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Comment by seibelj | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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

> * 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.

Yes, Serial first season engaged by laying out a larger and deeper story as it progressed, and was driven by the audience's curiosity to see what new evidence comes up that may change their view on previously presented evidence. Making a Murderer seems to (I'm only 6 episodes through) feed off the audience's impotent rage at injustice.

I only just listened to Serial, a few weeks ago. I didn't think a true-crime story about a random murder in Baltimore would be all that interesting. But holy shit is it well done.

Extremely strong recommend!

The second season is interesting in how different it is. There's not a lot of ambiguity in the same way, at least yet. It's an interesting story, but so far it feels like an informal documentary, which is fine, but doesn't replicate the magic of season one. I'm wondering if they are going to lay some big reveal on us soon.

I have a lot of respect for you, so I would love to understand how you came to these conclusions:

* Avery is forensically tied to Halbach's car in ways that do withstand scrutiny

Which ways are this? From the documentary, they messed up the DNA testing and the EDTA test is a bunk (Not being able to test for EDTA does not mean that the blood did not come from vial)

* There is physical evidence that corroborates specific, idiosyncratic details of the story Dassey told investigators

Which are these details? I think even with the slant in the documentary, it is clear that evidence has been tempered with. Combine it with the fact that Brendon has low IQ and didn't know what he was doing, it is entirely possible that they made him say things which matches up with the physical evidence they may have planted.

I feel like Syed probably did it. But that doesn't meet the standard of reasonable doubt. So I also think he should go free.

If there's been evidence tampering and fraud at multiple levels in a case, it's really very very hard to meet the bar of "beyond reasonable doubt".

If the police and DA can be proven (beyond a reasonable doubt) to have committed fraud in pursuit of the case, the door is opened to a lot of doubts that would normally be considered to be unreasonable.

If the story is about the execution of the case and circumstances surrounding it, I feel like talking about bias in it's presentation of the outcome is a side-show.

But I have my own biases so that's just my 2c.

> * There is physical evidence that corroborates specific, idiosyncratic details of the story Dassey told investigators

I have zero confidence in any of the Dassey testimony. It's entirely possible and IMO quite likely that the details you're referring to were fed to Dassey by the investigators. There is nothing defensible about the investigators' handling of Dassey.

I think he's referring to the DNA evidence from the hood latch. The DNA sample was collected from the latch, supposedly prompted by a Dassey interview. Dassey only speaks about Steven's using and opening up the RAV4 hood on prompt from the investigators. This is one of the moments where they try to lead his statements and eventually have to say "alright I'm just going to come out and say it. He opened the hood and disconnected the battery, right?" "yeaaaaah"

There's so much to this that one can't cover in a single comment, but I'll adress your points. For what it's worth, I agree with the parent that whether Avery is guilty or not is secondary to the miscarriage of justice that has clearly happened.

The physical evidence on the car itself is suspicious: (1) there were no fingerprints, yet there were blood; (2) at least one smudge looks _exactly_ like a bloodstain would look if you applied with a Q-tip [1]; (3) from the armchair perspective of someone who has only seen the not-terribly-high-resolution photos, Halbach's blood looks rusty, whereas Avery's blood looks bright red, almost a week after supposedly dropped there (EDTA-preserved blood does not fade like normal blood); (4) the dashboard blood is unlikely given the position of the cut on Avery's hand [2].

What Kratz claimed was "sweat DNA" (there's really no such thing) on the hood latch was only speculated as such, and was never entered as evidence in the trial because it was considered contaminated; the technician did not switch gloves after examining the inside of the car and then touching the hood. It's worth adding that it's evident from transcripts that the investigators certainly imprinted Brendan Dassey with the idea that Avery had opened the hood; this is also the case with the other details that Dassey comes up with that match the investigator's evidence. Don't forget that Dassey also said a ton of things which could not possibly be true, such as Avery cutting Halbach's throat in the bedroom. (The investigators also tried to get Dassey to confess that Avery had molested him; they quickly give up when Dassey describes Avery playfully trying to grab his genitals during play wrestling. Yet the molestation part has been repeated by the press.)

The key found in Avery's trailer is also highly suspicious. (1) It was supposedly found after numerous searches, and the investigators claimed to find it only after violently rattling the bookcase they claimed it must have fallen out of, despite the photo evidence showing that it could not possibly have happened that way (notice the coins on top of the bookcase). (2) The key was a spare; at least one photo shows that Halbach had a larger keychain, never recovered. (3) Only Avery's DNA was recovered from the keychain, but no other DNA, not even Halbach's.

As for the calls, prosecution tried to frame the narrative to make it seem Halbach was extremely uncomfortable with Avery. However, she had visited his home many times, which easily also explains why he specifically requested her. She would have known that the seller of the car, "B. Janda", was Barbara Janda, Steve Avery's sister and immediate neighbor. The only evidence of Halbach's "discomfort" was that she had once told a colleague about how Avery had once opened the door wearing only a towel, which she found distasteful. Apparently Avery frequently hid his caller ID; he also called her with caller ID. This isn't even circumstantial.

There are a bunch of other points, not touched upon in the documentary, worth adding: For example, the prosecution clearly were not able to determine where the crime scene was — the lack of blood evidence shows the garage could not possibly have been the place of the murder. There are several clear signs that she was murdered elsewhere, and also that she was not burned next to Avery's house. The sheriff ignored an anonymous letter, received early in the investigation, stating that the smelter had been used to burn a body the night following Halbach's disappearance. The woman who found Halbach's car specifically requested (and was the only one to do so) to be permitted to search the Avery property, and she found the car after just a few minutes of walking among hundreds (or thousands) of cars, which seems too absurd to be a coincidence. And so on.

A lot of good discussion is happening on Reddit [3] these days, most of it pleasingly level-headed.

[1] https://i.imgur.com/4VXXzvB.jpg

[2] https://i.imgur.com/Br9KET3.png

[3] https://www.reddit.com/r/MakingaMurderer/

You're spot on. The fact that the documentary is supposedly so one-sided is almost irrelevant, because it presents more than enough evidence to constitute reasonable doubt.

On another note, I honestly can't believe that there's isn't some sort of law that would've prevented the sheriff's dept. from any sort of involvement in the case; there was such an obvious conflict of interests. I felt a little sick to my stomach when I heard about all the evidence they'd managed to procure, seemingly out of nowhere.

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