst private investigators. We have too many bad habits.”

Trainum, now a consultant for the Innocence Project, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and various defense lawyers, has not exactly been embraced by his former colleagues, who began calling him “Benedict Trainum” when he was still on the force. He said he is shunned by some older cops, but younger ones are more open to his ideas.

“I hope law enforcement reads my book,” Trainum said. “With my consulting business, I want to be put out of business. I would rather they make good cases that I can’t touch.”

I asked Brandon Garrett, a University of Virginia law professor who has focused on wrongful convictions, about Trainum’s book. “It is such an important new book,” Garrett said. “For decades, we have seen false confession after false confession lead to tragic wrongful convictions of the innocent while serious criminals go undetected.  The courts have done little to respond to abuses in the interrogation room; if anything they have eroded constitutional protections, such as the right to remain silent.  Trainum explains that for police, there is another way.  Overly coercive interrogation techniques not only produce false confessions but they are not good at uncovering good information.  In the U.K. and in more agencies in the U.S., police have changed gears, turning from psychologically coercive techniques to information gathering techniques.  Trainum and his book are at the forefront of a revolution in police interrogations.”

Now that’s a lot better book review quote than mine.

UPDATE DECEMBER 8, 2017

On August 12, 2016, Brendan Dassey's 2007 conviction was overturned by federal judge William E. Duffin. The State of Wisconsin appealed the decision. In June 2017, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals agreed 2-to-1 with Duffin's 2016 ruling. The State of Wisconsin appealed the decision. On December 8, 2017, the full seven-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled by a vote of 4-to-3 that Brendan's confession had not been coerced by police investigators, reversing the panel's decision.

“The state courts’ finding that Dassey’s confession was voluntary was not beyond fair debate, but we conclude it was reasonable. We reverse the grant of Dassey’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus,” Judge Hamilton wrote for the majority.

Hamilton said that Dassey was not subjected to threats or intimidation and investigators stayed calming while interviewing him.

Wood slammed the majority’s decision as “a profound miscarriage of justice.”

“Psychological coercion, questions to which the police furnished the answers, and ghoulish games of ‘20 Questions,’ in which Brendan Dassey guessed over and over again before he landed on the ‘correct’ story (i.e., the one the police wanted), led to the ‘confession’ that furnished the only serious evidence supporting his murder conviction in the Wisconsin courts,” Wood wrote. (Parentheses in original.)

The Seventh Circuit’s chief judge said Dassey’s confession was clearly coerced and should not have been admitted into evidence.

“Dassey will spend the rest of his life in prison because of the injustice this court has decided to leave unredressed,” Wood wrote. [Source]

END UPDATE

WBAY
June 23, 2017

Attorneys for "Making A Murderer" subject Brendan Dassey have filed a motion asking for their client's immediate release from prison.

The motion was filed Friday with the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, one day after a three-judge panel upheld a lower court's ruling overturning Dassey's conviction for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc County.

In the motion, attorneys Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin ask the court to lift a stay that's blocking Dassey's release from prison.

"Mr. Dassey, now twenty-seven years old, has been held in custody since March 31, 2006 - since he was sixteen years old - for a conviction, based almost entirely on an involuntary confession, that has been overturned," reads the motion.

Judge William Duffin, who initially overturned Dassey's conviction and ordered his release from prison, issued the stay on request from the Wisconsin Department of Justice to allow the agency time to appeal.

On Thursday, the appeals court released a 2-1 decision siding with Dassey that his confession to helping his uncle Steven Avery rape and kill Halbach on Halloween 2005 was coerced by Manitowoc County investigators.

Nirider and Drizin request that Dassey be released on bond.

"There is no longer any reason to further stay the district court's order releasing Mr. Dassey," reads the motion.

Click here to read the motion filed by Dassey's attorneys.

The order asks the state to file a response by 5 p.m. on June 26. Once it has heard from both sides, the court will make a decision on Dassey's release. It could happen as early as next week.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice has up to three months to decide whether to re-try Dassey for Halbach's murder. The state also has the option of asking the full 7th Circuit Court to review the case, or taking it to the U.S. Supreme Court.

"We anticipate seeking review by the entire 7th Circuit or the United States Supreme Court and hope that today’s erroneous decision will be reversed. We continue to send our condolences to the Halbach family as they have to suffer through another attempt by Mr. Dassey to re-litigate his guilty verdict and sentence," reads a statement provided by the DOJ.

Two federal courts have now ruled that Dassey's confession to Halbach's murder was involuntary, differing from decisions in the state courts.

The federal appeals court's majority opinion states that Dassey's intellectual limitations and suggestibility must be taken into account, and the investigators gave him false promises of leniency.

"Dassey's interview could be viewed in a psychology class as a perfect example of operant conditioning," reads the majority opinion.

"In sum, the investigators promised Dassey freedom and alliance if he told the truth and all signs suggest that Dassey took that promise literally. The pattern of questions demonstrates that the message the investigators conveyed is that the 'truth' was what they wanted to hear."

Click here to view the 128-page opinion from the federal court of appeals.

Steven Avery's attorney visited her client Friday at Waupun Correctional Institution. Kathleen Zellner tells Action 2 News that Avery is optimistic about his own case.

"He's extremely optimistic because when someone's innocent, and I've done this many times, they always are optimistic. I think he feels we have the evidence now to vacate the conviction. which we will do, and so he's very optimistic," Zellner said.

Zellner has filed a post-conviction motion arguing Avery should be granted a new trial based on five arguments, including ineffective defense counsel, ethical violations by the prosecutor, and new evidence. Zellner's motion breaks down new scientific testing she had completed on evidence on the theory Avery's DNA was planted.

Click here to view our exclusive interview with Kathleen Zellner.

Error in article above as noted by MnAtty at reddit:

WBAY wrote that (back in November) “Judge William Duffin, who initially overturned Dassey's conviction and ordered his release from prison, issued the stay on request from the Wisconsin Department of Justice to allow the agency time to appeal. WRONG. Judge Duffin DENIED this motion, stating it “largely reargues the same points already considered and rejected by the court in deciding Dassey's motion for release.” The WDOJ then filed an emergency motion with the Federal Appeals Court in Chicago, where their motion to stay was granted. WBAY really garbles these court rulings. Gotta watch out for that. 

ORIGINAL POST FROM NOVEMBER 14, 2016

Federal Judge Orders Supervised Release of Brendan Dassey; Appeals Court Grants Stay of Release as Case Continues