lol, at least you didn't lump salesmen in with sociopaths.

You're old. Even older than I am. I'm using sociopath in the new way where it just means you're a dbag, not a serial killer.

The problem with SA's case from the beginning has been that, TH was murdered, and while there's maybe not as much evidence as the prosecution would like to have on SA, it's hard to posit reasonable alternatives that don't involve significant conspiracies/framing. (Doesn't mean he should have been convicted, obv - I'm just speaking from a pure probability standpoint.) It's completely unlike the first case in that regard, where it pretty much could have been any random guy running out of the woods.

One other thing worth noting - I think the prosecutor (Kratz) actually did a pretty good job with both cases - not in terms of finding the truth/achieving justice or whatever, but in terms of doing what he had to do to win a conviction, he was shrewd and effective. It was a stark contrast from the completely hapless prosecution of the Morris Black case in Texas in The Jinx, where they somehow blew what should have been a total slam-dunk of a case.

Given the headwinds the defense was facing, they really needed a misstep from the prosecution somewhere along the line, and they never got one. I think it was a bad decision not to let SA testify. People have been posting that not calling the defendant to testify is something you do when you think you're ahead, but given the circumstances surrounding the case, I think the defense was mistaken in that estimation, even in spite of the initial jury poll. They had to know they were swimming upstream with a local jury that was almost certainly biased.

it's steven's decision. would they have advised him not to? if they did advise him either way then yes, because it's standard not to for many reasons.

I don't really agree. If the jury is just going to have infinite faith in police and prosecutors and can't allow the possibility that the key, the blood, the bullet and the car were planted and that any alternatives were faithfully investigated then it's a conviction.

God damn the jury had to be blind, deaf, dumb, and stupid to have any faith in BD's confession and not think about how the trailer would have been drenched in blood, but that's their fault, not the prosecutor's brilliance imo.

Considering his family track reccords they were worried he would confess to 2 more murders he didnt commit.

I think it was even worse than that. Kachinsky just wanted the publicity. You could see him just lapping it up every time he was interviewed

A lot of people wavering back and forth on Steven's innocence. I think the one thing that nailed it home for me on Steven's innocence was the way he handled that phone call with his sister basically saying I have no idea why Brendan is making up this ****, ask him, it didn't happen and he said so matter of factly. And compile that with his demeanor throughout his exoneration up until the whole guilty veridict, his personality never wavered. He didn't display a manipulative tactic ever throughout interrogations, being exonerated on the rape case, through his court hearings. Every time he spoke it was matter of fact what he believed. He never tried to hide anything. He even admitted to the animal abuse and owned up to it when he was a free man.

Just a soul read on his personal interactions in interviews, but he came away from this footage a lot less guilty than the cops, and pretty much everyone else involved.

And on the point of Steven not taking the stand, Strang had recent interview a couple days ago and answered this question and being diplomatic obviously said it's ultimately Steven's decision. But you can bet your ass Strang advised him not to take the stand based on what he said next. He mentioned that they could open up his past convictions and attack his character if he decided to take the stand. Otherwise, they can't. So in Steven's case, it would be defense lawyer suicide to put him on the stand.

Strang also mentioned if someone could easily be manipulated by a prosecution into saying what they want him to say, it could hurt. Which might happen in Steven's testimony.

The other reason being if someone is not a good public speaker, they can articulate things wrongly and be perceived wrongly. Which is another possibility.

I'm paraphrasing all of these reasons in layman terms

The weird thing as a read more and more about people's theories, they say it's least likely the police killed her. Is it just an innate trust from the public that those in authority wouldn't do something like that?

Because the most logical scenario and people with means to kill her would be Lenk and Colborn and co-conspirators. They were already proven to be self preserving with any means necessary by keeping an innocent man in jail, re: 1995 call Colburn took when Greg Allen was in custody and admitted to other rapes.

They surviellance Avery during the lawsuit, look for an in to **** Avery again, and here it is, perfect scenario. Halbach leaves property and gets 2 in the back of the head a couple miles down the road. Then they figure out how to plant it all.

All the evidence against Avery killing her can easily be explained by these psychos having access to frame him exactly how they want. They even have the support from the judge, community, media, other County pds and Theresas family they have manipulated.

It's gets even more sadistic when we see Colborn escorting both of them to prison after their verdicts. That's power/psychopath stuff. That's him telling the world you can't **** with me, I'm invincible. Serial killer stuff. Anyone with a brain in that dept if it wasn't so corrupt would have said, hey Colborn maybe you should sit this one out.

Excellent posts above from Gabby Hayes.

It blows my mind that anybody thinks SA is guilty. Clear motive, conspiracy, and corruption from the state.

Sure the series was one-sided but the facts speak for themselves. Complete lack of any of the victim's blood is enough in my book even without the rest of the evidence (and/or lack thereof).

The police's only defense was, "you're accusing me, that's outrageous!" No **** it's outrageous, you clearly committed gross crimes.

Those civil lawyer interviews on the police department after he gets exonerated are pretty damning. They show in the first couple of episodes. And we clearly then see the state trying to cover it up as best as possible. Strang mentioned this is at one point in trial, that just 3 days before they were being questioned, but I don't think that dumb jury made the connection of the gravity what Dean was implying. Dean basically said you were all caught in outright lies and facing public and financial ruin and literally 3 days later this man is charged for murder from the same department. What a coincidence.

Another key here is that many aren't talking about, is that one of their strategies would have been to coerce Brendan's confession into a plea deal under slime ball Len that was working with the State. Under Len, with the plea deal, Brendan probably would have done like 4-5 years in juvi for closing this case. But it backfired when he morally couldn't accept falsifying his story and they had to set an example for Brendan and show him they ****ed with the wrong people.

With Brendan's story, they had an open and shut case. Steve was the villian. Brendan cold have been the young ******ed pawn and they give him like 5 years for helping them convict their #1 enemy.

I was trying to get through most of this thread before posting but I wanted to address this.

There are reasons why law enforcement have strict procedures and policies for how they manage and collect evidence. It is so it is all not so easily questioned when trying to use it in a trial. Yet in so many instances here policy and procedure WERE NOT FOLLOWED allowing almost everything to be questioned.

Add in a couple of key pieces of evidence are just not terribly believable it is easy to doubt all the rest. It did not take a master conspiracy for any of this, just took a lot of horrible and/or lazy people in position of authority and maybe one or two really bad actors.

I think too many people think this documentary is out to prove Avery's innocence and that this is about guilt or innocence. I think that misses the entire point. The documentary highlights corruption and incompetence at the local and state level of law enforcement and justice system in Wisconsin with maybe even a pinch of help from the FBI.

Our justice system is not supposed to work this way. The burden of the prosecution is beyond a reasonable doubt. I think people forget what this means or just choose to ignore it. The reasonable doubt threshold is met as soon as we learn that while they are telling the world that other jurisdictions are running the investigation due to a HUGE conflict of interest they were actually key players in many parts of the investigation.

Regardless of Avery's guilt or innocence any considered person would have to have reasonable doubt at that point. Never mind anything else.

I live in Texas and I laugh at the backwards arseness of Wisconsin in this case. There was no other legitimate law enforcement agency to run a proper murder investigation in the state without heavily relying on the local county department? That quite simply put is unfathomable. By the way this is not just me wishing they avoided a conflict of interest it is them acknowledging it and claiming they were doing everything the right way to avoid any issues.

Been a couple weeks since I watched it but this is pretty much laid out in the first twenty minutes of the series.

My personal opinion is I don't know if Avery is innocent of the rape he served 18 years for and then was found not guilty. Mostly because modern law enforcement and criminal courts think DNA is a smoking gun. So I don't know if he did that crime and I don't know if he did this crime.

I do know that a great number of public servants in Wisconsin failed horribly at their jobs and because of this you can't send either of these men to prison.

To your point it's not the defense's job to prove the victim was elsewhere. We do know voicemails were deleted one of which could have been from Avery or someone else by someone who was not Avery so again we don't know. The judge, who was clearly incapable, did not even allow for that to be put into evidence.

My disposition has always been one of giving the police and prosecutors the benefit of the doubt especially when it comes to allegations of planting evidence and the like. And I won't even go so far to say that happened here. I will say pretty much all of the physical evidence is questionable because of the horrible job done with the investigation.

Final aside: Early on when watching the show I commented to someone, before I really even had a grasp of who was who, that one of the lawyers really bothered me and there was something really wrong with him. This was literally just from him sitting in court and perhaps asking some questions but was very early on. Anyways it turned out to be Krantz. So either the film makers were masters of subtlety infiltrating my brain with his horribleness from the word jump OR I am super intuitive about creepy lawyers OR it was just blatantly obvious if you talked to Krantz for two minutes your skin would be crawling or some combination of all three.

Shout to Wisconsin Lab lady and to the defense not being allowed to have an observer during testing because it might lead to contamination. Also props to teaching students while testing evidence for the highest profile case going on in the state at the time. Seriously I can't think of one public employee involved in this case who did not f up their job.

The judge did not allow the defense to do number two during a pre-trial motion. (Lol do number two).

They had multiple alternate theories but they were not allowed and any evidence that hinted at an alternate theory was not allowed.

Actually it is the responsibility of all members of the court to seek justice.

While the system is adversial that in no way means prosecutors are supposed to blindly pursue convictions.

The judge and attorneys for both sides are all supposed to be there for the same reason. That is how it is supposed to work. Unfortunately the bastardized reality has three different parties with three completely different goals, none of them being justice.

That's kind of the point of the documentary. The entire system is broken and failing. You have a publically elected DA clearly addicted to the power and prestige of his position who gets re-elected based on conviction rates and winning high profile cases. This is text book as to what is wrong with pretty much every prosecutors office in the United States. Their job is not just to convict everyone the police arrest. They have a responsibility and duty to serve justice. In this case the DA there was more morally derelict than 99% of the people he prosecuted in his 20 plus years. Yet his job carries a heavy moral obligation. It's ridiculous.

Yeah that the judge got rid of the attorney who would not even sit in the interview but allowed the confession in is crazy.

Not sure how anyone got that from watching this documentary.

Anyways the title does offer several interesting outlets including the previously mentioned "Did the system create a murderer by imprisoning someone for 18 years?". That was what I thought the title meant initially. But you also could view it as corrupt and incompetent law enforcement, prosecutors and judges manufacturing murderers to suit their needs.

Reading how this project got started, where they had no real familiarity with Avery at all before they read about him being arrested while looking for something to do a film on as Columbia Grad students, I don't think they came into it with any bias or pre conclusions.

Seems like they did a pretty thorough job of following the story and interviewing everyone who would talk to them. This is pretty much the reality of any documentary you can't make people talk to you who don't want to talk to you.

So you take the information you get you compile it and then you create a story to tell. Documentaries are not objective works designed to tell both sides. They are stories just like any other story where the author has intention and goals. I think they do a particularly good job of making what I think was their point.

So let us look at the documentary and ask ourselves what were they trying to tell us and were they convincing. I think they intended to tell us the criminal justice system is much more messed up than most are willing to admit even though it comes up all the time. That Wisconsin specifically has some egregious issues that seem to infect every aspect of the state. I think they provided a pretty compelling case on both parts. Showing two people are in prison because of this broken process is simply the nail to be hammered.

I certainly think characterizing the documentary as being designed to show Avery was innocent is a pretty bad misreading of the entire series.

Do you guys think the prosecution knew they had the wrong guy? Or do you figure it's just pure tunnel vision on their part? Just wonder if they ever think about it at night, or if they really feel they put the bad guy away. Obviously we know how Lenk and Colborn feel.

Just finished binge watching now and about to jump into this thread so sorry if all this has already been said but wow. What a great series, incredibly told but so so sad a story.
It's scary to think how many could be serving time for crimes they didn't commit but truly terrifying that an individual could specifically be targeted and everyone in any position of power from local to state level is willing to be complicit in sending a man away for crimes they know they have no real proof he commited. That this has happened twice to the same man is simply disturbing.

I kept watching continually shaking my head at what I was seeing and hearing, blood pressure raising at times at the disgusting tactics used by "the good guys" throughout the whole cases(s). I just couldn't wait to get to the end n see justice finally (even somewhat) served and those responsible held accountable. The only time I was smiling during watching the series was whilst imagining the joys that awaited the officers and such involved when they got locked up themselves....

What the ***??..


It seems they picked their target very well though. That's about the only thing they seem to have ever done right, and thankfully for them all they've ever needed to convict.
I must admit when I first saw the family I jumped to some not great opinions about them, they do seem different for sure. But by the end I think it would be fair to say they are simple people yes, but probably quite genuine and good people when it really comes down to it which makes it all the more sadder. There were a few times when discussing the case between themselves you knew what they wanted to say but didn't have the vocabulary to even relate it to each other, how on earth did they ever stand a chance against the might of the state?

Are they the most passive family in America also? You can see the heartbreaking anguish written all over Stevens mothers face and hear it when she speaks, but there was never really any sign of real anger. Perhaps that was just good editing.
But I'm a million miles away from it all and it has no baring on my life whatsoever and I'd seriously enjoy doing some damage to a few of the "good guys" in this story. Starting with the 1984 John Candy looking prick Kratz and very closely followed by the lil ferret posing as Brendan's first attorney. What absolutely despicable things they are..but that's off topic and of no relevance here.

This case needs all the positive thoughts it can get so that's all I'm sending along with hope that one day sanity prevails somewhere in murica, home of the umm free except at least Wisconsin

Do you also think Teresa's brother is a jerk and Colborn is definitely lying about those plates? Kratz is pretty scummy, but it's easily the bolded, and so many people don't realize this.

while the 2nd judgement can be doubted for so many reason , the 1st one really look like a huge ****ed up on purpose by the police and it would be a really huge surprise if he was not innocent.

2nd one wether he is 30%guilty\70% innocent or whatever percentage you guess is not really relevent as you said and we'll most likely never know

Wait, what?

We do know he wasn't guilty of the rape he served 18 years for. He was exonerated based on DNA evidence.

Yeah, I don't know how you come out not knowing that. Yeah, you never know 100%, but close enough.

Besides the bad and leading investigation, you have the DNA from a previously convicted sex offender who had opportunity and totally fits the description.