The creators of Making a Murderer have recently come under fire from some of the show’s viewers.
A number of people have accused the show of bias, saying film-makers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos only highlighted evidence suggesting Steven Avery was innocent rather than giving a more balanced view.
However Dean Strang, Avery’s defence lawyer, has now defended the show. He believes it would have been impossible for the producers to feature every bit of evidence used in the trial in ten episodes.
Speaking in an interview with The Progressive he said:
The editorial decisions these filmmakers made in taking 200-plus hours of evidence in the Avery case and distilling it to three plus hours on the trial in the film were easily defensible decisions.
Not the only decisions you could have made, but easily defensible decisions.
Strang also accused the press of bias due to the way they reported a 2006 statement made by Ken Kratz, which condemned Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey as guilty before the trial had even started.
He believes the nature of the case means it has received way more media scrutiny than normal:
Every time the police department or a prosecutor wants to issue a press release or hold a press conference, the overwhelming majority of media outlets treat what the police or prosecutors say as received wisdom.
There’s almost never a critical examination of what the police or prosecution has to say.
Now when one film doesn’t hue to the prosecution line that’s where the criticism falls [and] you’re imbalanced, or you’re offering an unbalanced view.
Strang referred specifically to a recent article in The New Yorker by Kathryn Schulz and accused her of repeating claims without doing thorough research.
Ms Schulz simply parrot[ed] this claim of Mr. Kratz that sweat DNA was found on the hood latch of Teresa Halbach’s car. There is no such thing as sweat DNA.
There is DNA that may be transferred in sweat or other bodily fluid potentially, but there was no evidence at trial of sweat.
There wasn’t even any testing to establish that there wasn’t blood.
The case continues…
