Thoughts on 'Making a Murderer'

Don't read this, if you haven't watched Netflix's series, 'Making a Murderer', that is, unless you do not intend to watch the documentary.

How to understand the full story

Having binge-watched the entire show, I felt unsatisfied about what was presented. I made it a point to remain skeptical while watching the show, and it was clear to me that things had been left out, so I naturally searched online to find out more information about Steven Avery's case. That's how I found the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinal's Tom Kertscher's posts covering his own binge-watching and references to his own knowledge and coverage of the case. I strongly urge you to read what he wrote. I also urge you to read what the prosecutor had to say, after the show had been released, as well as speculation on who may have killed Teresa Halbach, as both come into play, below.

My take on all this, is probably very different than what you'll read from anyone else, or at least as far as I've been able to determine from researching the topic.

Understanding the show

The first thing to understand about the show, was that it covered things that the jury did not see, and it also skipped on covering many things that the jury did see. This alone made it difficult to put one's self in the juror's box, or to judge the verdict of the jury. Understand, therefore, that the invalidation of the verdict was not necessarily the intention of the filmmakers, which brings me to the second point.

The second, and probably most important point about the show's intention, was that it was presented as a demonstration of how the prosecution of individuals could go wrong. This second point, frankly, was nothing new to me; I've known for a long time that the judicial system, in particular the jury system, was highly imperfect. Having sat in a court room under voir dire multiple times, it was very clear to me that jurors were not selected by their impartiality; rather, they were chosen by any bias that could be exploited by one side or the other. The judicial system isn't a search for the truth; it is an adversarial system to exploit what is known, to seek a conviction. If you want to convict a black person for a crime against a white person, you choose a jury of white people. If you want to convict a Wall Street investor of fraud, you find a bunch of people who are poor or otherwise had been laid off recently.

The third point presented, was that the local sheriffs and investigators were like Keystone Kops, committing all sorts of errors along the way, motivated by tunnel vision, to focus on Steven Avery. Without this, the second point of the overzealous prosecution of Steven Avery could not have occurred. Of course, this sort of thing is fueled by the system itself which seeks to exclude smart people from becoming police detectives, and if you were to ask me, I would tell you that this is precisely why so many innocent people are convicted, and sometimes executed, only to be later exonerated.

A brief understanding of Steven Avery's case

According to the prosecutors, Steven Avery murdered Teresa Halbach with both a gun and a knife -- first with a knife, and then with shots to the head. To make their case, they pointed to Halbach's RAV4 being located on Avery's property, to his blood being found in the RAV4, to Halbach's vehicle's key in his residence, to bone fragments found in two separate fire pits on his property, and a single bullet fragment containing Halbach's DNA, found in his garage. A gun recovered from Steven Avery's home, supposedly matched the ballistics fingerprinting of the bullet fragment that was found in his garage.

The defense argued that, not only was Avery wrongfully targeted because of his past, but that the whole case was based on planted evidence and faulty methods of investigation that should have invalidated the evidence collected against Steven Avery. Furthermore, the defense offered up plausible explanations to refute the prosecution's case, by demonstrating when and how the local sheriff had opportunities to plant said evidence.

What prosecution possibly got wrong

The smoking gun, according to their closing argument, was the refutation, through FBI testing, that the blood found in Halbach's RAV4, had not been taken from evidence collected in a prior case.  Therefore, according to the prosecutors, Avery's blood in Halbach's RAV4 was not planted by the sheriff. In fact, Avery's DNA was supposedly found on the hood and trunk of Halbach's RAV4, which was left out of the documentary.

But there is one possibility that was never examined and therefore never excluded, as it related to Avery's DNA: Though the examiner may have concluded that the blood matched Avery's DNA, it in fact could also be that of a sibling.

"False matches are also more likely to occur with close relatives (for example, the brother of the person who committed the crime)." -- Forensic Genetics Policy Initiative

Furthermore, with recent studies, bullet forensics is more art than science, with the reliability under question.

"As with fingerprints, not enough research has been done to quantify the probability of error in ballistics matching. So it's impossible to say with certainty that the marks made on bullets as they are fired are truly unique to an individual gun." -- Popular Mechanics

If the homicide had been committed by one of Avery's siblings, it could easily explain why all of this evidence was scattered around his place, but yet, outside of that single bullet fragment, no other blood or DNA was found anywhere in Avery's garage or home -- no blood splatter of a gunshot, no pool of blood from knife wounds, and no luminol to highlight blood that was cleaned up.

Why the defense failed

The contention that local sheriffs planted evidence, was never going to fly. The more plausible idea here, was that they bungled their investigations from start to finish, because they had made up their minds of the narrative, then sought the evidence to support their narrative.

Were local sheriffs incentivized to plant evidence to thwart a multi-million dollar payout to Steven Avery? Sure. Could they have planted evidence? Sure. But without explicit evidence, you're merely speculating about a high offense, and doing so does not result in reasonable doubt. Reasonable doubt is a very high standard, so what the defense offered was simply not good enough.

Because the defense's strategy was to focus was on the planting of evidence by investigators / sheriffs, they had no bogeyman to pin the murder on -- something that many jurors probably needed to have, before they could find Avery innocent of the charges.

The other lesson to be learned

Testimony is not easy, if you're trying to do it from memory. If, like most of the people in this case, you were testifying from memory of events a year or more ago, good luck to you, because your memory is flawed and you will have conflated (mixed) memories which you believe to be real and true, though they are embellished.

If you've kept up with this blog, you would know that whenever I've witnessed a criminal act, I've rushed to document everything that I witnessed. In my documentation, I've tracked time, my actions, and my thoughts. Tracking one's thoughts, goes to your state of mind -- something that you'd want to track, in case someone wants to question your bias.

The same is true for police officers. Most of them will diligently document every critical detail in any encounter, on a little notepad, on the scene. At a later date, when they report to a court room, they are then able to pull out their notepad and recount what happened. If you do this, it will be harder for people to attack your credibility.