Brendan Dassey is renowned throughout the world thanks to Netflix series Making a Murderer.
The now 28 year old was convicted by a Wisconsin court and sentenced to life in prison in 2007 for helping his uncle, Steven Avery, rape and kill Teresa Halbach in 2005. The then 16 year old confessed to the crime during a police interrogation but his lawyers argue the confession was improperly coerced.
During the interrogation, clips of which are featured in the Netflix series, Dassey “repeatedly gave wrong answers to questions about the crimes, thereby suggesting he was not involved,” his lawyers say. His interrogators “fed him the ‘right’ answers” and told him he would be allowed to go free if he confirmed what they said.
Dassey’s lawyers are now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case and to review a ruling from a federal appeals court that found he voluntary confessed to assisting in the 2005 murder of Halbach.
The petition was filed before the court on Tuesday. It argues that the case raises significant issues that have for decades problematised state and federal courts, namely in relation to intellectually challenged persons such as Dassey.
“Too many courts around the country, for many years, have been misapplying or even ignoring the Supreme Court’s instructions that confessions from mentally impaired kids like Brendan Dassey must be examined with the greatest care — and that interrogation tactics which may not be coercive when applied to an adult can overwhelm children and the mentally impaired,” Steven Drizin, one of Dassey’s lawyers, said in a statement.
In their petition to the Supreme Court, Dassey’s lawyers argue that the confession was involuntary and note Dassey’s “significant intellectual and social limitations.”
The legal team writes: “Put simply, the interrogators took advantage of Dassey’s young and mental limitations to convince him they were on his side, ignored his manifest inability to correctly answer many of their questions about the crimes, fed him facts so he could say what they wanted to hear, and promised that he would be set free if he did so.”
A federal court in Wisconsin overturned Dassey’s conviction in 2016 and held that the confession was unconstitutionally coerced. The decision was affirmed by a three-judge panel from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, but the full appeals court voted 4-3 to reverse the lower court’s decision to grant Dassey a new trial.
