World's Worst Mother, Barb Tadych, Fed Innocent Son to Police Tree Jumpers

Billboard in Manitowoc Demands Pardon for
Wrongfully Convicted Brendan Dassey. Gov
Tony Evers (D) is vested with unlimited power
to grant clemency for any or no reason under
 Article V, Sec 6 of the Wisconsin Constitution.

Innocent Man in Prison — Everyone Knows

Update Sept 2, 2021: Supporters of Brad Dassey, step son of the infamous Barb Tadych, in Manitowoc County say the world's worse mother still wants her step-son incarcerated for criticizing her alleged abuse.
Corruption County, Manitowoc County, is reportedly offering a fine against Dassey for writing the truth about his step-mother.
The deranged mother who offers her children to Manitowoc County police to be incarcerated wants step-son, Brad, in prison because he defeated Tadych in a civil suit on First Amendment grounds.
Tadych says an unenforceable retraining order, now vacated, may have been violated. The Manitowoc County District Attorney's office is rightwing and out-of-control and is helping Tadych, who looks to the office to help incarcerate her step-son.
The next plea hearing is scheduled for October 15, 2021 at 11:30 am.

--

Happy Mothers Day 2021

The innocent Brendan Dassey doesn't have a good mother.

One Barb Tadych, in fact, is one of the world's worst mothers.
 
No matter, today, we demand Gov Tony Evers (D) pardon the wrongfully convicted Brendan Dassey in the interest of justice.

Below is a repost of a piece from 2020.

Madison, Wisconsin — There is a special place in infamy for the bystander.

Brendan Dassey is in a Wisconsin prison; he is demonstrably innocent, but lives in a state with many perpetrators and more bystanders ensuring the wrongfully convicted remain behind bars.

So, Dassey works for his freedom, his life.

Dassey and Steven Avery are featured in the Emmy-winning documentary series, Making a Murderer.

The series resulted in a worldwide campaign of supporters who work for exoneration of two clearly innocent men.

No judge who has heard Dassey's case believes he is guilty.

No cop believes in Dassey's guilt, though no Wisconsin cop will state this publicly — ever.

Two Wisconsin cops worked in bad faith — Mark Wiegert (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin DoJ, DCI investigator (ret)) — and ripped into a 16-year-old with an I.Q. of 70, and a severe language impairment, ultimately leading to the false conviction for first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault in 2007.

The Flight of Moloch - by William Blake
Happy Mothers Day, as we remember
Barb Tadych for delivering her son to
Wisconsin law enforcement.

Dassey was easy prey for Wiegert and Fassbender.

The prosecutor, Ken Kratz, who called himself a "dick" in 2016 (for real), self-described as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder and multiple drug addictions, was driven from the district attorney's office in 2010 after multiple allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault came to light, after which he was driven from the Wisconsin legal profession altogether in 2019.

In the Dassey injustice, defense of Ken Kratz binds Democrats and Republicans here: A commitment to defend wrongful convictions at the hands of unethical and dishonest law enforcement.

Kratz' wife mocked and taunted Dassey's alleged conspirator, Steven Avery, in Feb 2019 in a tweet, now removed:

Writes Kratz:

Hey guys, Stevie’s still sitting in a jail cell 🙌🏻👏🏻🙌🏻👏🏻 #MakingAMurderer #MakingAMurderer2 Keep dragin ass, Kathleen. We love it! 😁😁

— Leah Kratz (@LeahMarieKK) February 16, 2019

One can garner much about the police culture of Wisconsin from this one tweet from an unhinged hick.

Consider this shared objective of destroying innocent life, a depraved devotion that cries out for constant challenge.

Last year a member of Dassey's defense team, Seth Waxman, advocating for a pardon or commutation for Dassey from Gov Tony Evers on Oct 2, 2019 in Madison, said, "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."

No word came from Evers before or after Oct 2019. 

Then, came Evers rejection of Dassey's bid for a pardon in Dec 2019, the news hidden in a press release just before Christmas, though Evers did manage to land a shot at Dassey, knowing he would get the news while retaining expectations about the holidays.

Ken Kratz and his ilk in the Manitowoc and Calumet County sheriff offices, have a friend they may not have counted on: Wisconsin's new Attorney General Josh Kaul (D).

Josh Kaul's office through co-counsels Mark Williams, Thomas Fallon and others is carrying on the crusade against Avery and Dassey with the same lack of ethics and regard for law that defined the tenure of Kaul's three predecessors in the Wisconsin Dept of Justice.

---

In the medical profession, practitioners are expected to carry out the spirit of an oath that demands doctors be healers, not destroyers.

Among police and prosecutors, there are no such strictures governing police conduct demanding no innocent be harmed or harassed, assaulted, defamed, arrested and imprisoned. In the Dassey and Avery cases, Wisconsin law enforcement destroyed evidence, then defended destroying evidence.

Among police, and its civilian collaborators, mission-critical imperatives are to protect police. The public is a free-fire zone and in warped police culture, the police cult perpetrates predictable brutality.

The type of individual, double-high authoritarian and anti-intellectual, who wants and self-selects to be a cop is capable of anything.

And all of law enforcement and politicians remain complicit in their silence.

Evers could help correct a grotesque injustice with a stroke of a pen today.

The decent who fight for Brendan Dassey's exoneration will never quit.

We are live in Manitowoc on the corner of Washington & 25th street, which poignantly is the same road as the courthouse where Brendan's life was snatched from him. Webcam footage doesn't do it "justice" - more photos to come #BringBrendanHome #FreeBrendanDassey pic.twitter.com/KMTyJx8Znq

— Tracy Keogh (@TracyKeogh2) December 7, 2020

A Call to Boycott Wisconsin Democrats — Party Is over for Nihilistic Gang Defending Wrongful Convictions

"I hate injustice. I guess that's about the only thing I really do hate."
— Ben Shahn, anti-fascist artist (1898–1969)

Madison, Wisconsin — This is a call for withholding all political and electoral support for Wisconsin Democrats at all levels of government.

This action starts with opposing Gov Tony Evers (D), Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D), U.S. Rep Mark Pocan (D), and all Democrats down to any  state, county and municipal candidates who are silent on the wrongful convictions of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, and so many others languishing behind bars, ruining and preventing their lives.

The game, this charade, is over, people. 

The Democratic Party is imprisoning innocents and killing black and brown people in broad daylight, then defending these crimes in their elected offices of public trust. Kenosha and Jacob Blake are the norm.

Tony Robinson is the norm. Paul Heenan is the norm. Ashley DiPiazza is the norm. That's just Madison, the civilized place. Look, killer cops cannot operate for long without the support of the Democratic Party. This is the truth staring everyone in the face, and yet we look away.

In Wisconsin, supporters of black and brown folks, and Brendan Dassey and Steven Avery, it's time to pursue opposition to Wisconsin Democrats at all levels of government. This injustice system cannot go on unless we support Evers and Kaul in the political system.

Corrupt Wisconsin police targeted the innocent to tragic
consequence in cases of  Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey.
Image from Kathe Kollwitz, (1867-1945). Kollwitz
is a major anti-fascist artist who lived in Germany, and never
recovered from the death of her son in World War I.
Image depicts German state enlisting her son, shortly before
he was killed in a senseless and ridiculous war.

Evers and Kaul know the facts of these innocents in prison, especially Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey.

What escapes bums like Evers and Kaul is no individual life is worth the Democratic Party, especially this Democratic Party.

Over time, we can quickly raise the costs of Party opposition to freeing innocent men and women. 

Even a marginal raising of electoral costs will quickly degrade the Party in Wisconsin. No more support for Democrats, people. We want Brendan and Steven free?

The political system is the pressure point. This is the prominent way in which we pursue change and protect our very lives and liberty, yet many working for the freedom of innocents eschew the political and electoral systems as a means of freeing people who do not belong behind bars.

Most folks in Wisconsin, my state, had they resided in Germany in the 1930s would have made superlative NAZIs, worse -- by-standers. No more.
---

"I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me."

All the NAZIs required of the population is a "mood of passive compliance" as Hitler’s Holocaust and armies coursed through Europe as he promised a return to "traditional values" and security for good German families. -- Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide: The Myth of the Jewish World Conspiracy and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion (1970). Cited by Noam Chomsky, The Culture of Terrorism (1988).
--
Has anyone been watching the Derek Chauvin trial on Court TV?

Every witness at the Chauvin trial struggles with the question, 'should they have done more to save George Floyd?' The sadistic pig-cop Chauvin and his buddies did not struggle with any moral question. They viciously terrorized and killed a man.

Watch the sadist Chauvin driving his knee as he looks around and preens on a terrified George Floyd's neck, as he arrogantly flaunts his status as a cop among Minnesota-Nice society. What we do in Wisconsin's Democratic Party is worse, and this sick game must be over now.

Brendan Dassey Awaits Freedom in Wisconsin as Gov Tony Evers Cowers

Billboard in Manitowoc Demands Pardon for
Wrongfully Convicted Brendan Dassey. Gov
Tony Evers (D) is vested with unlimited power
to grant clemency for any or no reason under
 Article V, Sec 6 of the Wisconsin Constitution.

Innocent Man in Prison — Everyone Knows, Afraid to Act

Madison, Wisconsin — There is a special place in infamy for the bystander.

Brendan Dassey is in a Wisconsin prison; he is demonstrably innocent, but lives in a state with many perpetrators and more bystanders ensuring the wrongfully convicted remain behind bars.

So, Dassey works for his freedom, his life.

Dassey and Steven Avery are featured in the Emmy-winning documentary series, Making a Murderer.

The series resulted in a worldwide campaign of supporters who work for exoneration of two clearly innocent men.

No judge who has heard Dassey's case believes he is guilty.

No cop believes in Dassey's guilt, though no Wisconsin cop will state this publicly — ever.

Two Wisconsin cops worked in bad faith — Mark Wiegert (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin DoJ, DCI investigator (ret)) — and ripped into a 16-year-old with an I.Q. of 70, and a severe language impairment, ultimately leading to the false conviction for first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault in 2007.

Dassey was easy prey for Wiegert and Fassbender.

The prosecutor, Ken Kratz, who called himself a "dick" in 2016 (for real), self-described as suffering from narcissistic personality disorder and multiple drug addictions, was driven from the district attorney's office in 2010 after multiple allegations of sexual harassment and sexual assault came to light, after which he was driven from the Wisconsin legal profession altogether in 2019.

In the Dassey injustice, defense of Ken Kratz binds Democrats and Republicans here: A commitment to defend wrongful convictions at the hands of unethical and dishonest law enforcement.

Kratz' wife mocked and taunted Dassey's alleged conspirator, Steven Avery, in Feb 2019 in a tweet, now removed:

Writes Kratz:

Hey guys, Stevie’s still sitting in a jail cell 🙌🏻👏🏻🙌🏻👏🏻 #MakingAMurderer #MakingAMurderer2 Keep dragin ass, Kathleen. We love it! 😁😁

— Leah Kratz (@LeahMarieKK) February 16, 2019

One can garner much about the police culture of Wisconsin from this one tweet from an unhinged hick.

Consider this shared objective of destroying innocent life, a depraved devotion that cries out for constant challenge.

Last year a member of Dassey's defense team, Seth Waxman, advocating for a pardon or commutation for Dassey from Gov Tony Evers on Oct 2, 2019 in Madison, said, "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."

No word came from Evers before or after Oct 2019. 

Then, came Evers rejection of Dassey's bid for a pardon in Dec 2019, the news hidden in a press release just before Christmas, though Evers did manage to land a shot at Dassey, knowing he would get the news while retaining expectations about the holidays.

Ken Kratz and his ilk in the Manitowoc and Calumet County sheriff offices, have a friend they may not have counted on: Wisconsin's new Attorney General Josh Kaul (D).

Josh Kaul's office through co-counsels Mark Williams, Thomas Fallon and others is carrying on the crusade against Avery and Dassey with the same lack of ethics and regard for law that defined the tenure of Kaul's three predecessors in the Wisconsin Dept of Justice.

---

In the medical profession, practitioners are expected to carry out the spirit of an oath that demands doctors be healers, not destroyers.

Among police and prosecutors, there are no such strictures governing police conduct demanding no innocent be harmed or harassed, assaulted, defamed, arrested and imprisoned. In the Dassey and Avery cases, Wisconsin law enforcement destroyed evidence, then defended destroying evidence.

Among police, and its civilian collaborators, mission-critical imperatives are to protect police. The public is a free-fire zone and in warped police culture, the police cult perpetrates predictable brutality.

The type of individual, double-high authoritarian and anti-intellectual, who wants and self-selects to be a cop is capable of anything.

And all of law enforcement and politicians remain complicit in their silence.

Evers could help correct a grotesque injustice with a stroke of a pen today.

The decent who fight for Brendan Dassey's exoneration will never quit.

We are live in Manitowoc on the corner of Washington & 25th street, which poignantly is the same road as the courthouse where Brendan's life was snatched from him. Webcam footage doesn't do it "justice" - more photos to come #BringBrendanHome #FreeBrendanDassey pic.twitter.com/KMTyJx8Znq

— Tracy Keogh (@TracyKeogh2) December 7, 2020

Innocent Brendan Dassey Waits in Wisconsin Prison — Wrongfully Convicted, Wrongfully Prosecuted

Corrupt Wisconsin police targeted the innocent to tragic
consequence. Image - Kathe Kollwitz, (1867-1945). Kollwitz
is a major anti-fascist artist who lived in Germany, and
never recovered from the death of her son in WW I.

"I hate injustice. I guess that's about the only thing I really do hate."
—Ben Shahn, anti-fascist artist (1898–1969)

Madison, Wisconsin—It's comforting to suppose a gentle ethic resides in Wisconsin, a decency standing ready to challenge betrayal such as defamation, child molestation, corruption, false imprisonment, torture and destruction of life.

This belief defends a lie.

This lie is perhaps the most striking message of the Emmy-winning Making a Murderer docu series (Netflix, Inc), a work that holds Wisconsin up to the world and says, 'look what they have done' to a challenged, 16-year-old Brendan Dassey and an exonerated Steven Avery.

So, it is no surprise that it took a handful of out-of-state attorneys and journalists to give Messrs. Dassey and Avery hope  that exoneration is near.

One of those jurists is Seth Waxman, 41st Solicitor General of the United States (1997–2001).

A premier advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court the last 40 years, Waxman is defined more by his decency than his prominence as a litigator. See for example Waxman's work to preserve habeas corpus in 2007, (Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. United States (06-1196)), (Center for Constitutional Rights).

Waxman appears to be animated by some core beliefs: That crucifixion of our fellows is wrong, and to bear witness is to incur an obligation to act, to think, to challenge and demand justification.

Few in the State Bar of Wisconsin seem to be animated by such concern — ethics. Rather, careerism and moral numbness define their collective passivity.

Waxman — a member of Brendan Dassey's legal team — said that when reviewing the outrageous interrogation of Dassey by Mark Wiegert, (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin DoJ, DCI investigator (ret)), that his "blood ran cold."

Advocating a pardon or commutation for Dassey from Gov Tony Evers on Oct 2, 2019, Waxman said:

I have been a practicing lawyer since 1977. As part of my pro bono practice, in addition to representing juveniles in criminal justice proceedings, I represent death row inmates. Other than the almost seven years that I was in the Justice Dept, I've always had at least one client facing execution for a capital crime. 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.

So, why Waxman's involvement and not the involvement or at least support of 100s of Wisconsin attorneys?

I don't pretend to know what is in Seth Waxman's heart. But I have seen hints.

Waxman made some comments at the Bernard G. Segal Memorial Lecture in Law and Ethics, April 10, 2018, explaining what animates his 1,000s of hours of pro bono work and legal advocacy since he became an attorney.

Waxman recalled attorney John Joseph Cassidy, a "cheerful and very engaged Roman Catholic," who sat with him in 1977, and asked:

'Why do you think that [religious] Jews and Jesuits are so drawn to the law?'

And, at the time, I didn't think I knew any Jesuits.

He (senior partner John Joseph Cassidy) said, that he was convinced that Jews and Jesuits excelled at the law because they both come from religious traditions steeped in wrestling with the meaning and application of God's law — a muscular intellectual engagement with religious texts.

And it is true over the course of my career, it' s actually impossible to count the number of times that the terms, Talmudic and Jesuitical, have been used to characterize particularly detailed discussions about how a specific legal principle should be interpreted or applied.

Thus, one can conclude, Waxman believes a religious and moral sensibility guides the role of lawyers during a time of lawlessness in the greater society.

I'm grateful for Seth Waxman's work for the innocent.

And to my many friends who are members of the Wisconsin Bar, I ask today for them to listen at some point to the words of Seth Waxman advocating for the innocent, video below.

To help with the Dassey commutation and pardon petition now before Gov Evers, see the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; Bluhm Legal Clinic, Wrongful Convictions of Youth.

Specifically, all Wisconsin citizens are urged to write a letter in support of Brendan Dassey's petition for a pardon or commutation.

Letter should be addressed to:

Governor Tony Evers
115 East
State Capitol
Madison, WI 53702

Seth Waxman advocating for clemency for Brendan Dassey on Oct 2, 2019 in Madison, Wisconsin. Video is below; [See also Bring Brendan Home.]:

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.

.@xoner8ed, @jasonstrong01, & @charlesjbaldwin—all wrongly convicted in high-profile false confession cases—offer to meet with @GovEvers to explain “who we become upon freedom.”

Your heroism honors and humbles us, guys. You won’t leave Brendan behind. Neither will we. https://t.co/bFu8MD8Mas

— Laura Nirider (@LauraNirider) December 29, 2019

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.

.@GovEvers all 3 of us r criminal justice advocates. I'm an adjunct professor @ @Georgetown & @TouroLawCenter. @charlesjbaldwin is exec director of an organization fighting 4 the wrongly convicted. @jasonstrong01 is an active Innocence advocate, consultant, etc. #exonereesrock

— Marty Tankleff (@xoner8ed) January 2, 2020

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.

Wisconsin Gov Evers Hides from Truth on Brendan Dassey Clemency — Rejection in Unsigned Form Letter

Corrupt Wisconsin police targeted the innocent to tragic
consequence. Image - Kathe Kollwitz, (1867-1945). Kollwitz
is a major anti-fascist artist who lived in Germany, and
never recovered from the death of her son in WW I.

Dassey Pardon Petition Remains before Tony Evers

Madison, Wisconsin — News that Gov Tony Evers' (D) Pardon Board declined to review the Brendan Dassey pardon and commutation petition does not surprise, (AP).

This is a political decision, defending the wrongful conviction of an innocent Wisconsin man, convicted as a child, and preyed upon by the tree jumpers populating Wisconsin law enforcement, (see Under the Hood: Brendan Dassey, Language Impairments, and Judicial Ignorance, (full paper) LaVigne and Miles).

The advisory Board's decision was released in a form letter on the Friday before Christmas, the time to conceal the bad work of Wisconsin politicians.

No elected politician has ever publicly taken the side of the exonerated and the wrongfully convicted in Wisconsin. Not once.

Consider that, in Wisconsin of all places and to be clear the worst place to be black, standing up and speaking the truth is an exercise so dreaded by the denizens of public office, that they would rather see innocent lives destroyed than to advocate for their liberty.

Neither has any daily newspaper advocated for the freedom of the innocent.

Seth Waxman — a member of Brendan Dassey's legal team — said this year that when reviewing the outrageous interrogation of Dassey by Mark Wiegert, (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin DoJ, DCI investigator (ret)), that his "blood ran cold."

Gov Evers maintains the explicit state Constitutional authority and right to summarily reject the Board's decision and grant Mr. Dassey his immediate freedom with a stroke of a pen for any or no reason, (Rolling Stone).

This action would entail using capacities that to date Evers has not displayed — intellectual honesty, knowledge of Wisconsin law enforcement, and to the worst of Evers' personal defects, a moral backbone and sensibility to the call of social justice.

Put yourself in the place of Tony Evers, what would you do? Defend the innocent and call out the guilty, or hide?

From the Wrongful Conviction Podcast and Jason Flom:

Dassey Team Response to Pardon Board Clemency Denial

On behalf of Brendan’s lawyers, Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin, we share the following statement:

Today, only five days before Christmas, the Wisconsin Pardon Advisory Board chose to reject Brendan Dassey’s clemency petition in an unsigned form letter, without reviewing the petition on the merits.

Had the Board reviewed Brendan’s petition on the merits, it would have seen what more than 250 national experts -- and millions of ordinary people around the globe – see: a terrible miscarriage of justice.

Now 30 years old, Brendan Dassey has been imprisoned for thirteen years based only on a false confession that is inconsistent with the known facts of the case, has been disproven by DNA and forensic evidence, and was immediately recanted. That false confession was the result of a deeply flawed interrogation of a 16-year-old special education student with profound learning disabilities.

Although the Pardon Advisory Board has stated that it will not consider commutations, Governor Evers is not bound by those rules.  He does have the power to issue commutations under the Wisconsin Constitution and should do so when, as here, courts fail to deliver justice.  Our partners around the country stand ready to work with the Governor to develop an appropriate process for the review of commutation petitions.

In the meantime, we will continue to work, respectfully but relentlessly, towards the day when this Governor recognizes in Brendan Dassey the gentle, cheerful, and kind human being whom we have known for twelve years.  A good teacher never forgets his most vulnerable students; a good Governor never forgets his most vulnerable citizens.

We spoke to Brendan this morning. While the Board’s choice today has caused pain to many around the globe, Brendan wishes to express his profound gratitude – and his Christmas wishes -- to his many supporters.  He is not giving up hope, and neither are we.

Now more than ever, we need your help.  If you’d like to support our continuing effort to free Brendan, please consider doing the following two things:

(1)Re-sign the petition to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers at bringbrendanhome.org and add your request that he “review the petition on the merits.”

(2)Send Brendan a letter of support and hope.  Your words of encouragement mean more to him than anything else.  You can address the letter to Brendan Dassey, #516985, Oshkosh Correctional Institution, PO Box 3310, Oshkosh, WI 54903-3310, U.S.A.

Thank you for standing with us.

Happy holidays and keep on fighting.

Signed,

The team at Wrongful Conviction

Wisconsin Souls Betray the Innocent — Thanksgiving 2019

Corrupt Wisconsin police targeted the innocent to tragic
consequence. Image - Kathe Kollwitz, (1867-1945). Kollwitz
is a major anti-fascist artist who lived in Germany, and
never recovered from the death of her son in WW I.

"I hate injustice. I guess that's about the only thing I really do hate."
—Ben Shahn, anti-fascist artist (1898–1969)

Madison, Wisconsin—It's comforting to suppose a gentle ethic resides in Wisconsin, a decency standing ready to challenge betrayal such as defamation, child molestation, corruption, false imprisonment, torture and destruction of life.

This belief defends a lie.

This lie is perhaps the most striking message of the Emmy-winning Making a Murderer docu series (Netflix, Inc), a work that holds Wisconsin up to the world and says, 'look what they have done' to a challenged 16-year-old Brendan Dassey and an exonerated Steven Avery.

So, it is no surprise that it took a handful of out-of-state attorneys and journalists to give Messrs. Dassey and Avery hope, even cautions optimism, that exoneration is near.

One of those jurists is Seth Waxman, 41st Solicitor General of the United States (1997–2001).

A premier advocate before the U.S. Supreme Court the last 40 years, Waxman is defined more by his decency than his prominence as a litigator. See for example Waxman's work to preserve habeas corpus in 2007, (Boumediene v. Bush (06-1195) and Al Odah v. United States (06-1196)), (Center for Constitutional Rights).

Waxman appears to be animated by some core beliefs: That crucifixion of our fellows is wrong, and to bear witness is to incur an obligation to act, to think, to challenge and demand justification.

Few in the State Bar of Wisconsin seem to be animated by such concern — ethics. Rather, careerism and moral numbness define their collective passivity.

Waxman — a member of Brendan Dassey's legal team — said that when reviewing the outrageous interrogation of Dassey by Mark Wiegert, (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin DoJ, DCI investigator (ret)), that his "blood ran cold."

Advocating a pardon or commutation for Dassey from Gov Tony Evers on Oct 2, 2019, Waxman said:

I have been a practicing lawyer since 1977. As part of my pro bono practice, in addition to representing juveniles in criminal justice proceedings, I represent death row inmates. Other than the almost seven years that I was in the Justice Dept, I've always had at least one client facing execution for a capital crime. 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.

So, why Waxman's involvement and not the involvement or at least support of 100s of Wisconsin attorneys?

I don't pretend to know what is in Seth Waxman's heart. But I have seen hints.

Waxman made some comments at the Bernard G. Segal Memorial Lecture in Law and Ethics, April 10, 2018, explaining what animates his 1,000s of hours of pro bono work and legal advocacy since he became an attorney.

Waxman recalled attorney John Joseph Cassidy, a "cheerful and very engaged Roman Catholic," who sat with him in 1977, and asked:

'Why do you think that [religious] Jews and Jesuits are so drawn to the law?'

And, at the time, I didn't think I knew any Jesuits.

He (senior partner John Joseph Cassidy) said, that he was convinced that Jews and Jesuits excelled at the law because they both come from religious traditions steeped in wrestling with the meaning and application of God's law — a muscular intellectual engagement with religious texts.

And it is true over the course of my career, it' s actually impossible to count the number of times that the terms, Talmudic and Jesuitical, have been used to characterize particularly detailed discussions about how a specific legal principle should be interpreted or applied.

Thus, one can conclude, Waxman believes a religious and moral sensibility guides the role of lawyers during a time of lawlessness in the greater society.

I'm grateful for Seth Waxman's work for the innocent this Thanksgiving Day.

And to my many friends who are members of the Wisconsin Bar, I ask today for them to listen at some point to the words of Seth Waxman advocating for the innocent, video below.

To help with the Dassey commutation and pardon petition now before Gov Evers, see the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law; Bluhm Legal Clinic, Wrongful Convictions of Youth.

Specifically, all Wisconsin citizens are urged to write a letter in support of Brendan Dassey's petition for a pardon or commutation.

Letter should be addressed to:

Governor Tony Evers
115 East
State Capitol
Madison, WI 53702

Seth Waxman advocating for clemency for Brendan Dassey on Oct 2, 2019 in Madison, Wisconsin. Video is below; [See also Bring Brendan Home.]:

I went to visit Brendan last night & he wanted to wish everyone a Happy Thanksgiving..
Here a little note he wrote to everyone. pic.twitter.com/hrgYLimGXH

— Carla Chase (@averydassey) November 27, 2019

Making a Murderer Victim Is Denied Hearing from United States Supreme Court

The United States Supreme Court denies the petition of
Brandan Dassey, an innocent who will remain in prison for
life. Case is highlighted at the bottom of above Court image.

Wisconsin Republicans lead defense for wrongful convictions such as Dassey's

The United States Supreme Court will not hear the case of Brendan Dassay, who was coerced as a 16-year-old into uttering a false confession that is featured in the 2015 Making a Murderer documentaries.

The so-called confession is the sole basis for the conviction of Dassey. The interrogation was conducted by demonstrably corrupt and dishonest investigators who promised Dassey that he could go back to his high-school class if he could just clear up a question. This led to Dassey’s conviction in the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach.

Writes atty Jerome Buting in May:

So WI Department of "Justice" doesn't care about justice in Brendan's case. They want him to rot in prison because they can't admit they went after innocent 16 yr old boy to convict his uncle.#makingamurderer#cjreform https://t.co/hLxeFy3MfC

— Jerome Buting (@JButing) May 10, 2018

The Court refused to grant cert in Dassey's petition, and its refusal came with a simple list of cases denied, a quiet snuffing out of a man's life, (highlighted at bottom of image, at right).

Wisconsin law enforcement, as with the rest of the nation, attracts Republicans and criminal personality types for whom prosecuting and imprisoning innocent people is seen a means to establish careers and gratifying a need to harm people.

The United States Supreme Court denies the petition of
Brandan Dassey, an innocent who will remain in prison for
life. Case is highlighted at the bottom of above Court image.

The Dassey case is featured along with another wrongful prosecution, Steven Avery, in the Making a Murderer series.

Len Kachinsky, Dassey's attorney, threw Dassey, a cognitively challenged 16-year-old, to two criminal investigators, Mark Wiegert, (sergeant at the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation investigator), who in 2005 weren't looking for the truth but trying 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, Fassbender and former District Attorney and sex offender Ken Kratz contrived a case against two men whom they knew to be innocent.

Republican-led state police organizations in 2008 awarded Wiegert and Fassbender actual awards for their work in railroading innocent people.

As noted here previously, in America there exists a hostile and deceitful domestic police force, a careerist, conviction-at-any-costs prosecutorial ethos, racism and taboo ethics in the criminal justice system, and a commitment of district attorneys to defend wrongful convictions irrespective of truth or any consideration of justice present conditions perfect for mass incarceration constituting a "leviathan unmatched in human history," (Glenn C. Loury, Boston Review).

We're there, people.

Consider if your daughter, brother, father or mother were wrongfully convicted. Who stands with you then?

Think it could not happen to you? It happened to Penny Brummer in 1994, a young military veteran wrongfully convicted by a Dane County jury because in part she is an out lesbian.

Ask the family of U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska, 1968-2009) (1923-2010), (Cary, Rollcall). The reader will have a full-blooded understanding of a Brady violation.

Ask the mother of Madison, Wisconsin's Penny Brummer: Interrogated, defamed, arrested, convicted and sentenced to what amounts to a life sentence.

Contrary to popular wisdom we live in a land of the Sovereign (the people of the state and not the law) and bad faith and deceit on the part of law enforcement are a huge part of the problem.

I'm thankful for the Richard Posners, the Sidney Powells (there is a force of nature), and the Alex Kozinski for shining lights on not a democracy, but a brutal prison state. And am always mindful of I.F. Stone's admonition: "Every government is run by liars. Nothing they say should be believed." First read this quote in 1985 on a large poster that used to occupy a prominent place of the late Erwin Knoll's (NYT) wall at the Progressive Magazine, a journal carrying out this legacy and reporting the truth to this day.

The only route for Dassey now is a pardon from a new Wisconsin governor if one is elected in November. It's a long shot.

American Prison Camps Are Built to Last, Evangelicals See Hand of God

"If you're at lunch, or if you have no appetite to hear what Germans have done, now is a good time to switch off the radio for I propose to tell you about Buchenwald."

It is on a small hill about four miles outside Weimar and it was one of the largest  concentration camps in Germany and it was built to last."
— Edward R. Murrow, April 11, 1945 broadcast from Buchenwald

For black and brown folk in the United States, child cages and concentration-camp complexes are an inviolate part of America, seemingly impervious to the political system.

It's part of who we are and democracy means no questions about who we are: a prison state erected by whites, for blacks and browns.

Whites are justified in calling down an armed police response to kill, imprison or fine you. And whites are feeling emboldened now-a-days.

See today for example, an eight-year-old, black girl sells water in early Summer in San Francisco. So, a resentful white phones the police hoping the cops come and arrest or kill someone. This idiot white has committed the moral equivalent of attempted homicide.

Not sure how Ginger Thompson and ProPublica managed to pierce the white American soul with their recordings of Trump abusing children at the internment camps, but ProPublica did just that.

Children getting abused and families being destroyed are acceptable outcomes of American society, favored outcomes in the white Evangelical mind because, you know, the authorities have deemed brutal treatment as just and necessary and we must obey as the Bible instructs.

The United States has a sordid history. This history should be understood as Trump expands the scope of the project of hurting people. [Read Amanda Schaffer's infuriating piece in The New Yorker about another eight-year-old, and then have a glass of wine and smoke-up, if you have it. (Great work, Ms. Schaffer.]

This expansion of cruelty is alarming as Evangelicals have already used the War on Drugs and post-911 police mania to inflict trauma and imprison black and brown folk, held in increasing disfavor.

Gov. Scott Walker (R) is the worst among a rouges' gallery of Republican offenders, but he had help.

Writes Savion Castro in the Capital Times this weekend:

Gov. Scott Walker offered something worse than deafening silence on Donald Trump’s unconscionable policy of tearing infants, toddlers, and children from their parents and placing them in 21st-century internment camps when he said he wouldn’t comment on a 'federal; issue.

Forty-eight hours later, when the governor traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Donald Trump, he still felt no obligation to speak out against the human rights violation occurring on our border against children. Instead, he has been fundraising off of Facebook ads on the need to build the border wall and sending Wisconsin National Guard troops to the border.

Make no mistake, Walker’s cruel, political calculus on 'baby jails' is the culmination of a 25-year pattern of indifference and hostility to children of color that he has displayed during his lifetime in elected office.

Walker was an early backer of the private-prison industry, now enjoying boom times building new detention camps.

In 2013, Wisconsin led the nation in concentrating black men behind bars as Walker and Clinton's racial politics bore its rotten fruit, (Corley, NPR) (O'Hear, Marquette Law School).

From 2015:

It isn't just divide-and-conquer poor people-bashing that led the Clintons, Tommy Thompson [1987-2001], Walker and Paul Ryan to rise to positions of political power.

Clinton, as Bill Clinton has admitted, used 'anti-crime' legislation to create the largest population behind bars in world history, (Cohen, Brennen Center; Loury, Boston Review).

Clinton's federal drive to imprison minorities was matched by ALEC legislation on the state level, and in Wisconsin led by then State Rep. Scott Walker (R-Wauwatosa, (1993-2002)) and Gov. Tommy Thompson (1987-2001) to make Wisconsin into a state 'leviathan,' as Glenn Loury terms mass incarceration, stocking prisons (private and public), making the imprisoned' lives a 'living hell,' as Thompson campaigned in an infamous political TV spot. (Mal Contends) (Mal Contends) (Adelman, Valparaiso University Law Review) and (ALEC Exposed, PRWatch).

'Walker pushed dozens of proposals in the state house to lengthen criminal penalties, for everything from perjury to privacy invasion to intoxicated boating. In just the 1997–98 legislative session, Walker authored or co-sponsored twenty-seven different bills that either expanded the definition of crimes, increased mandatory minimums for offenders, or curbed the possibility of parole,' notes Scott Keyes in The Nation.

Walker openly bragged about his bill, the infamous Truth-in-Sentencing law, which limited early parole, as having come from the corporate bill mill, the American Legislative Exchange Committee.
---
Scott Walker is the classic 'double high authoritarian' who takes pleasure in deceiving and hurting perceived incarnations of the wrong [black] type of people, while also marked by the inclination and "willingness to submit to established authority, (and) their aggressiveness on behalf of that authority," (Dean, part one, CounterPunch and Dean, part two CounterPunch). Walker is obsequies to Donald Trump.

It's no great leap to imagine Walker, Trump and white Evangelicals accelerate the prison state, and if Americans are not already rereading Milton Mayer and Norman Cohn to understand the totalitarian mind, they should be.

Making of a Murderer Appellate Decision Shows American Police State at Work

Image -Kathe Kollwitz, (1867-1945). Kollwitz is a major
anti-fascist artist who lived in Germany.

Update: Judges David Hamilton, Frank Easterbrook, Michael Kanne and Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit are dishonest people. Hamilton in his rush to reverse the federal court decision that would have freed Brendan Dassey confused Bobby Dassey with his older brother, Brendan Dassey. JFC. Critical reading.
---
When Richard Posner announced his resignation from the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in September 2017, it was clear real people would get hurt in his absence from the bench.

Posner blew the whistle on the federal judiciary, telling Adam Liptak in the New York Times that judges are not-so-judicious and often vicious: "there are others who are just, you know, reactionary beasts. They’re reactionary beasts because they want to manipulate the statutes and the Constitution in their own way," said Posner.

Posner had people like the innocent-and-convicted-anyway Brendan Dassey in mind.

Dassey was railroaded by east-central Wisconsin human garbage and convicted of crimes of which the cops knew Dassey to be innocent. The case drew outrage after it was featured in Making of a Murderer.

The conviction was reversed this year in federal court. Now, reactionary beasts on the Seventh Circuit reinstated the conviction in (16-3397), Dassey v. Dittman last week.

There is almost never accountability for the inhumane infliction against the innocent. Police and prosecutors remain immune to virtually any crime they inflict.

In Dassey v. Dittman, Judges David Hamilton, Frank Easterbrook, Michael Kanne and Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit are reactionary beasts, dishonestly and indifferently snuffing out an innocent, young life.

I wish Posner had been around for just a few months more.

Writes James Warren:

It's ironic — maybe tragic — that Richard Posner, generally conceded to be perhaps the most influential judge-academic of his generation and the most influential judge not on the Supreme Court, suddenly and surprisingly quit the Chicago appeals court and retired in September at a still prolific 78. If he were around, the odds are that he would have voted with the dissenters, made it 4-4 and thus affirmed the earlier reversal of Dassey's conviction.

But no. Dassey will remain in prison, it would appear, until he dies. It might prompt you to download the Netflix series. And, as you watch, be reminded of the strengths of journalism — but how even the most meticulously detailed conclusions can lead ultimately to exasperation, not satisfaction, and precious little attention. 

So, an innocent life is extinguished, Dassey is gone, unless the United States Supreme Court accepts his case when it's appealed.

Exasperation, disgust, and revulsion are features thinking people note in examining the United States criminal justice system. These are not emotions in this context, they're a formless creature of malice and indifference that is the American criminal justice system that exudes what it inflicts.

Whether the victim is Penny Brummer, or Brendan Dassey, the perpetrators are cops and prosecutors, and we are mostly by-standers.

Hillary Clinton's History Presages Scott Walker and Paul Ryan

Updated - Hillary Clinton sounds like Scott Walker and Paul Ryan when Clinton demonized poor mothers for wanting to feed children.

Clinton did it for politics.

This is not the message the Clinton campaign puts out today, wishing history would rewrite itself. But Clinton cannot wish it away.
 
Daniel Denvir in Salon writes:

[E]xamine Hillary Clinton’s comments defending welfare reform, assembled by [Christopher Massie at Buzzfeed], in the late 1990s and early 2000s: Clinton wrote that 'too many of those on welfare had known nothing but dependency all their lives.' She suggested that women recipients were 'sitting around the house doing nothing.' She described the 'move from welfare to work' as 'the transition from dependency to dignity.' Or a 'substitute dignity for dependence.' Put more simply, she stated, 'these people are no longer deadbeats—they’re actually out there being productive.'

In sum, she has frequently validated a pathologization of poor black women that has often served as a pretext for Republican assaults on the social safety net. She has not repudiated these remarks.

Sanders fought against Clinton's appeals to prejudice in the late 1990s. Notes Salon's Denvir:

In the 1990s, for what it’s worth, Sanders condemned welfare reform efforts as combining 'an assault on the poor, women and children, minorities, and immigrants,' and 'the grand slam of scapegoating legislation' that 'appeals to the frustrations and ignorance of the American people along a wide spectrum of prejudices.'

This pathologization of poor black women, (in defiance of the reality of single white women and white veterans who used the 'Food Stamp' program to feed children most frequently), is the same toxic politics that Tommy Thompson used contemporaneously with Clinton, later inherited by Scott Walker who took it to absurd depths.

Notes Mark Karlin in BuzzFlash in 2008, Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund "had this to say about the 'welfare reform bill' and Hillary Clinton" in an interview with Amy Goodman in 2007:

[W]hen many people are pronouncing welfare reform a great success, you know, we’ve got growing child poverty, we have more children in poverty and in extreme poverty over the last six years than we had earlier in the year. When an economy is down, and the real test of welfare reform is what happens to the poor when the economy is not booming. Well, the poor are suffering, the gap between rich and poor widening. We have what I consider one of—a growing national catastrophe of what we call the cradle-to-prison pipeline. A black boy today has a one-in-three chance of going to prison in his lifetime, a black girl a one-in-seventeen chance. A Latino boy who’s born in 2001 has a one-in-six chance of going to prison. We are seeing more and more children go into our child welfare systems, go dropping out of school, going into juvenile justice detention facilities. Many children are sitting up—15,000, according to a recent congressional GAO study—are sitting up in juvenile institutions solely because their parents could not get mental health and health care in their community. This is an abomination.

It isn't just divide-and-conquer poor people-bashing that led the Clintons, Tommy Thompson,Walker and Ryan to rise to positions of politcal power.

Clinton, as Bill Clinton has admitted earlier this year, used 'anti-crime' legislation to create the largest population behind bars in world history, (Cohen, Brennen Center; Loury, Boston Review).

Clinton's federal drive to imprison minorities was matched by ALEC legislation on the state level, in Wisconsin led by then State Rep. Scott Walker (R-Wauwatosa, (1993-2002)) and Gov. Tommy Thompson (1987-2001) to make Wisconsin into a state "leviathan," as Glenn Loury terms mass incarceration, stocking prisons (private and public), making the imprisoned' lives a "living hell," as Thompson campaigned in an infamous political TV spot. (Mal Contends) (Mal Contends) (Adelman, Valparaiso University Law Review) and (ALEC Exposed, PRWatch). [Note: Can't source Thompson's 'living hell' campaign spot with a link or year, but spot played heavily across state in a Thompson reelection campaign. Spot featured Thompson working out on a weight machine as he crowed about his tough-on-crime measures. I recall watching the spot repeatedly in the Madison market, wondering vaguely if Wisconsin were insane or stupid for electing Thompson over and over in the midterms.]

Notes Glenn Loury:

This growth in punitiveness was accompanied by a shift in thinking about the basic purpose of criminal justice. In the 1970s, the sociologist David Garland argues, the corrections system was commonly seen as a way to prepare offenders to rejoin society. Since then, the focus has shifted from rehabilitation to punishment and stayed there.

In 2013, Wisconsin led the nation in concentrating black men behind bars as Walker's and Clinton's racial politics bore its rotten fruit, (Corley, NPR) (O'Hear, Marquette Law School).

Clinton's early support among blacks is ironic today, and likely to diminish fast.

Matt Taibbi makes the case for Barry Sanders in Rolling Stone, noting, "Sanders is a clear outlier in a generation that has forgotten what it means to be a public servant. The Times remarks upon his "grumpy demeanor." But Bernie is grumpy because he's thinking about vets who need surgeries, guest workers who've had their wages ripped off, kids without access to dentists or some other godforsaken problem that most of us normal people can care about for maybe a few minutes on a good day, but Bernie worries about more or less all the time."

As for Clinton, it's not just low-income women and blacks she would sell out if she were president, with Paul Ryan as House Speaker.

The elderly who rely on Social Security and Medicare are next, and if you don''t believe that, in the words of Mike Lofgren, a 28-year veteran as a Republican Congressional staffer, "I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté," (Truthout).

Meanwhile, Scott Walker is trying to outdo himself in punishing the poor.