Known from the Netflix documentary
‘Making A Murderer’ Inmate’s Attorney: ‘The World Wants Brendan Dassey To Come Home!’
Brendan Dassey confessed to raping and murdering a woman as a teenager along with his uncle Steven Avery. He later retracted the confession (archive image).
© Morry Gash / Picture Alliance
As a teenager, Brendan Dassey was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 along with his uncle Steven Avery for murder. According to his lawyer, the special needs student was forced to confess at the time. Since then she has been fighting for his release.
As a teenager, Brendan Dassey of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, rose to notoriety when his case was publicized through the Netflix documentary Making A Murderer. The series explored the investigation, prosecution and trial of Dassey and his uncle Steven Avery in 2005-2007, both convicted of the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach.
After his conviction, Dassey’s case was taken up by the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth. Since then, lawyer Laura Nirider has been fighting for his release. An expert in false confessions, she specializes in representing youth who have confessed to crimes they did not commit.
Laura Nirider featured in season two of Making A Murderer
In the second season of “Making A Murderer,” she and her team work to remove from evidence Dassey’s confession, in which he told officers he and his uncle Steve Avery had a photographer, Teresa Halbach, on October 31, 2005 raped and murdered, and then burned her body.
Attorney Laura Nirider is fighting for Brendan Dassey’s release
© Scott Bauer / Picture Alliance
The 41-year-old considers the circumstances under which the then 16-year-old and mentally handicapped special student Dassey made his confession to be inadmissible. The teenager was repeatedly interrogated for a period of 48 hours without legal counsel or in the presence of his parents. According to Nirider, police put the words in Dassey’s mouth.
In fact, the confession is the only thing connecting the teenager to the murder, and although he immediately recanted it, Dassey was sentenced to life imprisonment on the basis of that confession, with no prospect of parole before 2048.
Brendan Dassey’s plea for clemency denied
Although a US district judge in 2016 called the confession “clearly involuntary in a constitutional sense,” his opinion was overturned by a federal appeals court. The US Supreme Court upheld the appeals court and declined to hear the case.
A clemency petition to the governor of Wisconsin in 2019 also failed. But Dassey’s lawyer doesn’t give up. “Working hard on Brendan’s case today and finding inspiration in the many replies to the 2019 tweet below,” she wrote on Twitter, referencing an old article about the failed parole petition. “The world wants Brendan Dassey to come home!”.
Brendan Dassey: “I told them everything they wanted to hear”
The 31-year-old is currently serving his sentence at Oshkosh Correctional Institution, a correctional facility in Wisconsin. In a telephone interview broadcast on a special edition of the US podcast “Wrongful Conviction”, Dassey spoke about his experiences and the many interrogations: “I just wanted to get this over with and told them everything they wanted to hear.”
In 2019, he addressed himself from prison with a handwritten letter to the governor asking, “I’m writing to ask for a pardon because I’m innocent and I want to go home.” The letter was also shared on Twitter by Kim Kardashian at the time, asking Gov. Tony Evers to read it. However, he rejected Dassey’s plea for clemency, pointing out that he did not meet the necessary requirements.
Despite the setbacks, his lawyer doesn’t want to give up: “I’m not done fighting for Brendan yet.”
Swell: Twitter, “lava for good”, youtube, NBC26
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