Brendan Dassey, the “other” subject of Netflix’s Making A Murderer series, has had his murder conviction overturned in a shocking development Friday.
The series brought intense global scrutiny on the murder of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc County, Milwaukee, and left many viewers thinking that two separate juries had wrongly found Dassey and his uncle Steven Avery guilty of murder.
Dassey, who was 16 at the time of Halbach’s murder and 17 when he was convicted of intentional homicide, is serving life sentences in prison and his previous appeal in state courts had failed.
But a federal court in Milwaukee has overturned his conviction and now prosecutors have 90 days to decide whether they’ll seek a retrial.
Making a Murderer, using videotaped interrogations of Dassey, portrayed him as a simple, slow-witted young man being lured into self-incriminating statements by law enforcement. Dassey would later recant his confession.
Prosecutors contended that Dassey raped Halbach on the orders of his uncle and helped dispose of her body. But Dassey’s attorneys argued he had nothing to do with the murder, and that that his constitutional rights were infringed in how the case played out against him. This view that was shared by many of the estimated 19 million viewers who saw Making A Murderer in its first 35 days.
