You guys might have seen the news emerging late last night that news that Making a Murderer’s Brendan Dassey could walk free from jail in 90 days after a judge overturned his murder conviction.
His uncle, Steven Avery, said he was ‘happy’ that the judge decided to release Brendan, only eight months after the 12-part Netflix docu-series about the alleged murder of Teresa Halbach shocked the world.
The series, which documented the trial, cast major doubts on the investigation by the Manitowoc County Sheriff department and the verdict.
Avery was found guilty in the murder of Halbach in 2007 and remains behind bars at the Waupan Correctional Institution in Waupun, Wisconsin, where he’s serving a life sentence.
In a statement, Avery’s legal team said:
We are thrilled for Brendan Dassey that his conviction has been overturned. We fully expected this outcome from an unbiased court that carefully examined his confession. I was just visiting Steven Avery and he is so happy for Brendan. We know when an unbiased court reviews all of the new evidence we have, Steven will have his conviction overturned as well.
The 26-year-old’s former defence lawyer, Dean Strang, who was part of his legal team alongside Jerry Buting in Making A Murderer, issued a statement to The Huffington Post, following the news that Brendan could be a free man.
Strang claimed that Dassey’s statement to the police had been ‘involuntary’ and was ‘wholly unreliable’, adding that by making this decision the federal court ‘served all Americans’.
The makers of Making A Murderer, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, also pledged in a statement to keep covering the events that could see Dassey set free.
They said:
Today was a major development for the subjects in our story and this recent news shows the criminal justice system at work. As we have done for the past 10 years, we will continue to document the story as it unfolds, and follow it wherever it may lead.
Kathleen Zellner, who began representing Avery in January, is now working on his appeal case in the hope of following Brendan in being release.
In June, Avery’s appeal case was delayed by 90 days, with Zellner submitting a request for an extension until August 29th.
Going by all the twists and turns that have already happened in the aftermath of the ground-breaking documentary, could it be only a matter of time before Avery is also released? Only time will tell.
