A website resource with analysis of this complex case.

[WARNING: contains information the prosecution doesn't want you to know.]

Welcome! Thank you for visiting us at Need Less Things

Please enjoy an incredibly simple website dedicated to exploring the incredibly labyrinthine cases of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, both made popular by the Netflix documentary series 'Making A Murderer.'

https://preliminaryguilt.jimdo.com/

Advocates itt don't know what terms or words actually mean. Such as "coercion" "false", "promises", "leniency" and "evidence"...

True enough - advocates for the prosecution don't know what they mean, and they don't want to know.

Judge Duffin lays it out for them:

However, the state courts unreasonably found that the investigators never made Dassey any promises during the March 1, 2006 interrogation. The investigators repeatedly claimed to already know what happened on October 31 and assured Dassey that he had nothing to worry about. These repeated false promises, when considered in conjunction with all relevant factors, most especially Dassey’s age, intellectual deficits, and the absence of a supportive adult, rendered Dassey’s confession involuntary under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Wisconsin Court of Appeals’ decision to the contrary was an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law.

IT IS THEREFORE ORDERED that Brendan Dassey’s petition for a writ of
habeas corpus is GRANTED.

http://www.law.northwestern.edu/lega...nd%20Order.pdf

You are the one confused as usual. I don't care if it s false or not. It's unreliable. If his mom or a lawyer were present and they didn't tell him what to say and he came up with that story nobody would complain.
When you fish for answer while suggesting what you want to hear the confession become worthless even if it is "true".
For the same reason you wouldn't do that with someone who might want to falsely self incriminate, since it will send the investigation on the wrong path.

In the very first recorded session with Brendan cops aren't treating him like a witness and finding out what he knows - they are already trying to get him to lie.

If cops are allowed to instruct witnesses to change their testimony and telling them what to say they might as well not talk to the witnesses at all.

It looks like the 7th Circuit US Court of Appeals has rejected Brendan Dassey's petition and reversed Judge Duffin's decision.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gVd...1QF0dwvvZ/view

Brendan's conviction upheld, 4-3.

http://wgntv.com/2017/12/08/making-a...ds-court-says/


I'll share my previous thoughts on the matter which I still stand by today:

1/2016

8/2016

Not at all you said the confession was false because it was coerced. You don't know what words mean
Not according to the 7th circuit court it isn't.
https://www.tmj4.com/news/local-news...nies-new-trial

The last best hope is that the vigorous dissents from 3 judges will provide a sound basis to appeal this decision.

I quite agree - there's a world of difference between the two cases.

Full disclosure: I think Brendan was involved in attending a completely innocent bonfire.

Despite the final ruling from the 7th Circuit Court I still stand with Judge Duffin and the dissenting judges: the statements that make up the 'confession' were coerced and the transcripts show that the incriminating details were fed to Brendan by his interrogators.

Clearly there is room for disagreement.

While I appreciate and fully understand your position, I disagree. I think the dissenting judges have correctly analyzed the facts in the case, and I also think that I have.

If Brendan unknowingly helped, then I can't see how he could be held legally liable even if Steven did in fact commit some crime against Teresa.

I fully agree with what you say here.

Nor is there anything wrong with believing that the so-called 'confession' is false given what we know about the sessions involving police interrogators.

While I agree that if the so-called 'confession' was coerced Brendan should go free (as that is pretty much the whole case against him), I have no compelling to believe Brendan was in any way involved.

Just saying lol.

[QUOTE]Chief Judge Diane Wood, who was highly critical of Dassey’s interrogation during oral arguments in September, penned a scathing dissent. She was joined by U.S. Circuit Judges Ilana Rovner and Ann Williams.

Wood slammed the majority’s decision as “a profound miscarriage of justice.”

“Psychological coercion, questions to which the police furnished the answers, and ghoulish games of ‘20 Questions,’ in which Brendan Dassey guessed over and over again before he landed on the ‘correct’ story (i.e., the one the police wanted), led to the ‘confession’ that furnished the only serious evidence supporting his murder conviction in the Wisconsin courts,” Wood wrote. (Parentheses in original.)

The Seventh Circuit’s chief judge said Dassey’s confession was clearly coerced and should not have been admitted into evidence.

“Dassey will spend the rest of his life in prison because of the injustice this court has decided to leave unredressed,” Wood wrote.

Dassey’s attorneys, Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin with the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, said in a statement that they “are profoundly disappointed by the decision of four judges…to reverse two prior decisions and deny relief to Brendan Dassey.”

“Like many around the globe, we share the view of the three judges who wrote, in dissent, that today’s ruling represents a ‘profound miscarriage of justice.’ We intend to continue pursuing relief for Brendan, including through a petition for certiorari to the United States Supreme Court,” the attorneys said. “Today’s ruling contravenes a fundamental and time-honored position of the United States Supreme Court: interrogation tactics that may not be coercive when applied to adults are coercive when applied to children and the mentally impaired.”

https://www.courthousenews.com/seven...derer-subject/
[QUOTE]

En banc decision in full
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gVd...1QF0dwvvZ/view

Interesting when supporting their stance, the dissenting arguments (p60 of PDF) reference Saul M Kassin, another known shill for criminals who makes factual errors on other cases.

http://themurderofmeredithkercher.co...s._over_5_days



More on Kassin here.
http://www.truejustice.org/ee/index.php?/tjmk/C831/

For those who think the confession should have been excluded:

1. In our legal system, the jury is supposed to make findings of fact. At Dassey's trial, the confession was presented along with evidence from the defense about Dassey's mental abilities and the phenomenon of false confessions, as well as testimony from Dassey that he made everything up.

What is your argument for why the jury shouldn't have been allowed to weigh all this evidence and make their finding?

Just because you think the jury came to the wrong decision doesn't necessarily mean that they shouldn't have been presented the evidence in the first place.

2. What techniques would you consider acceptable when police interview a young person of limited mental abilities who may be hiding information about a crime? Should they not be allowed to "bluff" about what they already know? Should they not be allowed to imply that it will be to the interviewee's benefit to tell the truth? Should they not be allowed to use any leading questions at all?

What would have made this interview acceptable in your eyes?

To be sure there are some aspects that are troubling to me, such as statements like "the truth will set you free", but on balance is it enough to throw out the entire confession? I'm not so sure?

Why do you think judges routinely weigh in on what juries are or are not allowed to hear at trials? Do you think that’s just a process they go through for giggles, or could it be that lay persons aren’t able to set aside their personal prejudices?

Do you know how many people regularly say “people wouldn’t confess to crimes they didn’t commit”. And yet, they do, for lots of reasons.

Such people's confessions aren't usually supported by forensic evidence or partially to secure search warrants like Dassey's was. Nor was his confession provisionally deemed false anyway but involuntary.

Best thing for him at this point would be to come clean with full disclosure, assuming the state is even feeling generous enough to offer him a reduced sentence for such a condition.

What materials the jury is allowed to hear is often decided out of earshot of the jury. So I don't think they way courts now function is to just let everyone and anyone present anything they want so the jury can try and sort out the wheat from the chaff. Lie detector? Sure. Psychics? Why not?

Sometimes materials are kept from the jury to protect the rights of the citizens involved - which is probably why Duffin cited case law in granting Brendan Dassey relief.

I understand there are a lot of folks who thinks citizens shouldn't have any rights when they are suspected or accused of a crime. I am not one of them. I like that we have rights and that the founders of the United States made sure to include them in our Constitution.

Are you arguing against the jury system in general?

Also wouldn't your logic apply to all confessions? Since citizens can't be trusted to accept the possibility of false confessions, no confessions should ever be admitted? Couldn't you apply the same logic across the board to all classes of evidence? Citizens can't be trusted to believe that the police might make a mistake, so police testimony should be disallowed?

I don't think you have a tenable position here.

I'm not talking about in general. Obviously there are rules that disallow testimony by psychics, and for good reason.

I'm talking about this specific case. Why shouldn't the jury have been allowed to hear Dassey's confession and decide what weight to give it?

According ti Duffin's ruling, the so-called 'confession' was the result of violating Brendan Dassey's Constitutional rights.

All these 'protocols' that law enforcement want to bend and break are there for our protection.

I don't think EfromPegTown is arguing any of the outlandish things you wrote here.

Making up strawman arguments to knock down is not a tenable position.

.

You contradicted yourself within 5 posts.

I don't think I did. Can you explain what you mean?

I'm just trying to understand his position. In the context of answering why he believes Dasseys confession should not have been presented to the jury, he wrote that

giving as an example that

It seems to me that this logic would imply that no confession should ever be shown to a jury. I don't think he actually believes this, which is why I called his position untenable.

I was hoping he would clarify his position to show what, in particular, about Dassey's confession should have caused it to be excluded, given that confessions shouldn't be inadmissible as a general principle.

I'll leave it to E to explain what was meant.

My own position is that the law has accorded citizens certain rights to protect them from government bias and corruption, some enshrined in the US Constitution.

If the obtaining of 'evidence' violates these Constitutional protections (things like coerced 'confessions' as Duffin pointed out) they are rightfully excluded from consideration by the jury.

I see no reason to change that.

In the case of Brendan Dassey the whole of the case against him was the so-called 'confession'.