Conviction against Brendan Dassey in Teresa Halbach murder overturned
MILWAUKEE -- A major ruling for the man convicted for his role in the murder of Teresa Halbach. Brendan Dassey was convicted back in 2007. Now, a federal court ruling has overturned that conviction on Friday, August 12th. The court says he was coerced into a confession.
Brendan Dassey
This is a case that received national attention when the documentary, "Making a Murderer" was released on Netflix this past winter.
FOX6 News has been reading through the 91-page federal court decision overturning Dassey's conviction.
Brendan Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, were both arrested in connection to the death of Teresa Halbach -- a photographer who had been hired to come to Avery's Manitowoc County property to take photographs.
Teresa Halbach
The case sparked protests and calls for the convictions to be thrown out.
Friday, after years of appeals, a federal judge overturned Dassey's conviction ruling investigators made false promises to him during his interview and his confession was coerced.
The ruling states, "he did not seem to grasp the seriousness of the matter."
Dassey was just 16 years old when he was arrested. Once he was in custody, he confessed to helping his uncle rape and murder Halbach.
Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey
"His lawyer wasn't there, he was prompted, he was promised things, he had very clear mental limitations. At the end of this whole thing he thought he was going to go back to school at the end of the day," said Janine Geske, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice.
Brendan Dassey
Geske says the video confession raised red flags.
"More people, legal observers, that saw it, I think were very uncomfortable about the way that interrogation happened," said Geske.
Dassey is represented by two attorneys from Northwestern Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth.
They released the following statement:
"On Friday, August 12, a federal judge in Milwaukee overturned Brendan Dassey’s murder conviction, giving the state 90 days to decide whether to retry him or release him.
Northwestern Pritzker School of Law professors Steven A. Drizin and Laura Nirider have served as two of his attorneys throughout the appellate process. They released the following statement upon receiving the news:
“Dr. Martin Luther King said that the ‘arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ It has taken a decade but the law is finally bending toward justice in the case of Brendan Dassey.
As attorneys for Mr. Dassey, we are overwhelmed by the Hon. William E. Duffin’s 91-page decision granting Brendan Dassey’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus and ordering the State to release Dassey from custody unless within 90 days the State initiates proceedings to retry him.
The Court’s decision rests on a fundamental principle that is too often forgotten by courts and law enforcement officers: interrogation tactics which may not be coercive when used on adults are coercive when used on juveniles, particularly young people like Brendan with disabilities. And when these tactics are used on juveniles, the risk that a young suspect will give a false confession increases exponentially.
In this case, the Court held that numerous promises of leniency were used by investigators to cause Brendan to make a confession that was coerced. Importantly, the Court also expressed “doubts as to the reliability of Dassey’s confession.” We look forward to taking the appropriate next steps to secure Brendan’s release from prison as soon as possible and are thrilled for him.”
Dassey, whose case rose to national prominence in late 2015 when it was featured in the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer,” has been represented by Northwestern’s Bluhm Legal Clinic’s Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth since 2008. Nirider coauthored the petition for writ of habeas corpus that led to the decision to overturn by Magistrate William Duffin.
The court found Dassey’s confession in the murder of Teresa Halbach was involuntary, in violation of the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments."
After hearing the news, Steven Avery's former attorney, Jerry Buting, tweeted this out:
Dassey is currently serving his prison sentence at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage. The court has ordered that he be freed from prison within 90 days, unless the case is appealed.