Author: Fresh Meat . <mymodem gmail>     Reply to Message
Date: 1/27/2016 3:45:17 PM
Subject: RE: Making a Murderer

Even my 12yo suggested that somebody could make a biased documentary showing how guilty he is.

Stop for a moment and realize you are not a lawyer. Then look up how much was left out of the documentary. Then visit your local jail and ask 'by show of hands, who here was wrongfully convicted?"

I think for future viewers somebody should edit out the 5 hours of people quietly standing in hallways then delete an hours worth of people walking up stairs. Then edit out the hour and a half of drone shots of the auto wrecking yard. Then keep only one audio phone clip of Steve saying I didn't do it. Now it's a 2 hour documentary.

I remain skeptical. But I do love the memes...

























Given her history, Penny Beerntsen does not need any convincing that a criminal prosecution can go catastrophically awry. But when Ricciardi and Demos approached her about participating in “Making a Murderer” she declined, chiefly because, while her own experience with the criminal-justice system had led her to be wary of certitude, the filmmakers struck her as having already made up their minds. “It was very clear from the outset that they believed Steve was innocent,” she told me. “I didn’t feel they were journalists seeking the truth. I felt like they had a foregone conclusion and were looking for a forum in which to express it.”

Ricciardi and Demos have dismissed that idea, claiming that they simply set out to investigate Avery’s case and didn’t have a position on his guilt or innocence. Yet “Making a Murderer” never provokes the type of intellectual and psychological oscillation so characteristic of Koenig and Snyder’s “Serial.” Instead, the documentary consistently leads its viewers to the conclusion that Avery was framed by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Department, and it contains striking elisions that bolster that theory. The filmmakers minimize or leave out many aspects of Avery’s less than savory past, including multiple alleged incidents of physical and sexual violence. They also omit important evidence against him, including the fact that Brendan Dassey confessed to helping Avery move Halbach’s S.U.V. into his junk yard, where Avery lifted the hood and removed the battery cable. Investigators subsequently found DNA from Avery’s perspiration on the hood latch—evidence that would be nearly impossible to plant.

Perhaps because they are dodging inconvenient facts, Ricciardi and Demos are never able to present a coherent account of Halbach’s death, let alone multiple competing ones. Although “Making a Murderer” is structured chronologically, it fails to provide a clear time line of events, and it never answers such basic questions as when, where, and how Halbach died.

Potentially critical issues are raised and summarily dropped; we hear about suspicious calls to and messages on Halbach’s cell phone, but these are never explored or even raised again. In the end, despite ten hours of running time, the story at the heart of “Making a Murderer” remains a muddle. Granted, real life is often a muddle, too, especially where crime is involved—but good reporters delineate the facts rather than contribute to the confusion.
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