The Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer was at its most effective when it shifted its focus to the sad plight of Brendan Dassey, an unfortunate young man who seemed to the layman’s eye not culpable for anything more than naiveté about how the legal system swallows up lives. So the news of his conviction for participating in the murder of Teresa Halbach, among other charges, having just now been overturned will, among many other things, be cause for celebration among the show’s fans. This news, the freeing of a young man who just last year was depicted in a widely-discussed documentary series as the ultimate victim of injustice, represents a meaningful achievement on the part of the
If you watched “Making a Murderer,” the ten-episode Netflix documentary about the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, you were probably both transfixed and horrified by the scenes chronicling the police interrogation of 16-year-old Brendan Dassey. Dassey is the nephew of Steven Avery, whose arrest, prosecution and conviction for Halbach’s murder were the central focus of the documentary. Dassey ultimately provided the confession the police demanded, repeating the suggestion that he assisted Avery in Halbach’s murder. He was convicted and, under the current terms of his sentence, would not be eligible for parole until 2048. Despite the apparent flaws in the interrogation an
