There are dozens of reasons he could have made that call and it was incumbent on the defense to explain why this issue mattered to the case at all, which they certainly did not from what the series showed.

Guilty until proven innocent. Right?

We're talking about evidence and a witness here, not the defendant.

Huge difference.

There are dozens of reasons he could have made that call and it was incumbent on the defense to explain why this issue mattered to the case at all, which they certainly did not from what the series showed.

Yet the state failed to show why he made the call.

I understand there is a lot of evidence that supports conviction. But nearly every piece independently can be proved to be compromised. The main pieces:

* The key - not found after several searches.
* The bullet - same, and no blood DNA on something that I assume would have been a hit considering she was to have been shot at point blank range.
* The car - no finger prints of the accused. It is believed to have been used to transport the body what I assume would be about 10 or 15 feet or so.
* Avery DNA under the hood - certainly does not indicate murder. In addition it was only collected 6 months after the crime occurred. And this I don't know, but I would expect to see others' DNA under there as well, specifically the people that examined it.
* Blood evidence in Rav 4 - the test was contaminated but admitted anyway. Completely at odds with the department guidelines. Sloppy but still admitted.
* Restraints - I still have yet to see how this has any bearing on the case aside from Dassey saying she was restrained in a room and her throat slit, but no bleeding apparently.
* The Dassey confession(s) - since they all don't seem to match up, and they weren't even used in the Avery trial except to poison the pool.

And for giggles, this post elsewhere was a funny recap of the case:


Lets recap the prosecution’s “airtight” case in a nutshell: A guy who is a month or two away from a $36 million dollar check gets impatient waiting for all that money and decides to rape and murder a woman that he telephonically arranges (which she seems un-frightened to see him in her voicemail) to come visit his property in the middle of a weekday in full view of various people coming and going from said property. Once he gets her inside his trailer and commences with said raping, he gets a knock on his door, and answering it, he sees his nephew with the mental capacity of a 9 year old. Rather than saying, “I’m busy”, he invites said nephew in to witness, participate in, and eventually confess about all the subsequent rapiness and other crimes that happen. Luckily for him, the nephew does not seem to possess any DNA, since none of it gets anywhere during the entire afternoon and evening. Later, after much raping, stabbing, cutting, slitting, etc, that happens without any blood loss, the woman is dragged to the garage where she is shot eleven times, again without any blood loss, and also without making any sound. Later that evening, they burn the woman’s body a few yards away from where several people live, without the horrifying and distinctive smell caused by a burning body. At some point during this time, the guy and his nephew drive the woman’s car (after first taking some of her bloody hair and drawing pictures with it in the back of the vehicle) to what they think is a perfect hiding spot behind 3 or 4 branches, which is located very close to a large and inconvenient car-crusher. They do this without leaving any fingerprints or the tiniest bit of DNA in the car, except for a lot of smeared blood in very obvious spots. Three days later the police come asking questions and want to look around inside the trailer. The guy lets them do it, knowing he is safe because all of the raping, stabbing, cutting, slitting, etc, that happened in his carpeted trailer happened without any blood loss. The very next day, this guy leaves for his family’s cabin 100 miles away, but decides not to bring the woman’s car key, bones, teeth, cell phone, camera, etc. to dispose of far away because he knows he’s loved by the Manitowoc police department and they will never suspect him and search his property.

I read this on reddit and thought you might have a good response to it.

"When Andrew Colburn called in the license plate number to dispatch, can you think of any other reasons in the world why he would have done so if he wasn't looking at the car? Just trying to come up with any scenario that would remotely make sense.
Maybe he was given the license plate number before calling dispatch and just wanted to verify it? Still doesn't make sense why he just wouldn't say that in court. And his reaction in court was definitely strange. He didn't have much of a response after SA's defense attorney played the recording twice. At least not from what the documentary showed."

Any thoughts?


If you listen to the recording to the dispatcher it sure sounded like Colburn was looking at the car and describing it while talking to her.

If you listen to the recording to the dispatcher it sure sounded like Colburn was looking at the car and describing it while talking to her.

I will say the way he offered the year of the vehicle seemed strange, as though he was reading something, not necessarily looking at a vehicle. However, he had all the opportunity to explain that, but he didn't. If he was reading from a report or something or trying to confirm info from the family, why not just say that when questioned about it? It's the combination of the call and the waffling on the stand that make it suspicious.

Yet the state failed to show why he made the call.

He was called by the defense, not the prosecution.

The defense was trying to imply there was something nefarious about all this, thus it was up to them to prove that, not for the prosecution to prove anything about this witness since they didn't need him to prove their case.

And AGAIN, the footage in this documentary was heavily edited and even shown out of sequence. There is simply no way anyone watching all these episodes -- and I've watched them all twice now -- is any position to say what did and didn't happen.

There was maybe an hour of courtroom footage that was heavily edited... The jury heard six WEEKS worth of testimony and evidence.

The only thing better than the truth is a good conspiracy.

I always find it interesting reasonable folks can look at the same set of facts and derive wildly differing and passionate conclusions. My take aways are this "documentary" is highly manipulative, I wouldn't want the Avery clan as my neighbors and I can't believe I watched the whole thing. As far as who done it? How would I know I wasn't there.

The only thing better than the truth is a good conspiracy.

Well it only take 2 to make a conspiracy. In this case,that could have easily been achieved. Like I said,they may be guilty but there is enough reasonable doubt that I don't think I could have convicted either one.

Colburn & Lenk sure clouded things IMO.

I did an aerial look of their property on my I phone and can plainly see Steven Avery's place, and the burn pit behind the garage, the gravel pit where the other bones were found and the ridge where the car was found. The Google imaging on my desktop looks like a later image. Many cars have been cleared out of the back lots and Avery's place looks grown over. I also did a street view from the end of their road at the highway, and you can't see anything from the road that even resembles what you see from the air. .. It kind of left a pit in my stomach.

What a fascinating documentary. Not surprised they both were convicted because proving a police conspiracy is crazy difficult to prove. They would have had a much better chance had the FBI not magically crafted a test to prove the blood wasn't from a test tube.

With that said Avery would likely have to be a top 10 U.S. idiot to burn the body right outside his door and then "hide" the car on the outside row of the salvage yard with some branches over it.

Let's just all count our blessings that we do not reside in Manitowoc county!

I heard that Discovery is working on their own less biased version of this story..

Convicted Killer and ?Making a Murderer? Subject Steven Avery Appeals Conviction ? and Here Are His Arguments | TheBlaze.com (http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2016/01/12/making-a-murderer-subject-steven-avery-appeals-murderer-conviction-here-are-his-arguments/)

I think it's presumptuous to say how you'd vote if you had been on the jury unless you sat through the full 6 weeks of trial and then sat in a deliberation room with 11 others who did the same.

We saw a very tiny sliver of what they saw and heard, and what was presented to the viewer was biased and carefully edited to forward the idea of reasonable doubt.

We also don't know what their instructions were, what testimony and evidence they were asked to consider and what they were told specifically not to consider.


Unless you've sat on a long jury trial you don't have an appreciation for how seriously jurors take their jobs, especially with someone's life literally on the line.

A. I have sat through a long jury trial for exactly the same thing avery was charged with. I am well aware we don't have all the information they did.

B, for the sake of argument, i gave my opinion. I'm not an idiot...i realize a juror is more fully informed. surely you must realize the point of this documentary was to make jurors out of the viewer.

^

Meant no disrespect to you, just making general comments about this situation in general.

And it's fine to speculate not know all the facts, but we have hundreds of thousands of people signing petitions and getting behind the idea of a retrial.

Haven't watched it, but my girlfriend did and she fed me info and asked me my opinion. Then I read about half this thread and got info from people's posts. My opinion?

The guy is probably guilty. I also wouldn't be surprised at all if someone in the police department decided to "help" the case along a little bit. In fact, I'd be surprised if they didn't. Too much bad blood between him and local officials.

You don't need a massive conspiracy to frame someone. You just need one guy who is willing to say he found evidence at a location, and for other people to believe him. It's pretty common for law enforcement institutions (police, prosecutors, sometimes judges) to just assume they got the right guy, and proceed full speed ahead without looking at any other options. If someone says "hey look I found this key" or "here are the guy's fingerprints I found on the car", no one on the prosecution is ever going to look at it twice. That kind of evidence tampering is basically impossible to prove for a defense attorney.

I'm not suggesting that the police killed her. But I don't trust the evidence they claim to have found either. Especially small stuff.

The nephew's defense attorney sucks. It's not uncommon to try and push a client into taking a plea agreement, especially if you think they're going to be convicted at trial. Having your investigator look for evidence that corroborates your guy's confession might be useful in getting a better deal (even if he didn't testify against his uncle, the intent at the time would be for that to be an option). But this guy not being present at a police interview with his retard client, as well as a few other things he did, is just pure incompetence. Probably not something where he's going to get disbarred or sanctioned for it, but it's just a stupid thing to do.

‘MAKING A MURDERER’ SUBJECT STEVEN AVERY FILES AN APPEAL, THROWS HIS OLD LAWYERS UNDER THE BUS (link (http://decider.com/2016/01/13/making-a-murderer-steven-avery-files-appeal/?utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_source=NYPFacebook&utm_medium=SocialFlow))

What could possibly be more popular on Netflix (http://decider.com/platform/netflix/) than Making a Murderer (http://decider.com/show/making-a-murderer)? Well, if Instantwatcher.com’s metrics are to be believed, the popular docu-series is being trampled by an hour-long video of an oscillating fan. That’s right. More Netflix subscribers are excited about watching an oscillating fan than they are about the trials and tragedies of Steven Avery.

http://decider.com/2016/01/12/more-netflix-users-are-watching-this-oscillating-fan-than-making-a-murderer/

Trial transcripts are now available online for anyone who wants to dig deeper:

Table 1: Jury Trial Transcripts ? Steven Avery Trial Transcripts and Documents (http://www.stevenaverycase.org/jurytrialtranscripts/)

^

Thanks for posting that.

I'm not going to read all 6-weeks worth but I did read through one day that featured lead investigator Fassbender form the Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation and it was very eye-opening to how the flimmakers cut his testimony to really forward this James Lenk conflict of interest idea when Fassbender himself said that there was no question of conflict in his mind and gave a detailed explanation as to why.

Of course, that was completely omitted from the documentary to give everyone watching the distinct impression there were all types of improprieties around Lenk and possible conflicts (all presented with ominous music in the background) when the lead investigator from the State of Wisconsin said completely the opposite.

Fassbender also said that Lenk was never at the crime scene without someone else from outside the County present and that they welcomed and needed the assistance of the County. The idea wasn't that no one in the County could be involved, it was that the lead investigators and prosecutors who organized and drove this case were not from the County, just to be extra safe.


Verifies all my feelings about this entire docuseries where they took things and intentionally edited them to forward their conspiracy theories when there were lots of important explanations that were purposely left out.

From all the hype, I figured this "documentary" wasn't worth watching. I was wrong. It compares favorably with "The Thin Blue Line" . . . "The Wire" . . . "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo Trilogy" . . . "Carnivale" . . . Downton Abbey . . . and "The Sopranos." Please don't tell me how it turns out. (did I forget "Rumpole of The Bailey" . . ? The Iowa Primaries? =~)

http://www.eonline.com/news/787359/making-a-murderer-s-brendan-dassey-conviction-overturned-could-be-released-in-90-days

One of the stars of the Netflix hit Making a Murderer just received major news today in a Milwaukee court.

Brendan Dassey's conviction was overturned by a federal judge moments ago, court reporters tweeted.

According to court documents, a judge ordered that Brendan should be "released from custody unless, within 90 days of the date of this decision, the State initiates proceedings to retry him."

The judge further ordered that "in the event the respondent appeals this judgment, this judgment will be stayed pending resolution of that appeal."

Wow!

http://www.eonline.com/news/787359/making-a-murderer-s-brendan-dassey-conviction-overturned-could-be-released-in-90-days

One of the stars of the Netflix hit Making a Murderer just received major news today in a Milwaukee court.

Brendan Dassey's conviction was overturned by a federal judge moments ago, court reporters tweeted.

According to court documents, a judge ordered that Brendan should be "released from custody unless, within 90 days of the date of this decision, the State initiates proceedings to retry him."

The judge further ordered that "in the event the respondent appeals this judgment, this judgment will be stayed pending resolution of that appeal."


He never should have been convicted in the first place IMO. The cops pretty much talked him into confessing and also pretty much told him what to say.

Great news as far as I'm concerned. His **interrogation** was beyond sleazy.

^

I can understand that perspective given the way that entire series was filmed but if you read the court transcripts they left a lot out and did a great deal of selective editing.

Not so sure this guy is going to be released, as prosecutors tend to protect their convictions pretty aggressively.

I also seriously doubt he is innocent, even if his confession was obtained under somewhat dubious circumstances.

I just think with his intellect he would have broken down and confessed within 5 minutes of being grilled had he really been involved.

And AGAIN, the footage in this documentary was heavily edited and even shown out of sequence. There is simply no way anyone watching all these episodes -- and I've watched them all twice now -- is any position to say what did and didn't happen.

I just finished it and that's kind of how I felt. I was surprised that there wasn't much convincing of anything in the show. From the reaction, I thought it would be much more convincing. There was a lot of things it showed that just made me think 'WTF, that can't be right'. The contaminated DNA from the RAV4, the FBI's EDTA test, and Dassey's post conviction hearing were the most puzzling to me. In the case of the DNA, it seemed weird that they made the exception this time, when they had not before and it was against protocol to do so, mainly because the show made it seem like their justification for it was simply "nah, it's okay this time". The FBI EDTA test just seemed like a totally unscientific approach, especially as I understand it, there was no control. And, it seemed to me that it was pretty well shown that Dassey's first attorney wasn't working in his client's best interest, or at least he was operating under the assumption he was, in fact, guilty. However, none of that makes me know for sure they didn't do it.

But, I do understand the manipulation involved, which is why I was so confused most of the time. The show left so many matzoh balls hanging out there and didn't really show the responses to them, which I just assume must have been made. A lot of the time I wasn't sure what the prosecution was alleging happened exactly or why exactly they thought it. I really just came away from it going "what!?". I kind of felt set up in the same way as if someone came up to me with some footage and said "OK, I'm going to show you a UFO that's an alien spaceship". Then after seeing video of a flying object that I can not identify, they say "see! Have you ever seen anything like that before? It must be an alien spaceship!".

There has been a ton of action on these cases in the last few months. Brandon Dassey's conviction was overturned due to the coerced confession. The State is able to appeal this decision. Here is the judge's decision:

http://www.stevenaverycase.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Dassey-Habeas-Corpus-Decision-and-Order.pdf

Kathleen Zellner, an attorney renowned for freeing innocent people who were wrongly convicted, has filed a motion on Avery's behalf requesting to use new methods to test the evidence. She can explain it better than I:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nAk_FBaXMg&feature=youtu.be


MAM2 is currently filming and will hopefully get to show both men being released.

There has been a ton of action on these cases in the last few months. Brandon Dassey's conviction was overturned due to the coerced confession. The State is able to appeal this decision. Here is the judge's decision:

http://www.stevenaverycase.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Dassey-Habeas-Corpus-Decision-and-Order.pdf

Kathleen Zellner, an attorney renowned for freeing innocent people who were wrongly convicted, has filed a motion on Avery's behalf requesting to use new methods to test the evidence. She can explain it better than I:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4nAk_FBaXMg&feature=youtu.be


MAM2 is currently filming and will hopefully get to show both men being released.

Looking more and more live Avery was railroaded for a 2nd time and Zellner appears to have the proof.

This is like being caught between a rock and a hard place (legal-/justice-wise). If Avery is innocent, the killer is still at large. If Avery is guilty--and freed--then another dumbass is loose on the streets. It's sort of like the Speluncean Cave Explorers . . . except in Wisconsin (edited to correct the spelling of Speluncean )

This is like being caught between a rock and a hard place (legal-/justice-wise). If Avery is innocent, the killer is still at large. If Avery is guilty--and freed--then another dumbass is loose on the streets. It's sort of like the Speluncean Cave Explorers . . . except in Wisconsin (edited to correct the spelling of Speluncean )

The DNA should tell us if it was Avery and if it proves it wasn't the police have some splainin to do. One of the claims is that some of the blood found was from an old sample of Avery's. If what they say is true they can now tell how old that blood is so we should know if it was planted. If it was,they are going to have to open this back up.