No, haven't had the spare time since the last time I posted. Are you going to keep asking me every day? Perhaps the best thing would be to have a thread in the TV forum where fans can discuss the events on the show with spoiler tags, and the admittedly thin current affairs aspect of the reaction to the show can stay here. Tell you what though, I did listen to two whole episodes of Serial...and meh, no more. Either he did it or he didn't, I'm not swept away by the dramatic reveal of partial and selected facts that I know won't be conclusive either way and I don't need to hear it dragged out for 10 more episodes.

I expect this is should be viewed like a michael moore, or possibly adam curtis documentary. It's the compilation of archive footage to weave a dramatic narrative (yes, i know there is no narrator) that purportedly tells a shocking truth, with the added appeal of a continuous 'procedural' as they call them these days. Now I like michael moore, and I love adam curtis but I wouldn't necessarily watch an hour of their stuff and come away claiming I now knew objectively the mind-blowing truth of a complex issue because I've just seen a drama-documentary about it.

I just think a bit of scepticism about the nature of the format wouldn't go amiss. It's a TV show designed to entertain and get people talking about it. If they led you to believe that he probably did it, it would be just another one of those interminable true crime shows, so they lead you to believe something different instead.

Macdoc wrote:It's necessary to see it to make any sort of judgement call and you use "entertainment" in a slighting manner.
It's meant to be engaging like any good documentary ...entertainment implies "fluff" ala Dancing with the Stars etc.

This is far far from that.

Here is a good series of resources.

http://digg.com/2016/making-a-murderer- ... at-to-read

It's not meant to be a slight. It's what it is.

I'm not sure why you think entertainment implies fluff. There are so many great, insightful, engaging and thought provoking movies, books, tv shows, etc. that are meant as entertainment and often completely fiction yet have no "fluff".

It's important to understand that it's entertainment though and understand what you are watching is primarily intended to engage as large an audience as possible and is not meant primarily as a historical record. That doesn't mean this isn't a great jumping off point to examine this case or similar miscarriages of justice but to call for a convicted murderer to be freed because you saw a TV show is ridiculous.

What's rather ironic about this is that it's probably what got Steve Avery convicted in the first place. For a year and a half before his trial TV shows are entertaining people with this story except it was from the angle that Steve Avery was almost assuredly guilty, to the point that the defense had a tough time getting juror surveys that didn't say the prospective juror believed him to be guilty.

Really my saying this is entertainment isn't a criticism of this show but rather the whole industry as well as viewers are conditioned to believe something just because they saw it on TV.

felltoearth wrote:There isone bit of evidence for the defense that doesn't look good for the police in terms of framing, and for which there was never any sufficient explanation. Two days before "discovering" the RAV4 on the Avery property, Colburn called in the plates to identify the car. The tape of this call was played and was just left hanging there. This is the smoking gun for the frame up in my mind.

I watched the episode where Colburn is on the stand and the defense plays that tape. He's listens to it and immediately lies and says he didn't say what he said on the recording. The defense attorney has to play it again and Colburn kind of bumbles on about he did say it but can't remember or whatever.

It just shows how absolutely cocksure these cops are that they can do and say whatever they want and get away with it. I mean he lies about what he said right in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary then acts put off that the defense calls him out on it.

purplerat wrote:

felltoearth wrote:There isone bit of evidence for the defense that doesn't look good for the police in terms of framing, and for which there was never any sufficient explanation. Two days before "discovering" the RAV4 on the Avery property, Colburn called in the plates to identify the car. The tape of this call was played and was just left hanging there. This is the smoking gun for the frame up in my mind.

I watched the episode where Colburn is on the stand and the defense plays that tape. He's listens to it and immediately lies and says he didn't say what he said on the recording. The defense attorney has to play it again and Colburn kind of bumbles on about he did say it but can't remember or whatever.

It just shows how absolutely cocksure these cops are that they can do and say whatever they want and get away with it. I mean he lies about what he said right in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary then acts put off that the defense calls him out on it.

Its weird. I know as a trial strategy attorneys will try to bait people into lying on the stand because they realize if they do go out in lie and impeach themselves, it ruins their credibility on the rest of their testimony. Yet that doesn't seem to hold true for the police or prosecution.

One of my friends who is doing her masters in Forensics says alot of how they present the Forensics and what they leave out is crucial and they fail to make a convincing case.

She's only a few episodes in though.

I have worked forensics for two decades. I question the nepohew's competence to stand trial. An IQ of 73 seems quite generous based on the interviews I saw. He didn't know who the different people in the court were, or even what "inconsistent" means. The confession was based on leading questions, planting ideas, and almost telling him what he was supposed to say.

Avery was on a path as a petty criminal, borderline intelligence, poor impulse control, and a family with limited life skills. The cat incident in isolation isn't too damning, but if there was a pattern, then it would carry more weight. Spending 18 years in jail for something he didn't do, in the jailhouse culture leaves people struggling with reintegration. I wouldn't rule out a violent impulse, but much of the evidence is questionable, obtained inappropriately by people who had serious conflict of interest, and a history of criminal and ethical violations. I don't know if he's innocent, but his trial was a sham.

Acetone wrote:One of my friends who is doing her masters in Forensics says alot of how they present the Forensics and what they leave out is crucial and they fail to make a convincing case.

She's only a few episodes in though.

who fails to make a convincing case?

Kind of what some of us are saying:

...The series has also established Netflix as a significant force in criminal justice. The series has become the TV equivalent of last year’s gripping Serial, the podcast that reopened the 1999 case over the murder of a high-school student in Baltimore.

But, like any whodunnit that invites the onlooker to think as an armchair detective, the facts of the case are subjective: this is not a trial, but the truncated representation of one by journalists.

While the series has made heroes of defence lawyers Dean Strang and Jerome Buting, they concede that the praise they’re getting is no more balanced than the criticism they received during the trial. “Both of those experiences are artificial and distorting,” Strang said. Neither of them represents any particular reality other than what’s going on in fevered social media among a self-selected portion of the population.

Prosecutor Ken Kratz last week accused the programme’s makers – Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos – of withholding important evidence that led a jury to convict Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey.

The film was a result of the film-makers’ “agenda” to portray Avery as innocent and stoke public outrage. “That is absolutely what they wanted to happen,” added Kratz. Ricciardi said: “Our opinion is that we included the state’s most compelling evidence.”

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/j ... t-petition

ED209 wrote:Kind of what some of us are saying:

So you've watched the series?

Wow it's been so long since I was last asked that. Maybe I should put how many episodes I've got through in my signature. Still zero.

Would my watching the show magically transform it from being (like any other) a truncated representation intended to entertain and to stoke up a response which even the defence lawyers have said is unbalanced?

ED209 wrote:Wow it's been so long since I was last asked that. Maybe I should put how many episodes I've got through in my signature. Still zero.

Would my watching the show magically transform it from being (like any other) a truncated representation intended to entertain and to stoke up a response which even the defence lawyers have said is unbalanced?

Let me try to express this in more simple terms for you. Nobody here cares for your critical analysis of a show you haven't watched. My question was purely rhetorical because you insist on continuing your assertions on it despite never having watched it. Reading your posts show you don't even grasp the concept of the show.

OK then

But if nobody else is going to grasp that a TV show is not giving them the entire and objective truth, and this thread is now for fan theories and spoiler discussions then this thread needs to be moved to the TV subforum or perhaps merged into the 'TV shows you're enjoying' thread.

Has anyone said that the show was 100% objective?

For that matter is a trial by jury 100% objective?

OK, so skip the trials in future and go straight to the TV shows

Am I really in a minority for thinking that the fact that nearly 300k people asked the president of the US to overrule a court judgement years down the line because they watched a fucking TV show about it is absolutely insane?

I fail to see how anyone can watch Making a Murderer and not demand a retrial.

On what grounds?

I think the police screwed him but unless Avery can come up with something new to show he was framed he can't get a retrial simply because he didn't like the outcome. No matter how many people watch a TV show and agree with him.

That's not my reaction, that's the legal system.

What do you suggest, a legal system based on the whims of people on the internet. Can't imagine that ever going wrong

I fail to see how anyone can watch Making a Murderer and not demand a retrial.

Well, the actual defence lawyer I quoted earlier managed to watch it and said it was 'artificial and distorting'. The fuck would he know though, right?

Besides, your statement is about how convincingly slanted the TV show is, not about the facts of the case. I fail to see anyone how can watch the start of 'Up' without crying, but so what? Viewers are affected by what they watch and this show was made to affect them a specific way, but their emotional reactions or hunches or whatever they'd like to call them are no substitute for a rational consideration of all available evidence.

I recall this project where law students were looking back at the files of US convictions as an exercise and finding shitloads of them were unsound because of one reason or another, simple stuff like witnesses never contacted, bungled processes, alibis never checked out or whatever. But you know what those students were doing that none of the 300k have? They looked at the fucking evidence, as in, they read the files and court records, talked to the convicts and others, and so on. IANAL but that seems like quite an important step. Courts make some wrong decisions but it's not enough to claim by some weird precedent that because conviction A was unsound, then unrelated conviction B that they made that really compelling TV show about is unsound also.