Attorneys Demand Brendan Dassey Pardon as Gov. Tony Evers Refuses to Free Innocent in Prison

Called Out — 'Cruel and Cowardly' Tony Evers 'Shifting and Ducking Responsibility'

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — The innocent Brendan Dassey has now spent more than half of his life in prison, since being pulled from school by corrupt police, Mark Wiegert (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin DoJ, DCI investigator (ret)).

In an extraordinary development this week, former Steven Avery civil liberties attorneys Dean Strang and Jerry Buting, not Dassey's attorneys, have demanded Gov. Tony Evers (D) order the release of the innocent Dassey, citing Wisconsin police tricks, deceit and judicial intellectual dishonesty in a letter dated March 2, 2022, under the letterhead of Strang and Bradley, LLC, (WISC-TV, CBS58).

Strang and Buting represented Dassey's uncle, Steven Avery, featured in the Emmy-winning Making a Murderer docuseries depicting Wisconsin's notorious "Corruption County," Manitowoc County, in the state's east-central region known for small-town injustice.

Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, were convicted of first-degree homicide for the 2005 murder of a young photographer, Teresa Halbach. Both men are serving life sentences.

Wisconsin Democrats have backed the prosecution, and refuse to free Dassey in its politcal calculation to portray Democrats as tough on crime, no matter that Dassey and Avery are innocent. 

The Democrat political scheme also serves to protect the current Wisconsin Attorney General's mother, Peg Lautenschlager, for her work in courting and protecting corrupt Wisconsin police and aiding the prosecution of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey.

Dassey's case has spurred other states to ban police lying to juveniles as a means of tricking children into uttering false confessions, as deceptive police interrogation practices come under increasing fire, (Daily Herald). (See also LaVigne and Miles, Under the Hood: Brendan Dassey, Language Impairments, and Judicial Ignorance).

Tricking innocent children has defenders in Wisconsin: Police, Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D), every elected Wisconsin Democrat, and Gov. Tony Evers (D) singled out by Strang and Buting as a "governor ... of cruelty [and] cowardice."

 

Our message to Gov Evers: “By constitutional design, you can be a governor of grace, not of cruelty or cowardice. We urge you now to be exactly that,” Dean Strang & Jerry Buting wrote in a letter to the governor asking him to shorten Brendan’s sentencehttps://t.co/0SyfDnPDUe

— Jerome Buting (@JButing) March 4, 2022

As governor, Tony Evers has the unique and unquestioned authority to grant pardons and commutations under the Wisconsin Constitution, a power Evers has squirmed from in the Dassey case out of concern past Democrat politicians would be mired in scandal and corruption charges.

Strang and Buting join over 250 national legal experts and human rights activists in calling for a pardon or commutation for Brendan Dassey.

A member of Dassey's post-conviction defense team, former U.S. Solicitor General, Seth Waxman, said in Oct 2019 in Madison, "I have never had a case that has troubled me more than this case, that has kept me awake at night, that makes me anxious and sad. And that's because I know that Brendan Dassey is innocent."

Confidence in the integrity of Wisconsin's Judiciary can no longer be reasonably asserted in the face of the Dassey-Avery infamy. It appears Dean Strang and Jerry Buting have had enough.

In Wisconsin, it is the law itself that perpetrated the destruction of innocent life. And most everyone goes along as bystanders.

Making a Murderer Frame-up Blasted by Attorney Dean Strang — "Utterly Unsustainable as a Factual Matter"

The Wisconsin Dept of Justice is caught in multiple
dilemmas as it continues to block a hearing for the
wrongfully convicted Steven Avery,
framed for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach.

"Where is any of the blood?!"

Madison, Wisconsin—The ex-district attorney and sex offender Ken Kratz' versions of events that allegedly chronicle the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach are ridiculous.

Steven Avery's 2007 co-counsel, Dean Strang, calls the state's narrative of murder offered at the trial of Brendan Dassey, (contradicted by the state in its two different narratives at two different murder trials), "utterly unsustainable as a factual matter."

Mark Wiegert, (Calumet County Sheriff), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation investigator), are liars, unindicted felons, and they still work in Wisconsin law enforcement.

They framed two men whom they knew to be innocent.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul (D) has thrown the state DoJ 100 percent behind Kratz and perhaps the most spectacular law enforcement scandal in state history.

Rich Lomurro sits down to talk with Dean Strang about the Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey trials at the center of the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer. Video is below:

Protest in Manty Co. Friday, New Trial for Avery-Dassey Demanded

Manitowoc County in east-central Wisconsin
(blackened in image) is located deep in Republican
territory, a region notorious for corrupt police
and law enforcement. 'Where did all that cocaine
from the evidence room go?' National reporters should ask
sources surrounding Manitowoc County about an
array of open secrets not flattering to police. Local
Wisconsin journalists certainly will not.

WBAY-TV (Green Bay) reports protest groups will gather in Manitowoc Friday, Jan 29 at 10:00 a.m (Central) at the Manitowoc County Courthouse, (Schuster, WBAY-TV).

They want a new trial for Steven Avery and Brenden Dassey, and a federal investigation, (few trust the Wisconsin Republican Party's Dept. of Justice).

The American criminal justice system is coming under renewed and sustained criticism for corruption and its convictions-at-all-costs mentality across the nation.

Most prosecutors see their position as a stepping stone for legal careers. Wisconsin is among the worst.

Among the groups expected are groups organized through Facebook, Justice for Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey and the Steven Avery Project.

Other press reports note hotel rooms are filling up in Manitowoc County, and many protesters are flying in from out-of-state.

Manitowoc County is located in east-central Wisconsin, not northeastern Wisconsin.

The region—including Sheboygan, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Calumet, Winnebago, Outagamie, Kewaukee and Brown counties—is appallingly racist, white, corrupt and Republican. See also the stories on the openly corrupt Vince Biskupic, former Outagamie County district attorney appointed to a judgeship by Scott Walker.

Misconduct in Manitowoc: Police Induced False Confession, Say Expert and Attorney

Manitowoc County in east-central Wisconsin
(blackened in image) is located deep in Republican
territory, a region notorious for corrupt police
and law enforcement. 'Where did all that cocaine
from the evidence room go?' National reporters should ask
sources surrounding Manitowoc County about an
array of open secrets not flattering to police. Local
Wisconsin journalists certainly will not.

Updated - In Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos' documentary series, Making a Murderer (on Netflix), the cast of uncharged criminals wear a badge or have sworn an oath. They all work for law enforcement.

The prosecution's most damning witness, Brendan Dassey, had an IQ below 70 and was 16-years-old.

Police investigators played Dassey's condition to the hilt, working with a corrupt Manitowoc County Sheriff Dept. and District Attorney's office to wrongfully convict two innocents, Dassey and Steven Avery, featured in the film series.

After [Brendan Dassey] confessed to helping his uncle rape and kill the photographer, [Brendan] Dassey asked police if he could go back to school to make his 1:30 class; amid a similar admission, [another innocent cognitively challenged Clarence] Burcham asked if he could go on a family camping trip.

'To me, that's pretty clear evidence that they don't really understand what's going on here,' [Lawrence White, a psychology professor at Beloit College in Wisconsin,] said. The men maybe thought, "I'm not going to go to prison for this, because I'm innocent. It'll all get straightened out." And they're very naive to think that.' (Lyden, InForum)

That law enforcement investigators induce false confessions (and lie about confessions) comes as no surprise to retired public defender, Reesa Evans.

Ms. Evans is a retired attorney who in 1999 referred Avery to the Midwest Innocence Project (MIP) just after the University of Wisconsin-Madison established an Innocence Project chapter in 1998.

Ms. Evans had been appointed by the Court to represent Avery in 1985. MIP Legal Director Tricia Bushnell is now assisting as local Wisconsin counsel for Steven Avery.

In December 1985, Steven Avery was convicted of a vicious rape, prosecuted by many of the same unsavory bunch of Manitowoc County officials who evidence shows later framed Avery for the murder of Teresa Halbach, as asserted in the 2005-06 trial, after Avery was exonerated and after he served 18 years in prison.

Freed in 2003, Avery filed a $36 million federal civil suit against Manitowoc County, naming several law enforcement officials as defendants.

The law enforcement officials exacted their revenge on Avery.

In an exclusive interview, Avery's 1985 attorney, Reesa Evans, says "bad faith" and systemic breakdowns in law enforcement in the criminal justice system lead her to the conclusion that part of the oath of office prosecutors take is often ignored, the commitment to see justice done.

Evans said also she is sympathetic to Brendan Dassey's false confession.

"It's difficult to understand false confessions. They happen more than people realize. Unless you have been through it, you do not realize the pressures involved," said Evans. "Interrogations involve an isolated situation with multiple cops, you can understand people would start feeling guilty when they are innocent. Investigators lie, they often will say, 'tell us this, and you can go home,' right before making an arrest."

Evans was invited last year to the premier of Making a Murderer in New York. She made the trip, viewed the first two episodes and said the series is "amazing."

Still, Evans found the series upsetting. "It was very difficult and most of all emotionally upsetting. All the feelings of powerlessness and frustration, [Dassey and Avery] went through," Evans said.

Evans is living in central Wisconsin. She did an interview with Newsweek, but said she is declining future interview requests about the documentary series.

"Laura and Moira interviewed me for about 15 hours. It's an amazing accomplishment. The series is looking at the flawed criminal justice system, as much as this particular case," said Evans.

In the 1985 case in which Avery was proven innocent, Evans notes likely prosecutorial misconduct, specifically possible Brady violations, the duty of the prosecution to disclose materially exculpatory evidence in the government's possession to the defense.

"There were possible exculpatory house-to-house results of police interviews that were not disclosed before [the 1985 trial and conviction of Avery for which he exonerated after serving 18 years]," said Evans.

In the second 2005-06 case against Avery in which Evans was not involved, Evans said she had not ever heard of a "preventative detention" and other misconduct to which Avery was subjected after he filed his civil suit.

Notes John Ferak in the Appleton Post Crescent:

Manitowoc County Sheriff's Lt. James Lenk and Sgt. Andrew Colborn were suspected of becoming aware of evidence during the 1990s that Avery did not commit the 1985 rape and ignoring the information, while Avery remained in prison. In October 2005, less than three weeks before Teresa Halbach is murdered, Lenk and Colborn were questioned during a sworn deposition connection with Avery's $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County. After Halbach disappeared, Lenk and Colborn thrust themselves into the investigation, focusing on Avery. Colborn interviewed Avery the same night Halbach is reported missing. Lenk interviewed Avery the next morning. Lenk approached Halbach's vehicle after it was found. Lenk found the keys to Halbach's vehicle inside Avery's bedroom in plain view after officers from Calumet County, the state Division of Criminal Investigation.

One hopes for criminal justice reforms revolutionary in nature in the face of the putative and defective system Robert Jackson warned us about in 1940.

In the meantime, trust in law enforcement is misplaced. You want to walk, don't talk because police lie.

Juror in Avery Case: Feared for 'Life" and Voted 'Guilty,' Believes Avery Was "Framed"

Wisconsin fiends make national news,
they wear a badge.

Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos appeared on the Today Show (Stump) yesterday and announced a juror had contacted them after viewing the film series, Making a Murderer (on Netflix), and said she or he had cast a guilty vote because out of fear “for their own safety.”

Said co-exec producer Ricciardi: "(The juror) told us that they believe Steven Avery was not proven guilty. [The juror] believe(s) Steven was framed by law enforcement and that he deserves a new trial, and if he receives a new trial, in their opinion it should take place far away from Wisconsin."

Amen.

Reports Scott Stump:

There was behind-the-scenes vote-trading going on during the trial,the juror told the filmmakers, and the verdicts on each count were 'a compromise.'

'That was the actual word the juror used and went on to describe the jurors ultimately trading votes in the jury room and explicitly discussing, "If you vote guilty on this count, I will vote not guilty on this count," Ricciardi said.

One hopes the wrongfully convicted and the police-prosecutor state become the topic of news reports repeatedly.

Juror misconduct of this nature is grounds for a new trial, experts say.

The series also shows multiple instances of prosecutorial misconduct by law enforcement personnel, not pointed out, under Wisconsin Supreme Court rules governing attorney ethics.

For example: Wisconsin Supreme Court Rule [SCR 20:3.6 Trial publicity], stating: "(a) A lawyer who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter shall not make an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter."

And more broadly, Misconduct in Public Office:

Any public officer or public employee who does any of the following is guilty of a Class I felony:
946.12(1)
(1) Intentionally fails or refuses to perform a known mandatory, nondiscretionary, ministerial duty of the officer's or employee's office or employment within the time or in the manner required by law; or
(2) In the officer's or employee's capacity as such officer or employee, does an act which the officer or employee knows is in excess of the officer's or employee's lawful authority or which the officer or employee knows the officer or employee is forbidden by law to do in the officer's or employee's official capacity; or
(3) Whether by act of commission or omission, in the officer's or employee's capacity as such officer or employee exercises a discretionary power in a manner inconsistent with the duties of the officer's or employee's office or employment or the rights of others and with intent to obtain a dishonest advantage for the officer or employee or another; or
(4) In the officer's or employee's capacity as such officer or employee, makes an entry in an account or record book or return, certificate, report or statement which in a material respect the officer or employee intentionally falsifies; or
(5) Under color of the officer's or employee's office or employment, intentionally solicits or accepts for the performance of any service or duty anything of value which the officer or employee knows is greater or less than is fixed by law.

Stay tuned. Ken Kratz and these other lousy bastards in Manitowoc County may get what's coming to them.

2016 and Beyond—Come to Wisconsin

Wisconsin is making international news again.

This time it's a bunch of corrupt and despicable hicks from Manitowoc County.

Don't let these people define Wisconsin. They're a disgrace, an infamy to justice.

But for every ex-prosecutor like Kenneth Kratz, Wisconsin can point to a jurist like Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Shirley Abrahamson and attorney Dean Strang.

Scott Walker has been exposed as the pathological liar and know-nothing he always has been. He could not get elected to any statewide office now, in any mid-term.

The year 2016 will see Wisconsin with two U.S. senators—Tammy Baldwin and Russ Feingold—who will lead the nation as the nation's two most progressive senators.

Madison remains Madison ever-leading the Midwest, as Dane County is leading the state in new private-sector jobs and progressive politics.

Need an educated and skilled workforce, come to Dane County. Looking for human decency, an oasis of an engaged citizenry, come to Dane County.

Despite the damage done by Walker and his band of corrupt Republicans, citizen action, an innovative economy and progressive politics will define a state that shamed itself under the reign of the sociopaths.

Look to the future and the rise of the people pushing every Koch brothers piece of shit to the bottom of Lake Winnebago where they belong.

Film on Police Frame-up in Manty, Wisconsin Drawing National Attention

Update: Making A Murderer: Anonymous claims to have evidence that Netflix documentary’s subject, Steven Avery, is innocent, (Griffin, The Independent).

It would appear a significant chunk of the American people have had enough of the routine police and prosecutorial misconduct.

From Chicago to the coasts to Ferguson and up to Manitowoc, Wisconsin, the forces preying on the public wear a badge or represent the state. They are a grave threat to the citizenry, (Schilling, The Guardian).

Nowhere is this anti-American dynamic captured more poignantly than in the new film series, Making a Murderer (on Netflix) by Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos.

"When the prosecutor is at his best is one of the most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst," warned the great jurist and public intellectual, Robert Jackson, (U.S. DoJ). Jackson's worst fears, made famous in his 1940 address as U.S. attorney general, are a fact of life today.

CBS News has a segment this morning.

WISC-TV (Madison, Wisconsin) is airing another piece today and tonight in which Madison attorney Dean Strang is interviewed.

Strang is featured throughout the Making a Murderer series fighting corruption and betrayals by the Manitowoc Sheriff's office and multi-jurisdictional prosecutors and unscrupulous criminal investigators.

Strang has had plenty of experience defending the public against prosecutors gone wild.

From his footage in Making a Murderer it's clear Strang has had enough.

Film Series Show Wisconsin Criminal Justice as Systemic Scandal

Wisconsin fiends make national news
again. This time the fiends wear a badge.

Routine Police-Prosecutor Misconduct Highlights Need for Independent Conviction Integrity Unit

In Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos' documentary series, Making a Murderer (on Netflix), the Wisconsin criminal justice system is exposed as a leviathan run by liars, criminals and jackals (and the judges who protect them), a lawless system of unethical men and women in two infamous cases.

Everyone went along for the ride in the Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey wrongful convictions, from liberal officials in the Wisconsin Department of Justice to the Green Bay press to the progressive daily, The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin) (March 14, 2007 editorial).

The unindicted criminals and most repulsive actors are Wisconsin local law enforcement—abetted by the state attorney general's office, the FBI and Wisconsin judges—in the case of the innocent-but-convicted Avery and young Mr. Dassey, human beings who were "ground up and spit out by this 'system,'" as described by attorney Dean Strang, one of the few rays of light in this spectacle.

Making a Murderer chronicles the 1985 wrongful conviction of Steven Avery who "spent 18 years in prison for a sexual assault that DNA evidence later proved he did not commit. Avery was released from prison in 2003 after his conviction was overturned, but two years later he was charged in the horrifying murder of a young photographer named Teresa Halbach. At the time, Avery had filed a $36 million civil lawsuit against Manitowoc County for his wrongful conviction," (Butler, Washington Post).

Avery and Dassey are the victims of the retaliatory framing scheme, revenge perpetrated by the Manitowoc County, (Wisconsin) Sheriff's office and the multi-jurisdictional malicious prosecutions begun because Avery was about to expose the ugly realities of law enforcement in his $36 million civil lawsuit. Both are serving life sentences.

What is illustrated so vividly by Ricciardi and Demois is the extent to which prosecutors and the police enjoy a license to lie, slander and destroy the lives of innocents, without any integrity checks on their misconduct.

Making a Murderer maps the dystopian landscape in which the state, the 'Sovereign,' arrests, prosecutes and secures the convictions of as many 'offenders' as possible and locks them away in a huge complex of 'correctional' institutions either subsidized by the citizenry or publicly traded in the securities markets, a disgrace that Scott Walker and Tommy Thompson inflicted with their work on behalf of for-profit prison companies such as the Corrections Corporation of America (CXW), (New York Times), (ALEC Exposed, PRWatch) (Mal Contends).

The Avery-Dassey documentary is a masterpiece of journalism begun after Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demo read a piece in the New York Times.

It's critical to note some of the perpetrators.

Special prosecutor Kenneth Kratz, a deceitful piece of human garbage who is now the apparent recipient of death threats after the airing of Making a Murderer since Dec. 18, 2015 (Purl, WGN). Krats is in private practice now in Superior, Wisconsin.

Source: State Bar of Wisconsin

There's Brendan Dassey's attorney, the despicable Len Kachinsky, who with his investigator plotted against and ridiculed his own client, an offense that draws no objection from the toothless Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation.

Kachinsky is hiding out today in Outagamie County in Appleton and his name has been scrubbed from the law offices of Robert J. Sisson website.

Law Offices of Sisson and Kachinsky

The State Bar of Wisconsin indicates Sisson's firm as "Sisson Kachinsky Law Offices."

Kachinsky threw Dassey, a cognitively challenged 16-year-old, to two investigators, Mark Wiegert, (sergeant at the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation investigator), who weren't looking for the truth but trying (successfully) to get Dassey to mutter words portrayed as admissions of guilt and supporting a lurid, contrived tale of guilt of Avery in the revenge prosecution (Ferek, Appleton Post-Crescent).

Wiegert and Fassbender were on Dassey like jackals in interrogations, a display of the whole disgrace that the Wisconsin criminal justice system has become.

On a final note, former Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen (R) (2007-2015) announced on May 2, 2008, these human garbage, Wiegert and Fassbender, received the Meritorious Service Award from the Wisconsin Association of Homicide Investigators, (Wisconsin Dept. of Justice).

Not that Van Hollen's predecessor performed any better in the Avery affair.

"Peggy Lautenschlager, Wisconsin's Attorney General in 2003, directed the Wisconsin Department of Justice to investigate the merits of the 1985 wrongful conviction of Steven Avery. The DOJ released an 18-page report on Dec. 17, 2003, finding 'there is no basis to bring criminal charges or assert ethics violations against anyone involved in the investigation and prosecution of this case,'" (Ferak, Appleton Post-Crescent). Lautenschlager did what was politically expedient.

Except for the families of the wrongfully convicted and the defense attorneys, Dean Strang and Jerome Buting and the Innocence Project, few emerged from this affair appearing anything but indecent and corrupt.

In the Avery-Dassey scandal, Wisconsin law enforcement, the Wisconsin press, and the Wisconsin judicial system resemble nothing so much as benighted fools and corrupt betrayers of the public from Alabama.

Wonder if anything reformist in nature will become of this indecency as a result of the film. Revolutionary change is needed.