He was a 16-year-old boy that was bullied by the authorities.
There are so many moments in the trials of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey that will make you want to scream into the nearest pillow but one of the most heinous incidents portrayed in Making A Murderer involved officers from the Manitowoc Sheriff’s Department aggressively forcing a confession out of Brendan Dassey.
For those of you that might not know, at the time of Teresa Halbach’s murder in ’05 , Brendan Dassey was a teenager with severe learning disabilities. During his pivotal interrogation with the police, it’s clear that the authorities were happy to take advantage of Brendan’s limited intellectual capacity as they aggressively coerced the teenager into providing a statement of guilt.
There was something deeply unsettling about seeing a group of police officers haranguing, bullying and forcing an intellectually disabled teen into an admission of guilt – a process that lasted much longer than what audiences saw in the Netflix documentary.
Dean Strang has been speaking with the BBC about this and he says that it was “really wrenching viewing”. He adds “that’s unfortunately not an uncommon experience for children who are pulled into a police investigation or into the adult criminal justice system, and indeed for many people with learning disabilities or difficulties who are confronted with well-trained and aggressive police interviewers.”
Brendan Dassey was ultimately convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault.
Strang also had some frank views regarding the allegations that the documentary was biased and left out certain arguments. “This film manages to cram in all of the most significant evidence and arguments that the state made. And I think it evenhandedly does the same for the defence. Now, there is less significant information and argument that’s omitted on both sides but that’s unavoidable where you’re devoting 10 hours in total to this story. I think the editorial judgements made here are perfectly defensible as reasonable and fair.”
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