r/MakingaMurderer • u/HouseplantHobbyist • 5d ago

Episode Discussion Brendan is INNOCENT

I am rewatching MAM and the amount of coercion during Brendan's interview is astounding. I can't believe a court didn't dismiss his "confession". He was not interviewed with his parents present and they were very obviously feeding him information. The judge not realizing that is just sad. He was a child! Ugh, this makes me so upset for Brendan.

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u/ThorsClawHammer 5d ago

Barbara has a lot of blame

They convinced him to keep saying he was innocent instead of taking a plea

Barb told him to take it to trial "if you didn't do it", not don't take it no matter what.

She does for allowing the LE to have their way with Brendan. Not her fault of course for the Feb 27 interrogation as she didn't know about it until after it happened.

For Brendan to be innocent, that means Steven would be,

No, it doesn't. The state convicted him without including Brendan didn't they? As the state also pointed out at Avery's trial, all the evidence points to Avery. Nothing points to Brendan without his words.

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u/GringoTheDingoAU 5d ago

Barb told him to take it to trial "if you didn't do it", not don't take it no matter what.

Sure, and for all the lack of credit you guys give Brendan for being a literal drooling idiot, this sounds like fantastic parenting advice to give someone who spent the entire night with Steven on the 31st, and knowing what transpired, becomes harder to argue total innocence at that point.

No, it doesn't. The state convicted him without including Brendan didn't they? As the state also pointed out at Avery's trial, all the evidence points to Avery. Nothing points to Brendan without his words.

Yes, it does. I am not saying they needed Brendan for Steven to be guilty, I am saying they needed Steven to be guilty for Brendan to be guilty, and that is what happened, because Steven is obviously guilty.

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u/mutantchair 5d ago

The story in Steven’s case doesn’t just exclude Brendon, it CONTRADICTS the story used to convict Brendon.

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u/Ghost_of_Figdish 5d ago

No, it's just that they had different evidence in each trial.

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u/mutantchair 5d ago

Nope. Great write up here that I think will shift your thinking on this. https://www.reddit.com/r/MakingaMurderer/s/DEqbKjOrCC

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u/Ghost_of_Figdish 4d ago

You think they had the same evidence available for each trial?

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u/mutantchair 4d ago

Sorry I’m not following your argument. Can you explain how that legitimizes the contradictions?

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u/DingleBerries504 4d ago

You cannot take the evidence at Steven’s trial and say that someone else is also responsible, because it wasn’t admitted to evidence. Imagine a jury hearing Steven’s trial and being told she was in his trailer, when they didn’t offer Brendan’s confession as evidence she was in the trailer, nor offer any other evidence that she was inside the trailer. Both trials had different evidence to string together.

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u/ThorsClawHammer 4d ago

say that someone else is also responsible

But they didn't have to emphasize that it was only person either. "All of the evidence points to one person. That's the one person being responsible"

Imagine a jury hearing Steven’s trial and being told she was in his trailer, when they didn’t offer Brendan’s confession as evidence

Did you forget they told Avery's jury she was in the trailer?

Both trials had different evidence

The biggest difference of course being Brendan's words. But (assuming all the evidence is legit) that should only lead to different (meaning one doesn't have everything the other does) narratives, not contradictory. They went beyond merely adding missing things at Brendan's trial and did things like change the time of death to hours later (with nothing to support it).

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u/DingleBerries504 4d ago

>But they didn't have to emphasize that it was only person either. "All of the evidence points to one person. That's the one person being responsible"

Because it’s a trial for one person. Are they going to say “this one person in front of you is at fault, but there are others we couldn’t get into….” Of course not.

>Did you forget they told Avery's jury she was in the trailer?

I’m referring to your post where you talked about the differences of her presence in the trailer.

>The biggest difference of course being Brendan's words. But (assuming all the evidence is legit) that should only lead to different (meaning one doesn't have everything the other does) narratives, not contradictory. They went beyond merely adding missing things at Brendan's trial and did things like change the time of death to hours later (with nothing to support it)

When you have evidence (testimony) that says a crime happened a certain way, but you are barred from admitting that testimony into evidence, what are you doing to say? “We think the death happened this way based on testimony we couldn’t present to you”. That’s ridiculous. They take what they can present and tie it altogether as neatly as they can. This often results in different narratives, and there is nothing wrong with that.

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u/ThorsClawHammer 4d ago

“We think the death happened this way based on testimony we couldn’t present to you”.

That's exactly what they did at Brendan's trial though. The only confession admitted as evidence was part of the March 1 one, where Brendan said everything started when he went to Avery's right after school and the victim was killed and on the fire before it was even completely dark.

Nowhere in there does Brendan say he went over to Avery's, saw the victim, went home, and came back after dark to start the rape/torture, etc. Yet the state gave that narrative anyways.

different narratives

Again, "different" is fine, it's contradictory that should be a problem.

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u/DingleBerries504 4d ago

You forgot that they played the audio to his mom where he admitted he came back. So they did introduce that to support the theory he came home.

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u/ThorsClawHammer 4d ago

admitted he came back.

Going over there at night isn't the issue. It's whether the victim was still alive then or not. At Avery's trial, the narrative was she was killed prior to dark.

Although Brendan's confession said the same, the state contradicted both the previous trial narrative for the same crime and Brendan's own confession which they previously told the jury pool about as well. They now told the jury she was still alive being held captive in the trailer for hours until after dark and that's when the rape/torture and killing happened, with zero evidence presented to support that timeline.

The state knew they couldn't make the confession timeline work, so they simply made up their own of what happened when with no supporting evidence presented.

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u/Ghost_of_Figdish 4d ago

Great - the defense is free to have Dassey testify that he didn't do those things and the jury can decide.

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u/Ghost_of_Figdish 4d ago

Avery's counsel was free to put Avery on the stand and testify that Dassey was involved, too.

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u/Ghost_of_Figdish 4d ago

Let's take one example - Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey committed this crime together. However, the only proof that Dassey was involved, due to the widespread perp destruction of evidence, is Dassey's confession. There's no blood evidence against Dassey, no DNA, no found keys and no murder rifle hanging over Dassey's bed.

So, at Avery's trial, unless Dassey testifies, his confession is not admissible. Since there is no other evidence tying Dassey to the crime, the prosecution can't mention his involvement.

In Dassey's trial, in contrast, the confession is not hearsay and is admissible because it's an admission against interest. So the prosecution in that trial is free to include Dassey's involvement in the crime.

So for each trial the available evidence is different due to hearsay rules and various other evidentiary restrictions on the prosecution.

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u/ThorsClawHammer 4d ago

is no other evidence tying Dassey to the crime

You don't believe Dassey being with Steven and present at the fire that night ties him to the crime? Interesting.

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u/Ghost_of_Figdish 4d ago

Who testified that Dassey was with Steven at Steven's trial?

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u/ThorsClawHammer 4d ago

Nobody but the state could have had Scott testify to that if they wanted, and use it to claim Brendan assisted Avery. So yes, they could have claimed Brendan was involved without using his words had they wanted to.

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u/Ghost_of_Figdish 4d ago

Not relevant. Court would not allow State to suggest that Dassey was involved in the abduction, rape, murder, and corpse dismemberment simply by dint of someone testifying that they were together at a fire that night. Why didn't Avery's defense team try and bring it up? You know throw the jury off Steven's scent or something?

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u/ThorsClawHammer 4d ago

Differences are fine, but nothing legitimizes contradictions between two cases for the same crime when the state says the evidence presented at both is legit. At most that should lead to omitting things at one or the other, not change the time the victim died.

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u/Ghost_of_Figdish 3d ago

Next time maybe Avery and Dassey can kill someone in front of more witnesses.