On July 19, 1982, Marvin Anderson was at work when he was asked by his supervisor to come speak to police. The officers questioned Marvin about a rape that had occurred over the previous weekend. Marvin told the police what he knew about the crime – details he had heard because he lived in the neighborhood where it had occurred. The police asked Marvin to come down to the station to answer more questions and he agreed. Since he was innocent, he had no reason not to.
What Marvin didn’t know was that the man who had committed the rape had told the victim that he “had a white girl,” and because Marvin was the only black man that the investigating officer knew who lived with a white woman, he had automatically become a suspect. Even before questioning Marvin, the officer had gone to his employer and obtained a color employment identification photo of him. The victim was shown the color photo of Marvin along with a half dozen black and white mug shots and was asked to pick her assailant. She chose the color photo of Marvin. Less than an hour later, the police assembled a lineup where Marvin was the only person included whose picture was also included in the original photo array shown to the victim. She identified him in the lineup as well.
Information that another man may have confessed to having committed the crime against Beernsten was ignored by Manitowoc sheriffs, who claimed they “already had their man.” When skin cells found under Beernsten’s fingernails were tested for DNA and revealed there were alleles present that did not match either Beernsten or Avery, the judge ruled this irrelevant, arguing that she might have obtained them when coming into contact with paramedics or others. Meanwhile, there was no evidence of her scratching any of those persons.
Avery was eventually exonerated when the technology advanced enough so a set of pubic hairs taken from the victim could be tested for DNA. Only two of the hairs still contained their stems, and only one of those two did not come from the victim herself. In the end a single remaining hair was found to have come from the same man who had previously confessed to the crime, but had been ignored by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department.
Avery was freed and became a local celebrity. New state laws were enacted in his name.
He filed a $36 million suit against Manitowoc County, but while the depositions for his case were in progress a young local photographer working for Auto Trader named Teresa Halbach disappeared. Volunteer searchers located her vehicle stashed among the many autos at the Avery family’s salvage yard. Avery’s home and garage were searched multiple times in an investigation headed by nearby Calumet County sheriffs due to the impropriety of having Manitowoc sheriffs, who were being sued by Avery, involved with the case.
Yet in the end, they were indeed involved.
After multiple searches found nothing, it was Manitowoc officers who found a car key to Halbach’s vehicle lying in plain sight in Avery’s bedroom. It was Manitowoc personnel who found a single bullet with Halbach’s DNA in Avery’s garage. No blood, fibers, or other trace evidence of Halbach was found in these locations, but blood trails linking to Avery were found in Halbach’s car. A burn pit with human bones was found behind Avery’s house, but other burned bones were found in nearby locations, indicating that evidence may have been moved or relocated.
The filmmakers have been heavily criticized for not mentioning more of Avery’s criminal past of sexual violence. It’s been noted that Avery, who is in fact the last person to admit having seen Teresa alive, was known to her. She had come down that day to photograph a car for sale in Avery’s salvage yard, and had done so before. She had complained to her co-workers that she found Avery to be “creepy,” yet this isn’t mentioned in the documentary. The filmmakers have argued that it’s because this information was rendered inadmissible by the judge.
The defense argues that the blood drops found in Halbach’s car may have been planted, as a vial of Avery’s blood being stored in the county clerk’s office was found to have been tampered with and punctured by a needle without authorization. Critics argue that other non-blood DNA of Avery’s was found on the hood latch of Halbach’s car and they claim it “couldn’t have been planted.” However, even though it’s not mentioned in the film the defense did address this issue in the case. The filmmakers note that such DNA belonging to Avery could have also been planted as investigators had full access to all of his possessions, including his toothbrush and dirty laundry. They also argue that the Manitowoc county technician who inspected the vehicle had not changed his gloves after having handled many of Avery’s possessions and could have easily contaminated it.
It’s quite easy to fall into a pattern of re-litigating the specifics of the case and debating whether Avery is or isn’t guilty of the second crime. However, that ignores the larger questions of police conduct in this case based on their “certainty” that they had the right man this time—just as certain as they were the the last time.
Manitowoc county personnel were not supposed to be involved in this case, yet they were. In fact, many of the exact officers who had been deposed in Avery’s lawsuit just days previously were the same ones who miraculously located key evidence on Avery’s property, many days after other officers had searched those exact same locations. Maybe that was just dumb luck. And maybe not.
It’s fairly suspicious, but the most obviously egregious element of this doesn’t involve Avery himself. It involves the process used to manipulate his young cousin Brandon into creating a very obviously false confession which would incriminate Avery. Brandon is shown being interviewed by his attorney’s investigator and after he writes down that all he did was sit at home, watch television, then later go over and watch Steven’s bonfire, he’s told by the investigator to change his story, to claim he saw Teresa tied up in Steven’s house, to add scenes of sexual violence, rape, stabbing Teresa multiple times, and ultimately dumping her body in the fire.
Let me repeat: Brandon’s own attorney helped craft and twist his original statement into an elaborate false confession in collusion with prosecutors, claiming this was the “only way” they could help him and that if he denied any wrongdoing “things would be worse.”
Sadly, improper defense of this type is not that uncommon.
A review of convictions overturned by DNA testing reveals a trail of sleeping, drunk, incompetent and overburdened defense attorneys, at the trial level and on appeal. — The Innocence Project
Eddie Joe Lloyd was convicted of a brutal 1984 murder of a sixteen-year-old girl in Detroit, Michigan. While in a hospital receiving treatment for his mental illness, Eddie wrote to police with suggestions on how to solve various murders, including the murder for which he was convicted. Police convinced Eddie that by confessing to the murder and getting arrested, he would help them “smoke out” the real perpetrator. They fed him details that he could not have known and Eddie signed a written confession, giving a tape recorded statement as well.
Eddie was represented during pre-trial by a court-appointed attorney who received $150 for pre-trial preparation and investigation. This attorney gave $50 of this to a convicted felon, who conducted no investigation into Lloyd’s mental state or confession.
This lawyer withdrew from the case eight days before trial and another attorney was appointed but the trial was not postponed. The new trial attorney did not meet with the pre-trial attorney. He did not question the details of the investigation and did not cross-examine the police officer most directly involved in the coerced confession. He called no defense witnesses and gave a five minute closing argument. The attorney lamented in the press that Eddie would not permit an insanity defense, saying, “With a psychiatric plea, we might have had a chance. If he’s not goofy, there’s not a dog in Texas.” Lloyd insisted that, despite his mental illness, he was innocent. The jury deliberated for less than an hour before convicting him of first degree felony murder.
Brandon’s attorney is ultimately dismissed from the case, but that is long after Brandon is interviewed by police and after he repeats his original story that he saw nothing. Police then begin to berate him for hours without his mother present and without his lawyer, alternately calling him a “liar” anytime he says something they don’t want to hear and then telling him that “everything will be alright” each time his stumbling guesses at what they want to him to say finally hit the right mark.
This type of practiced coercion is also not uncommon in many police departments.
“Astonishingly, more than 1 out of 4 people wrongfully convicted but later exonerated by DNA evidence made a false confession or incriminating statement.” — The Innocence Project.
Damon Thibodeaux went out with several of his Jefferson Parish, Louisiana neighbors on the evening of July 19, 1996, to look for his 14 year old cousin Crystal Champaigne, who hadn't been seen since going to the supermarket earlier that afternoon. The search continued overnight and into the following afternoon, when police began interviewing people who had been with Crystal before she disappeared. An officer was interviewing Damon -- who had been at the Champaigne's home when Crystal left for the store -- when he was told that her body had been found, partially naked and strangled with a cord. At that point, a homicide detective took over the questioning.
Damon said he knew nothing about the murder and agreed to a polygraph test, which police said he failed. After nearly nine hours of interrogation, Damon gave a recorded statement confessing to consensual and non-consensual sex with the victim and then to beating and murdering her. There were numerous inconsistencies between his statement and the facts of the crime, including that there was no evidence of semen in the victim's body and that Damon claimed to have strangled her using a white or gray speaker wire from his car, not the red electrical cord which had been burned off from a cord hanging from a tree near the crime scene. Damon was arrested, charged with rape and murder, and finally allowed to eat and rest, after which he immediately recanted.
In response to the allegations that the blood may have been planted in Halbach’s car by Manitowoc officers, the prosecution managed to get the FBI lab to formulate an EDTA test. EDTA is a preservative which is added to stored blood, which is not normally present in the body. No test of this type, according to the defense, had even been attempted since the first O.J. trial when similar allegations of deliberate blood smearing were raised in that case. The FBI technician testified he did not find EDTA in the blood samples found in Halbach’s car, although the defense brought on an expert who noted that there is no recognized and verified testing method for detecting EDTA. As a result, the expert argued, there’s no way to know if the test failed because no EDTA was present or because what was there was not enough to meet the minimum threshold established for this test.
Bad forensics is also not an uncommon problem.
Many forensic techniques — such as hair microscopy, bite mark comparisons, firearm tool mark analysis and shoe print comparisons — have not been subjected to sufficient scientific evaluation and have resulted in error. — The Innocence Project.
Unlike DNA testing, many forensic disciplines – particularly those that deal with comparing impression marks and objects like hair and fiber – were developed solely to solve crime. These disciplines have evolved primarily through their use in individual cases. Without the benefit of sufficient foundational research or adequate financial resources, applied research has also been minimal.
In fact, many forensic testing methods have been applied with little or no scientific validation and with inadequate assessments of their robustness or reliability. Furthermore, they lacked scientifically acceptable standards for quality assurance and quality control before their implementation in cases.
Although there have been positive developments in forensic science in recent years, our cases have shown that forensic analysts sometimes testify without a proper scientific basis for their findings. Testimony about more dubious forensic disciplines, such as efforts to match a defendant’s teeth to marks on a victim or attempts to compare a defendant’s voice to a voicemail recording, are cloaked in science but lack even the most basic scientific standards. Even within forensic disciplines that are more firmly grounded in science, evidence is often made to sound more precise than it should. For example, analysts will testify that hairs from a crime scene “match” or “are consistent with” defendants’ hair – but because scientific research on validity and reliability of hair analysis is lacking, they have no way of knowing how rare these similarities are, so there is no way to know how meaningful this evidence is
Whether you agree or disagree with the allegation that Avery and his nephew Brandon Dassey were essentially railroaded into prison is actually beside the point. It’s possible that Avery did kill Halbach and that, at the minimum, Dassey did see parts of her body burning in the bonfire when he came over from next door after watching TV. The defense didn’t make the case that this couldn’t have possibly occurred—only that the prosecution didn’t truly prove all their fairly wild and elaborate allegations against the pair without any reasonable doubt. It’s fair to debate that point, but distracting.
The larger point which is highlighted by the series is just how much the justice system tends to fail innocent people who are caught up within it. This is made most clear when Avery decides to give up on his $36 million lawsuit and accept a paltry $400,000 settlement on his wrongful prosecution case, just so he has cash on hand to pay for decent lawyers for the second trial.
Most people who encounter the justice system don’t have $400,000 to spend on attorneys who can fight just as hard on their behalf as the prosecution can against them. Most have to deal with court-appointed and highly overworked, underpaid, and understaffed public defenders. Most of the time that’s doesn’t work out well for them.
People have reacted viscerally to the Avery/Dassey case. They’ve been shocked and outraged by it. Many of those people rightly feel that our justice system shouldn’t be this flawed. That it shouldn’t be this easy to manipulate and skew, that even if you believe that Avery and Dassey ultimately got what they deserved, it really shouldn’t be like this. But it is.
People of color have known this for a long, long time. This happens to be largely why there was such a marked difference in responses to the original O.J. verdict between black and white viewers. Many white persons have not had personal interaction with our justice system. They don’t really know what it’s like. They assume, as we are often shown on television and in movies, that all cops are honest, pure and true. That all prosecutors are competent and ethical. But even if each and every one of them were, there would still be errors.
Steven Avery may indeed be the white O.J.: Exonerated after his first trial, but then relentlessly hounded by those who continue to feel that they had it right the first time, until finally they “Got ‘im!” And it may not be because of deliberate malice. It might just be the compounding of mistake on top of mistake.
The problem isn’t that the system fails to be flawless. It’s that when its flaws become evident the tendency isn’t to correct those flaws: It’s to cover them up. Paper them over. Deny. Deflect. Defuse.
Prosecutors and police in this series take a lot of time taking umbrage that their integrity is being questioned. They feel as if questioning them and their methods is some type of personal attack. Those who’ve taken to the streets to protest that black lives matter have taken much of the brunt of that umbrage.
But the point is that being questioned is what they signed up for. The presumption of innocence is not supposed to be granted to the operatives of the state. It’s supposed to be granted to its accused citizens. At some point, our justice system turned itself on its head. Police have become unassailable, unquestionable. Their word has become law and fact and proof, in and of itself.
Steven Avery may not be a black man or a brown man, but he’s discovered what it’s like to be treated exactly as if he were. At every junction, because he isn’t upper crust, because people consider him and his family to be “dirty” and “inbreeders” (as is alleged by Brandon’s initial attorney), he’s considered beneath others in the community. Guilty of whatever depravity they imagine of him until ultimately proven innocent. And even after they’re finally given that proof, some still refuse to believe anything other than what they already presumed about him and his family. People of color know that condition well.
Yet people who become fixated on Avery, or even on Brandon Dassey, are missing a vital issue as illustrated by this chart, again via the Innocence Project.
Those exonerated by DNA testing aren’t the only people who have been wrongfully convicted in recent decades. For every case that involves DNA, there are hundreds that do not.
Only a fraction of criminal cases involve biological evidence that can be subjected to DNA testing, and even when such evidence exists, it is often lost or destroyed after a conviction. Since they don’t have access to a definitive test like DNA, many wrongfully convicted people have a slim chance of ever proving their innocence.
These factors are not the only causes of wrongful conviction. Each case is unique and many include a combination of the above issues. Review our case profiles to learn how the common causes of wrongful convictions have affected real cases and how these injustices could have been prevented.
Steven Avery was incredibly lucky to have been found innocent using DNA evidence after his first conviction. Many, many more certainly aren’t as fortunate.