Dassey's taped interview should be standard training for every police officer and/or mental health worker as an example of how not to do an interview.

Willie71 wrote:Dassey's taped interview should be standard training for every police officer and/or mental health worker as an example of how not to do an interview.

And shown as a prime example of abuse of someone lacking in capacity who requires formal assessment as such and the appointment of statutory counsel to be present in all interviews with investigators.

I find it incomprehensible that it's not a requirement now across the USA but according to the appeal judgement released on Friday, it isn't. Seems silly to have to review practice retrospectively to decide if a vulnerable person was coerced unfairly and unconstitutionally rather than making safeguards to prevent it from happening at all. It's cost 10yrs of a young man's life to decide in this case it was wrong. Makes you wonder how many other people there are in prison who were young and/or incapacitous at the time of their convictions who weren't adequately represented because they didn't fully understand they should be.

There are probably more than a couple people who've been railroaded as Dassey was. We only know about Dassey because he happened to be part of this documentary.

I should mention that I don't believe the documentary played a part in overturning the conviction - that is the work of his lawyers. Making a Murderer only functioned to make more people aware of this particular case.

Especially when the investigators’ promises, assurances, and threats of negative
consequences are assessed in conjunction with Dassey’s age, intellectual deficits, lack of
experience in dealing with the police, the absence of a parent, and other relevant
personal characteristics, the free will of a reasonable person in Dassey’s position would
have been overborne. Once considered in this proper light, the conclusion that Dassey’s
statement was involuntary under the totality of the circumstances is not one ab
out which “fairminded jurists could disagree.” See Richter, 562 U.S. at 101 (quoting
Yarborough v. Alvarado, 541 U.S. 652, 664 (2004)).

Consequently, the court finds that the confession Dassey gave to the police on March 1, 2006 was so clearly involuntary in a constitutional sense that the court of appeals’ decision to the contrary was an
unreasonable application of clearly established federal law.

http://www.stevenaverycase.org/wp-conte ... -Order.pdf

monkeyboy wrote:

Willie71 wrote:Dassey's taped interview should be standard training for every police officer and/or mental health worker as an example of how not to do an interview.

And shown as a prime example of abuse of someone lacking in capacity who requires formal assessment as such and the appointment of statutory counsel to be present in all interviews with investigators.

I find it incomprehensible that it's not a requirement now across the USA but according to the appeal judgement released on Friday, it isn't. Seems silly to have to review practice retrospectively to decide if a vulnerable person was coerced unfairly and unconstitutionally rather than making safeguards to prevent it from happening at all. It's cost 10yrs of a young man's life to decide in this case it was wrong. Makes you wonder how many other people there are in prison who were young and/or incapacitous at the time of their convictions who weren't adequately represented because they didn't fully understand they should be.

Just to clarify, are you saying that lawyers should be mandatory only in interrogations of vulnerable suspects, or in the interrogations of all suspects?

If it's a vulnerable suspect, I'd agree there should be some neutral third party to assist them and prevent browbeating, but a lawyer would all-but guarantee no confessions, even if they're voluntary and accurate. Unless a state's significantly modified the hearsay rule to allow exculpatory statements in, any competent defense attorney's simply gonna say, "Shut up," and end questioning.

A neutral third party would better reconcile a suspect's rights with the state's compelling interest in prosecuting crimes.

I'm talking pretty much about people lacking capacity to understand the circumstances they find themselves in, the procedures, terminology, and basic things like their rights even when they are given to them, let alone intentional coercion.
In England, we use "appropriate adults", often social workers but not necessarily exclusively. I've sat in on a couple of interviews as an appropriate adult before. Rather than legal representation, your role is to provide safeguarding support in ensuring welfare, rights are not breached, comprehension and emotional support to a potentially vulnerable person in custody, be it by age, mental illness or cognitive deficit/impairment.

more re appropriate adult here

Yes, I'd agree that an independent layperson should be present to assist vulnerable prisoners in understanding what's happening.

There's important procedural differences between England and America, particularly the absence of anything like PACE codes, and a different purpose to interviews (in England, they're investigative; in the U.S., they're overwhelmingly focused on getting a confession). Notably, deception to trick a suspect into confession is legit in America. The Miranda warnings explicitly tell suspects that anything they say can be used against them in court, but many ignore it, and try to talk themselves outa trouble.

Helping a suspect understand the implications, but not helping them beat the rap, is a fine line to walk.

An article explaining how Dassey's coerced 'confession' was used:

On March 2, 2006, the afternoon after Brendan was arrested, Mr. Kratz addressed a throng of reporters whom he had assembled in a press conference that was carried live on many local television and radio stations. Mr. Kratz first issued a warning to viewers and listeners not to let children under age 15 hear what he was about to say. And then he proceeded to narrate Brendan’s “confession” over the air. Merely mentioning that Brendan confessed was prejudicial enough, but Mr. Kratz went further. He vouched for the truth of the confession, speaking with certainty with phrases like “we now know what happened” to Teresa Halbach. The release of these gory details coupled with his confidence in their truth all but sewed shut any chance that Brendan or Steven could get a fair trial.

...

What makes Mr. Kratz’s conduct especially galling is that he had to know he was breaching both ethical rules governing pre-trial publicity and special rules which expect an even higher duty of prosecutors in criminal cases. He just didn’t care.

There’s no wiggle room in these rules. Wisconsin Rule of Professional Conduct 3.6(2)(a) prohibits lawyers from making public statements that the lawyer “knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter.” Rule 3.6(2)(b) is more specific, prohibiting attorneys in a criminal case, from publicizing “the possibility of a plea of guilty to the offense or the existence of the contents of any confession, admission or statement by the defendant or suspect.” The Comments to Rule 3.8 which concern “the special responsibilities of a prosecutor” state that “a prosecutor can, and should, avoid comments which have no legitimate law enforcement purpose and have a substantial likelihood of increasing public opprobrium of the accused.”

Mr. Kratz violated these rules. He knew that the contents of Brendan’s confession would be disseminated widely throughout the Manitowoc area, the entire state of Wisconsin, and soon enough to the world via the internet. As Mr. Keller can attest to, the manner in which Mr. Kratz read the contents of the confession only served to add to the trauma of those listening to it. The remarks also inflamed the public’s scorn of Avery, Dassey, and the entire Avery family.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-dri ... 08060.html

Virtually impossible to get a fair hearing under such circumstances:

Other improprieties regarding the jury selection and the difficulty to ensure a fully impartial sample of the population is selected was revealed on Making a Murderer. As Buting and Strang go through the jury questionnaires, they read that 129 out of 130 had admitted they thought Avery was guilty, all due to the pre-trial publicity received by the case in the media and to Avery’s relative fame.

http://www.inquisitr.com/2710473/making ... uspicions/

monkeyboy wrote:I'm talking pretty much about people lacking capacity to understand the circumstances they find themselves in, the procedures, terminology, and basic things like their rights even when they are given to them, let alone intentional coercion.
In England, we use "appropriate adults", often social workers but not necessarily exclusively. I've sat in on a couple of interviews as an appropriate adult before. Rather than legal representation, your role is to provide safeguarding support in ensuring welfare, rights are not breached, comprehension and emotional support to a potentially vulnerable person in custody, be it by age, mental illness or cognitive deficit/impairment.

more re appropriate adult here

In Canada we are starting to address the transitional youth who appear adult, but don't necessarily have all of the adult capacity, as well as moving beyond just IQ and looking at functional capacity for borderline cases where functioning is lower than IQ would suggest it would be. This has been quite common with FASD.

Avery's attorney Kathleen Zellner draws connection between sick mind that pushed involuntary 'confession' on Brendan Dassey and the case presented against her client:

The Wisconsin prosecutor who convicted Steven Avery, the subject of the blockbuster documentary Making a Murderer, bragged about his role in the controversial case to impress women he wanted to date and was accused multiple times of abusing his official position to coerce women into sexual conversations and acts, according to documents obtained by Newsweek.

New and disturbing details about the accusations against prosecutor Ken Kratz emerged from a 143-page case file kept by the Wisconsin Department of Justice (DOJ) during its 2010 investigation of Kratz, who initially received glowing praise for his handling of the 2007 trial that convicted Avery of killing young photographer Teresa Halbach.

Kathleen Zellner, the defense attorney working to free Avery, tells Newsweek the allegations cast doubt on the conviction and are especially troubling given Kratz’s behavior in the lead-up to the trial.

Zellner draws a connection between the prosecutor’s alleged sexual misconduct and the graphic press conference he gave before the trial. As the press conference began, Kratz asked young viewers to stop watching, then described how a sweaty Avery had shackled Halbach naked and screaming to his bed and invited his teenage nephew, Brendan Dassey, to rape and kill her. (The sexual assault and kidnapping charges against Avery were dropped before trial and on Friday a federal judge overturned Dassey's conviction.)

“They dismissed the sexual assault charges against Avery, and there was absolutely no proof of it,” Zellner tells Newsweek. “When you see a fabrication of reality such as what was done in that press conference, you wonder where those ideas come from [and] what would motivate someone to make up such a graphic scenario.” Zellner adds that the description Kratz gave at the press conference seems to be “the product of someone’s dark and disturbed fantasy.”

http://www.newsweek.com/steven-avery-la ... ion-490010

Other than the bogus so-called 'confession' there is no evidence there was any rape in this case, though virtually all of the potential jurors were exposed to Kratz's outrageous public announcement and were prejudiced against him from the outset.

Even though Dassey's confession is now considered to be involuntary, it was the only piece of evidence that put Avery at the scene of the crime.

However, that confession was never used in court for Avery's case.

As Avery's lawyers pointed out, months before trial in a press conference with the special prosecutor, he painted a grim narrative of Avery by using Dassey's confession.

It's a narrative that all the jurors likely had heard before stepping into the courtroom.

Avery's defense team said while the confession was not used in court, they spent most of the time having to debunk that narrative.

"The effect of that false and involuntary confession was very evident as we picked through the jury questionnaires where 129 of 130 people believed Steven Avery was guilty before they heard any evidence in court," Buting said.

http://www.kmov.com/story/32757545/maki ... conviction

Willie71 wrote:

monkeyboy wrote:I'm talking pretty much about people lacking capacity to understand the circumstances they find themselves in, the procedures, terminology, and basic things like their rights even when they are given to them, let alone intentional coercion.
In England, we use "appropriate adults", often social workers but not necessarily exclusively. I've sat in on a couple of interviews as an appropriate adult before. Rather than legal representation, your role is to provide safeguarding support in ensuring welfare, rights are not breached, comprehension and emotional support to a potentially vulnerable person in custody, be it by age, mental illness or cognitive deficit/impairment.

more re appropriate adult here

In Canada we are starting to address the transitional youth who appear adult, but don't necessarily have all of the adult capacity, as well as moving beyond just IQ and looking at functional capacity for borderline cases where functioning is lower than IQ would suggest it would be. This has been quite common with FASD.

Yeh, it's one area I'm quite proud of here. It's not perfect by a long shot and we've had our fair share of miscarriages of justice over the years but we've made great strides in the last 15-20yrs in the right direction. We have mental health professionals working in some police stations, we have operating diversion from custody schemes, we have pretty decent mental health law, police with powers to detain people under the mental health act to allow them to bring people into hospital without having to arrest them. PACE, the mental capacity act and robust safeguarding provision means that professionals really have no defensible reason to do something like question a Brendan Dassey here without representation. The sergeant in custody suites who book everyone in would be obliged to bring in social workers etc if someone of Dassey's age was brought in and on speaking to him for 5 minutes, irt would be apparent he had to have an appropriate adult brought in. It's not just for his rights but to protect police officers from disciplinary action if they don't.

purplerat wrote:Dassey's testimony was never used against Avery

It was, though. They staged a big PR thing around it in order to affect the public, and by extension, the jury.

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

purplerat wrote:Dassey's testimony was never used against Avery

It was, though. They staged a big PR thing around it in order to affect the public, and by extension, the jury.

Nice quote-mining

Meanwhile, it appears Zellner hasn't quietly dropped the Avery case and is going full court press.

QUESTION: Why did you decide to take this case?

ZELLNER: I decided to take it because I knew that he's innocent. I thought when I watched the documentary, which I did--Steven Avery had contacted me in 2011 when I was on trial in Washington in a civil rights case. But I decided to take it because I think that the crime scene doesn't make sense. A couple other things that make absolutely no sense. There's no mixture of blood in the car. We've never seen that before. None of my forensic scientists have. You have all of Steven Avery's blood in the front, all of the victim's blood in the back. He's supposedly cut and he throws her in the car. So my scientists were saying they've never seen that where there isn't a mixture of the victim's blood along with the alleged perpetrator.

The bones were moved. That was admitted. There was a human pelvis found over in the quarry. The bones were in different spots. The body was not burned whole. It's not possible to do that. So you've got the same bone in three different places. You've got only 30% of the bones recovered. You have 29 of the teeth never recovered. The bones look like they were planted. The property was closed down. The coroner from Manitowoc was not allowed on the property and actually was not notified it was a murder--that violates the Wisconsin statute.

So when I looked at the case, I could see all kinds of problems, but I could also see a lot of evidence that could be tested. Evidence that could be retested. And that we could determine if the evidence was planted. So I thought, "great case,", you know, I want to be involved in it. I met with him 18 times. I'm positive that he's innocent. I won't have to prove he's innocent but I would like to because I absolutely believe that he's innocent.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MakingaMurdere ... woc_press/

Lol. Some of the answers to these questions seem completely retarded. I hope that's not how this lawyer will be presenting the case to the courts.

"If you think about it, why would a guilty person allow such in depth DNA testing to be done"

OOOOOOOOOOHHHH-AHHHHHHHHH

What presumptive test for DNA was done? Surely they mean presumptive test for blood or other bodily fluids? That was used in court as a DNA test??? Didn't recall that.

They say tests are already coming back that they know WILL show his innocence. So basically 'yeah, some tests came back... but we don't know what they say... we know however they'll clear him. Later on they say a similar sort of thing about other tests.

Anyway this is interesting:
They're going to use radiocarbon dating on the blood to figure out the date of death, I've heard of this sort of research but never heard of it being actually employed in a case. So that's interesting. Not sure if this is the best case to use it though given how close the dates are.

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/227839.pdf

The DNA methylation test could be useful. Now that I think about it I'm not sure the order of storage for forensic samples. My current understanding of the process is a blood sample would be stored in a vial with anti-coagulants until it was needed for DNA extraction/sequencing. The resulting sequencing is NOT stored. So if the sample of blood came from the vial directly this test won't pick up on it. Instead this test will determine if they took blood from another source PCR'd the fuck out of his DNA removed the DNA from the other blood sample and inserted his fragmented PCR'd DNA. (PCR'd DNA is not methylated).

You can tell that PCR'd DNA isn't stored for future testing because sometimes samples don't yield enough DNA for multiple samples or for future testing. Even though they could have PCR'd enough of it and stored it. The stored sample is the original sample.

I personally think the EDTA test is far more telling in this case.

The whole press release sounds like a bunch of bullshit. Acting as if they conclusively know he's innocent for all this time but have just been waiting. They don't know shit THAT'S why they're waiting. To see if something comes up which they can strike on. The reasons they know he's innocent are bullshit too. Does this lawyer think everybody listening are idiots and going to hook line and sinker for the ole 'would he have consented to this if he were guilty?'

I mean it's not as if she hasn't represented guilty men before and thought they were innocent.

purplerat wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

purplerat wrote:Dassey's testimony was never used against Avery

It was, though. They staged a big PR thing around it in order to affect the public, and by extension, the jury.

Nice quote-mining

How so? How does any of the rest of what you wrote change anything?

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

purplerat wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

purplerat wrote:Dassey's testimony was never used against Avery

It was, though. They staged a big PR thing around it in order to affect the public, and by extension, the jury.

Nice quote-mining

How so? How does any of the rest of what you wrote change anything?

It's obvious from the context of both what I was responding to and the rest of my post that I was talking strictly about the court of law, not the court of public opinion and what the legal ramifications would or wouldn't be over Dassey's confession being thrown out.

What you responded with doesn't contradict what my post was about except when you take half a sentence out of context as you did.

Acetone wrote:
I mean it's not as if she hasn't represented guilty men before and thought they were innocent.

It would appear Zellner has a good record of convincing appellate courts and judges that the people she represents are innocent, too.

It will be interesting if this is another case where she not only frees her innocent client, but identifies the real perpetrator.

For those interested in miscarriages of justice engineered by prosecutors....this one is worth following on 48 hours....and once more involved tunnel vision of the worst sort ...

http://www.inquisitr.com/2878570/david- ... -mistress/

and more
http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas ... 957973.php

You are very much left with the sense that this was an enormous error driven by a sleazy prosecutor. Her investigative partner at the time is now entirely convinced it was wrongful conviction....and the actual killer seems very obvious ....to him and the viewer.
The stack of evidence not given to the defence is astonishing.

There is something very wrong in a system which is driven more by 'winning' by any means necessary than by a concern to serve justice.

purplerat wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:

purplerat wrote:

WayOfTheDodo wrote:
It was, though. They staged a big PR thing around it in order to affect the public, and by extension, the jury.

Nice quote-mining

How so? How does any of the rest of what you wrote change anything?

It's obvious from the context of both what I was responding to and the rest of my post that I was talking strictly about the court of law, not the court of public opinion and what the legal ramifications would or wouldn't be over Dassey's confession being thrown out.

What you responded with doesn't contradict what my post was about except when you take half a sentence out of context as you did.

But it was used in the court room. The whole PR thing was set up to influence the public, and thus the jurors.