- Oct 2, 2013
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I say no.
I do not see a fix when jury's are terrified and in fear of their lives to vote 'not guilty' against government generated indictments where simply being accused is a guilty verdict.
I believe state injustice is no more fixable today than it ever was, pre or post revolution.
I do not see a fix when jury's are terrified and in fear of their lives to vote 'not guilty' against government generated indictments where simply being accused is a guilty verdict.
The Emotional Manipulations of Making a Murderer
Weeks after finishing it, I’ve found myself enraged by this series for reasons I didn’t anticipate.
So is it fair for Making a Murderer to characterize both the people of Manitowoc County and the jury that convicted Avery as members of a mindless lynch mob if they were looking at a different, murkier set of facts?
Had Demos and Ricciardi offered a more layered portrait of Steven Avery, it would not have rendered the suffering of Halbach’s and Avery’s families, especially that of Avery’s mother, Delores, any less powerful. Those empty fish tanks that Allan Avery stares into as he contemplates all the things that might have been would be no less heartbreaking. The sheriff’s department’s obvious conflict of interest and the unctuous, Ned Flanders–esque sanctimony of Ken Kratz, the former Calumet County district attorney who was later forced to resign after a sexting scandal, would have been no less maddening. But a fuller picture would have demanded that the audience consider two other horrifying scenarios: that serving 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit had turned Steven Avery into a predator, and/or that police may have framed a guilty man. In both, the state remains morally complicit in shoring up a corrupt legal system that is stacked against those who don’t have the resources to fight it.
There’s an interesting moment in Making a Murderer’s final episode, when Dean Strang says, “If I’m gonna be perfectly candid, there’s a big part of me that really hopes Steven Avery is guilty of this crime. Because the thought of him being innocent of this crime, and sitting in prison again for something he didn’t do, and now for the rest of his life, without a prayer of parole? I can’t take that.” But as a viewer, I felt the exact opposite: I wanted Avery to be innocent so badly that the bits and pieces of information that trickled out after the series aired were hard to swallow.
The Emotional Manipulations of Making a Murderer
I believe state injustice is no more fixable today than it ever was, pre or post revolution.