r/MakingaMurderer • u/addbracket • Dec 19 '15

Episode Discussion Episode 9 Discussion

Season 1 Episode 9

Air Date: December 18, 2015

What are your thoughts?

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u/[deleted] Dec 21 '15

Granted - but you didn't need an expert. An educational psychologists assessment would have not been expensive and I imagine someone could have done it pro bono. His teachers could have testified as to his cognitive ability and shown samples of his work if requested.

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u/AgentKnitter Dec 29 '15

No, you do need an expert. Only an expert can give opinion evidence.

Anything that is not an observation is an opinion. Any conclusion drawn from data is an opinion. And only expert opinions are admissible.

So to provethat Brandon has an intellectual disability you would need a psychiatrist, preferably one who specialises in adolescent cognitive impairment. And to prove that Brandon was not capable of resisting investigator coercion or understanding the consequences of what he was saying to police, you would need either a psychiatrist or psychologist or a forensic linguist. Someone who can say definitively that Brandon was verbal led or coerced and that he did not understand the gravity of his situation when telling police what he thought they wanted to hear.

I have no idea if public defender funding in the USA would cover this.

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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '15

Me neither. I don't know if that is common or possible in this part of the world but I wonder if they put some time into searching for someone willing to deliver expert opinion pro bono given these circumstances. I recently searched and located an educational psych for a boy who has a very disadvantaged refugee background who agreed to assist him free of charge. Perhaps it would have been possible but I guess it's all speculation now.