Dec 29, 2019

Three Exonerees Offer to Meet with Wisconsin Gov Evers to Explain False Confessions and Wrongful Conviction

Madison, Wisconsin — No observer of the Brendan Dassey wrongful conviction featured in the Emmy-winning Making a Murderer series believes Dassey committed a crime, and certainly not the first-degree murder, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault for which he was convicted in 2007, (Appleton Post-Crescent).

No forensic evidence supports the Tarantinoesque crime scene concocted by Wisconsin law enforcement and presented at trial by the disgraced sex offender, District Attorney Ken Kratz (resigned). Kratz was forced from office after sexual assault and harassment allegations against him became public in 2009.

No evidence against Dassey beyond a false confession proved to be no impediment to a conviction.

What's really important is that Wisconsin law enforcement is not held to account for its conduct, believe Wisconsin politicians.

Dassey's wrongful conviction and the related wrongful conviction of Steven Avery are now defended at all costs by the Democratic Party's Attorney General Joshua Kaul and Gov Tony Evers.

Three exonerees convicted because of false confessions similar to Brenden Dassey's have offered to meet with Evers to explain why wrongful convictions are wrong, and how misconduct by corrupt and immoral law enforcement destroys innocent life.
Tony Evers is a life-long public school bureaucrat who to this point has proven impervious to fact and reason in the Dassey and Avery affair.


If Evers deigns to accept the meeting with the three exonerees, I would advise these three people to bring pictures for Wisconsin's incurious governor.
---
Colborn v Netflix Defamation Case

In related news over the holidays, the Manitowoc County Dep Sheriff Lt. Andrew Colborn's (ret) attempt to shield law enforcement from public scrutiny survived a motion to dismiss in United States District Court, Eastern District of Wisconsin.

The case is Colborn v. Netflix Inc (1:19-cv-00484).

Colborn's amended complaint survived the dismiss motion for not meeting the low threshold of stating a claim upon which relief can be granted, citing Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 12(b)(6).
---
Plaintiff Colborn's action accuses Netlix, Inc and the Making a Murderer docu-series journalists, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, of having "omitted, distorted, and falsified material and significant facts in an effort to portray Plaintiff [Andrew Colborn] as a corrupt police officer who planted evidence to frame an innocent man," (Appleton Post-Crescent).

Colborn's lawsuit also states in part that the documentary, Making a Murderer, did not "admit" the factuality of, and include the "[t]horough, careful, and objective analysis by some members of the public and a few journalists [that] revealed that the series had badly distorted the facts," as advanced in a 2016 book authored by attorney Michael Griesbach, (the author of Colborn's original 2018 complaint in this case), in Indefensable: The Missing Truth About Steven Avery, Teresa Halbach, and Making A Murderer (Kensington Publ’g Corp. 2016).

Griesbach is a former Manitowoc County Assistant District Attorney.

Colborn and Griesbach argue that the 2015 documentary should have included Griesbach's polemical 2016 monograph, Indefensable, though this requirement would violate known physics pertaining to time travel and, in any event, is not required in a free society, protected in part by the First Amendment.

Reads the Netflix motion to dismiss in part:
8 The Amended Complaint also alleges that all Defendants acted with actual malice because they have refused to 'admit[] their distortions and omissions of fact' in the wake of '[t]horough, careful, and objective analysis by some members of the public and a few journalists [that] revealed that the series had badly distorted the facts.' Dkt. 1-2 ¶ 55. Here, the Amended Complaint makes a not-so-veiled reference to a book criticizing MaM published by Colborn’s counsel that mirrors many of the allegations in the Amended Complaint. See generally Michael Griesbach, INDEFENSIBLE: THE MISSING TRUTH ABOUT STEVEN AVERY,  TERESA HALBACH, AND MAKING  A  MURDERER  (Kensington Publ’g Corp. 2016). This detour is, however, irrelevant to the issue of actual malice, which is measured at the time of publication, not afterwards. Pippen, 734 F.3d at 614. 

Advocates for Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey are watching the developments of what they believe is an increasingly desperate Wisconsin law enforcement effort to protect wrongful convictions.

According to Colborn's novel theory of libel law underlying his complaint, any public official performing his public duties, criticized at a public trial, has a basis for civil action if journalistic and political speech criticizing the official's public conduct does not comport with a cop's self-serving portrayal of his public performance.

Colborn seeks to upend First Amendment jurisprudence, specifically calling for reordering the holding of a landmark 1964 First Amendment case in a June 2019 brief.

Colborn included this argument in his federal defamation suit against both the creators and distributors of Making a Murderer that seeks to eviscerate specific protections exemplified in the First Amendment case, New York Times v Sullivan.

Colborn v. Netflix Inc et al, Case # 1:19-cv-00484, was removed from Manitowoc County circuit court to federal court on April 10, 2019. 

The case is being heard by Judge Pamela Pepper, United States District Judge of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

A trial is expected in 2020.

No comments:

Post a Comment