Finished 'Making A Murderer'? Here's What To Read Next
Like Serial last year, Netflix's Making a Murderer has captured the public's interest with a tale of true crime and our broken justice system.
The series — which is the work of two filmmakers, Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi, who filmed over a period of 10 years — tells the story of Steven Avery, a resident of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who served 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit and, two years after his exoneration and release, was arrested for and convicted of a murder which he maintains he did not commit. Slate has a helpful breakdown of the key points.
If you've watched all 10 episodes, here's what to read now:
An Extensive Interview With The Filmmakers
Ricciardi: We were taking a procedural look at the system. We have no stake in the outcome of the trial; we have no stake in whether Steven is innocent or guilty. What a risk we would have taken as filmmakers to devote all our resource and time to a case if it was going to hinge in a particular outcome. What we were documenting was the procedure that led to the verdicts.
And Interviews With Defense Attorney Dean Strang
Strang: I like being the underdog. I don't like bullies. And often the government seems to be in the bully role or can bully people even if a prosecutor doesn't mean to exercise his or her power that way. The sovereign powers are so enormous, and it's so lopsidedly in favor of the government no matter the good faith of the prosecutor.
[Slate]
Strang hinted that he and Buting may return to Avery's side to fight for a new trial that could exonerate Avery—again.
Viewers Are Petitioning President Obama To Pardon Avery
The Obama administration will have to address the incarceration of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin native at the center of the Netflix series, "Making a Murderer." A petition asking President Obama to pardon Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey has reached 100,000 signatures, the minimum requirement for the White House to issue a response.
[ABC News]
But it's highly unlikely that he'll actually be pardoned:
So what are Steven Avery's chances today? Can he obtain a pardon? In light of this new information supposedly from a juror, can the defense use this new information from a juror to attack — or "impeach" — the verdict? First, can he obtain a pardon by appealing to federal or state executives? It's a two-part question with a two-part answer: the first part is "absolutely not"; and the second answer is "almost certainly not."
[CNN]
Members Of The Prosecution Have Alleged The Filmmakers Ignored Key Evidence
The series "really presents misinformation," [then-DA Ken] Kratz said in an interview on Monday. He portrayed the program as a tool of Mr. Avery's defense and accused the filmmakers of intentionally withholding facts that would lead viewers to see his guilt.Much less than a dispassionate portrayal of the case, the film is a result of the filmmakers' "agenda" to portray Mr. Avery as innocent and stoke public outrage, Mr. Kratz said. "That is absolutely what they wanted to happen," he added.
Ken Kratz, the DA who headed the case against Avery, sent the Wrap an email outlining the evidence that was left out. Milwaukee-based crime reporter Jessica McBride broke down the claims at OnMilkwaukee:
I didn't want to take [Kratz's] word for any of it, though (especially due to his later problems). Instead, I went back to news accounts and some court transcripts from the time. Those are not infallible, either, of course. But they are interesting. It's too bad the Netflix documentarians left things out or quickly passed over things. They would have created an even richer tapestry if they hadn't.
McBride has also written about the questions the series raised for her — a Wisconsin resident who had firmly believed in Avery and Dassey's guilt before watching Making a Murderer — and about the four alternative suspects the defense wanted to put forward (including Avery's brothers).
In an interview with The Daily Beast, defense attorney Dean Strang responded to Kratz's arguments:
Speaking with The Daily Beast Wednesday night from Milwaukee, Avery's former counsel Dean Strang challenged the supposedly damning evidence used to convict Avery in 2007 for the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach, despite the plethora of holes that have outraged viewers since the series' debut. "This is a case where I think substantial, real, and reasonable doubts remain about whether an innocent man got convicted," declared Strang.
At Least One Juror Thinks Avery May Have Been Framed
In an interview on Today, the filmmakers said that a juror has spoken with them about about the deliberations and says that they think Avery was framed by police.
The juror also said that the jury hoped to force a retrial by acquitting Avery of mutilating a corpse:
According to the juror, the finding of not guilty on the count of mutilating a corpse — a "split verdict" — was intended to "send a message to the appellate courts," Demos said. "They thought that Steven would get a new trial. That was sort of their plan and it didn't work out that way," Demos said.
A Lab Tech's Take On The State's DNA Testing
I just wanted to lay out some facts from the scientific field about what I saw. Based on what I have presented here, pretend the bullet had no trace of the victim, and pretend the blood swabs were never tested for the presence of EDTA. That is what should have been done.
Brendan Dassey's Full Interrogation Is Online
If you feel so inclined, you can watch all four harrowing hours of Mark Wiegert and Tom Fassbender's interrogation of Brendan Dassey here.
[Complex]
How Does It Compare To 'Serial' And Others?
The New True Crime seems to have happened by accident, a marketer-designed trend, each entry piggybacking on the success of a serendipitously recent predecessor— The Jinx onto Serial, Making a Murderer onto The Jinx — until an old genre seemed to be undergoing a real renaissance. Looked at closely, though, each major new entry has also approached the classic genre from very different angles; they may have less in common than they seem to.
[BK Mag]
For a piece in the Washington Post, Stephanie Merry argues that the lack of a first-person narrator in Making a Murder, like Serial host Sarah Koenig, hurts the credibility of Netflix series:
One element that made "Serial" so revolutionary — an openness about reportorial bias — isn't in "Making a Murderer." It's easy to feel duped as details emerge about what facts the series captured and what the filmmakers chose to leave out or downplay.
In a similar fashion to the related podcasts and online communities that sprang up around Serial, amateur Internet sleuths are getting in on the Avery case, particularly on the Making a Murderer subreddit.
And What Does The Show, And Its Popularity, Mean For Society?
If Making a Murderer bears a hopeful message, it's not that the criminal justice system is doing its job; or even that we stand a chance of fixing it. Instead, it tells us that audiences have begun asking for more than the simple stories we have long been satisfied with, and that we have begun to believe that the truth may be more complicated than we have allowed ourselves to believe.
I'm heartened that our reality programming is exposing flaws in our justice system and sowing seeds of compassion. I'm thrilled that something as ultimately open-ended as this show is still so seemingly satisfying to so many people. As we trudge toward the promise of the truth, amassing tweets and e-signatures and righteous outrage, it seems like things might be getting better insofar as we understand the extent of how bad things are… In the end, for the vast majority of its audience, Making a Murderer is only a show, but that's better than nothing.
[Gawker]
