Wisconsin Criminal Justice System Performs Normally — and Insanely

The Flight of Moloch - by William Blake.
The significance of Blake's wok is the moment
when we stop using children as pawns to
sacrifice, rather as treasures to protect.

Commentary

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — Any decent human being would decline to trick innocent people, especially children, into a false confession of a crime.

But how often have you heard of a cop or a politician speaking out against cops coercing false confessions, or framing innocent members of the public? Never, not in Wisconsin.

Who benefits by the persistence of false confessions? The victims do not; society at large does not; certainly not police-made victims; it seems the police and prosecutors are the only ones who pat themselves on the back for clearing their books of another crime while the perpetrators go free.

That's because the criminal justice and political systems act as authoritarians and have all the power when it comes to prosecuting crimes. 

The state, the sovereign, freely sacrifices innocent lives if it serves their purposes, rather than standing up for and calling out for righteous justice for the innocent.

There generally is no pre- or post-conviction review of the prosecutors and police cases, when misconduct is revealed, though there are isolated examples of this logical follow-up.

If I were a cop, and I even heard of this human rights atrocity of the police framing or coercing a false confession, I would state publicly and repeatedly, "You unbelievable coward, what is the matter with you?"

It's now routine to read of outrageous acts of police tricking children into false confessions. 

Several states have outlawed this unbelievable practice of tricking children.

But the reporting and child advocacy never take the logical next step — the condemnation of the police. We live in a politcal system in which criticism of the police almost never occurs, especially from elected Democrats and Republicans and especially in Wisconsin.

In Wisconsin, the most infamous case of police tricking and lying to children is Brendan Dassey.

After police lied, manipulated and tricked the innocent Brendan Dassey into an outrageous false confession, Wisconsin police gave the two police child molesters — Mark Wiegert (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office) and Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation investigator (ret.) — the Meritorious Service Award from the Wisconsin Association of Homicide Investigators on May 2, 2008.

That's right. Police applauded Wiegert and Fassbender for terrorizing and destroying the life of an innocent kid.

Folks, we live in a society where police routinely prey on the innocent and gullible with the objective of sending them to prison for life. That's a problem, just ask Brendan Dassey and Steven Avery, and Penny Brummer.

What is the difference between what Wiegert and Fassbender did to Brendan Dassey and what child molesters do during the commission of their crimes? Children are lured in by false promises, assaulted,  and are oblivious to what hit them.

See John Oliver's segment on the use of the Reid Technique nonsense, police interrogations and false confessions are aptly characterized as junk science.

Said Oliver: "The problem with police interrogations right now is the same problem that we have with policing at large. They're emboldened to act however they'd like in a system where they hold an undue amount of power with very few protections for civilians, especially the most vulnerable, because there can be little to no consequences for extracting a false confession."

Act locally. In Wisconsin we need to vote out Gov. Tony Evers and Attorney General Joshua Kaul for protecting dirty cops and keeping those whom they know to be innocent in prison.

Meanwhile, stay current on the litigation of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey's crusade to shame Tony Evers into a pardon.

Brendan Dassey needed someone sitting with him in class to help him figure out what the teacher was asking him to do. But he had no help when interrogated. Even with help, police are trained to neutralize guardians. Lawyers can't be neutralized. @TheArcUS https://t.co/JqCn4Vgr89

— Steven A Drizin (@SDrizin) April 27, 2022

Corruption County — Manitowoc, Wisconsin Strikes Again; Targets Critic to Protect Old Wrongful Convictions

Manitowoc County Sheriff Uses Office to Silence Critic of Wrongful Convictions

Update III 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.

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Update II: World's worst mother, Barb Tadych, who fed her innocent son, Brendan Dassey, alone in a room with two police tree jumpers resulting in a life sentence, now wants her step-son, Brad Dassey, in prison too. June 17, a judge will decide whether to imprison another innocent Dassey on unfounded criminal charges heard by the Manitowoc County judiciary, known for corruption and stupidity.

 Update: Analysis of the Manitowoc County District Attorney's ridiculous Summons, relying on the even more ridiculous reports of the Sheriff's Office and Barb Tadych reasons that since the TRO and petition for restraining order were denied May 3, the TRO is not enforceable on its face. Brad Dassey will prevail again, but the take-away is Barb Tadych, the DA and the Sheriff all worked together to get Brad arrested, convicted and imprisoned. Sound familiar?

Madison, Wisconsin — Manitowoc, Wisconsin is Corruption County USA.

For readers wondering whatever happened to the most corrupt county in America — Manitowoc County, Wisconsin — cops there are searching for new victims, and protecting wrongful convictions through the corrupt conduct of their office of public trust, under color of law.

One of the world's worst mothers, Barb Tadych, Brendan Dassey's mother, is featured in the Emmy-winning documentary, Making a Murderer.

Barb Tadych's Choice

Tadych is a major figure in the grotesque frame-up scheme against Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey.

In 2005, Tadych fed her 16-year-old son, Brendan, who has a severe language impairment and 70 IQ, to corrupt Wisconsin law enforcement [Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation investigator (Ret)) and Mark Wiegert, (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), who interrogated Brendan alone in a room], the better to elicit words that the cops could falsely state constituted a confession to murder of Teresa Halbach.

Law enforcement then used Brendan's so-called confession to convict the innocent Steven Avery.

Tadych publicly protested Brendan's innocence, but Tadych also remains under suspicion for her defense of Bobby Dassey, Brendan's brother, who implicated the once-exonerated Steven Avery as the State's star witness, (Ferak, Appleton Post-Crescent). 

Bobby Dassey is now a key suspect for the 2005 murder of Ms. Halbach, (for which Brendan and Avery were convicted in 2007), and a witness came forward last month attesting he saw Bobby Dassey planting Halbach's Rav-4 on Avery's property.

In April 2021, faced with compelling evidence Bobby Dassey may have been responsible for killing Ms. Halbach, and was responsible, in part, for framing Steven Avery, [a legal argument that "directly connects Bobby to the crime charged [against Avery Brendan Dassey]," (Avery Motion for Remand and Stay of Appeal, April 12, 2021, p. 5), Barb Tadych's response was not to condemn the odious Manitowoc County Sheriff Dept and other law enforcement for its actions after this spectacular new development.

Instead, Barb Tadych reached out and colluded with the very Manitowoc County Sheriff Dept that has terrorized innocent people for decades. This time their target is Brad Dassey, half-brother of Brendan and Bobby. Tadych had already thrown one son to the wolves, so, she apparently reasoned, why not another?

Barb Tadych and the Manitowoc County Sheriff Dept remain close, even after Tadych's move to sacrifice Brendan caused Tadych to criticize the cops, in regret.

First, Tadych sought and obtained a Temporary Restraining Order, [Manitowoc County Case Number 2021CV000155, Barbara Tadych vs. Brad Anthony Dassey; April 19, 2021] against step-son Brad Dassey (for his criticism on social media of Tadych as an abusive parent and a possible destroyer of evidence implicating Bobby), days after the April 12, 2021 development of a new witness coming forward and attesting that the witness saw Bobby Dassey planting critical evidence on Steven Avery's property, (Patch. com).

After Tadych's ridiculous petition of a harassment injunction against Brad Dassey was dismissed on May 3, the Manitowoc County District Attorney mailed a criminal summons also dated May 3 to Brad Dassey, citing a polemical and sketchy Manitowoc County Sheriff Dept report alleging Brad Dassey violated the Temporary Restraining Order, though ultimately the TRO and Barb Tadych's harassment petition were denied on May 3.

Corruption County wants Brad Dassey for his criticism of the Sheriff and Barb Tadych, and it will not stop.

And there is nothing law enforcement can inflict that the Wisconsin Dept of Justice will not defend.

Brad Dassey has set up a legal defense fund. Readers are invited to contribute.

Phone calls to the Manitowoc County District Attorney's office this morning were not successful.

The cause of justice is not the cause of the Wisconsin Dept of Justice and other corrupt Wisconsin law enforcement.

Making a Murderer — Wisconsin DoJ Plays Games as Wrongfully Convicted Lose Years of Life

Attorney General Joshua Kaul's 'Defend Wrongful Convictions at All Costs' Commitment Is Betrayal of Wisconsin

Madison, Wisconsin — Wisconsin Republicans and Democrats agree on a policy area: Defend wrongful convictions.

Consider the case of Wisconsin v. Steven A. Avery, featured in the Emmy-winning documentary, Making a Murderer.

In post-conviction litigation, the once-exonerated Steven Avery presents game-changing evidence to the Wisconsin state judiciary exposing law enforcement in its second frame-up job against Avery for homicide in 2005.

The second frame-up was committed shortly after Avery prepared evidence for his $36-million civil rights suit for misconduct in the first frame-up (Ferak, Appleton Post-Crescent). Law enforcement officials reasoned if they could pen a homicide case onto Avery, the resultant prosecution would silence the multi-million-dollar civil action.

Brady Violations

In court filings, Avery has chronicled six major Brady violations in post-conviction litigation. 

Brady violations are instances when law enforcement disregards its duty to notify a defendant of exculpatory evidence — for the police purpose of securing a conviction, then defending the wrongful conviction.

By effectively blocking exculpatory evidence that law enforcement controls or accumulates, law enforcement becomes the architect of court proceedings to arrive at guilty verdicts and other rulings disfavorable to the defense.

This imposed system that a defendant must navigate is found to violate defendants' civil liberties and Due Process in Brady v. Maryland, (373 U.S. 83 (1963). See also Wisconsin v. Gary Lee Wayerski, from the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, (2015). [Under Wayerski, the Court finds that the prosecution must fulfill its Brady obligation by alerting defense to exculpatory evidence in its possession, even if the evidence is also housed elsewhere.]

In Avery's post-conviction litigation, the Wisconsin Dept of Justice refuses to even respond in legal filings to chronicles of Brady violations and new evidence brought forth, much less accede to a hearing or vacating a corruptly secured conviction, least exposure brings the State to public ridicule.

Instead, the DoJ under direction of Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D) makes motion after motion to delay and block the courts from even considering a request to consider a hearing.

So, while the Brady v. Maryland case acclaiming Due Process is 58-years-old, there is no enforcement guarantee or Constitutional ethics in the Wisconsin judiciary that compels law enforcement to follow the law, so law enforcement flaunts its obligations and judges turn a blind eye.

The Wisconsin Dept of Justice, which argues against Due Process rights in the 2015 Wisconsin v. Gary Lee Wayerski (implementing Brady), today takes the position of, We don't like your Due Process rights, we don't like our Brady obligations, we don't like your bringing up law enforcement law-breaking in your post-conviction litigation.

The anti-Brady ethos lives in Avery's post-conviction litigation as the State of Wisconsin filed a frivolous motion that is demonstrably false and that, further, defames and personally maligns Avery's attorney, Kathleen Zellner (Wisconsin legal filing, April 16, 2021).

In response, attorney Zellner penned a devastating chronicle of State conduct that shows the Wisconsin Dept of Justice to be engaged in serial law-breaking and hostility to its law-breaking being mentioned in Court at the costs of an innocent man's life.

Writes Zellner in Reply to State's Response, April 22, 2021:

It is a supreme irony that in one of the most blatant examples of a wrongful conviction the State's only response is to falsely accuse Mr. Avery's lead counsel of nefarious conduct for discovering a 6th Brady violation. Rather than seeking justice, the State wants to 'slay the messenger' by putting forth more false allegations, a skill that it has mastered over the last 16 years. The State turns a blind eye towards its past actions of withholding exculpatory evidence. When the State disclosed a CD of violent porn from the Dassey-Janda computer 12 years after the CD was created and concealed from prior counsel, the State argued, as it does now, that Mr. Avery was attempting to add new material to his § 974.06 motion. (740.5). When the State facilitated the destruction in 2011 of evidence it had agreed to allow Mr. Avery to test, the State argued, as is it does now, that Mr. Avery was attempting to add new material to his § 974.06 motion. (See 770.2). This Court did not accept those disingenuous responses then, and it should reject the same disingenuous response now. (pp 1-2. Reply to State's Response, April 22, 2021)

The community behind Steven Avery remains optimistic.

But the State's reply to Avery's April 22, 2021 chronicle of State misconduct is to strike the whole reply from the record. More game-playing.

There is a huge body of Constitutional law that makes explicit citizen's rights.

The State of Wisconsin will never heed to this law while a corrupt judiciary keeps rewarding bad faith and ill will of the government towards the citizenry for the purpose of securing injustice.

Attorney General Joshua Kaul, who assumed office in 2019, has conspicuously failed to launch any DoJ investigations into law enforcement, including his own department, despite the widespread criticism of police, Ken Kratz, Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation investigator (Ret)) and Mark Wiegert, (current Sheriff of the Calumet County Sheriff's Office), for example, in the Avery case.

Kaul's mother, former Wisconsin Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager (2003-2007) worked to clear law enforcement of misconduct in the first east-central Wisconsin crime pinned on Avery for which he was exonerated in 2003. [Wisconsin Dept of Justice report of the investigation and prosecution of the wrongful conviction of the exonerated Steven Avery; authored by Amy Lehmann, Deb Strauss, Dec 17 2003.]

Point is high Democratic Wisconsin state officials remain opposed to Constitutional rights, and advocate, instead, for law enforcement which has grown into a grave threat to the lives and liberty of Wisconsin citizens.

Watch this space for updates on the Steve Avery post-conviction case.

Like a psychopath with his knee to Avery's neck, the State of Wisconsin works to bleed the life out of an innocent man.

And there is nothing law enforcement can inflict that the Wisconsin Dept of Justice will not defend.

Making a Murderer — Avery Atty Blasts "Disingenuous" DoJ Response in Devastating Legal Filing

Madison, Wisconsin — The Wisconsin Dept of Justice's commitment to defending the wrongful conviction of Steven Avery received a legal thrashing in the latest Avery court filing.

The once-exonerated Steven Avery was made internationally famous in the Emmy-winning documentary, Making a Murderer, for his 2003 exoneration, and subsequent apparent retaliatory frame-up by crooked Wisconsin law enforcement, resulting in his 2007 conviction for the murder of Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

Avery's fight continues in a state coming to be synonymous with corruption in law enforcement.

In a spectacular development, a witness came forward in an affidavit in April 2021, and named Bobby Dassey and "an unidentified older male" as individuals whom witness Thomas Sowinski saw planting Ms. Halbach's dark-blue RAV-4 auto in the Avery auto salvage yard.

Put another way, a witness swears he saw the prosecution's primary witness planting the murder victim's vehicle on the property of the man convicted of first-degree homicide.

After Sowinski witnessed the planting of Ms Halbach's RAV-4, he reportedly phoned the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office and was told by a female employee that the Office "already knew who did it," the motion's affidavit reads.

The response of the Wisconsin DoJ to the affidavit was not to launch an investigation into criminal conduct of the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office and other Wisconsin law enforcement, though the record is rife with police and prosecutorial misconduct.

Rather, the DoJ, under the authority of Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D), penned a personally insulting legal fling claiming, in part, "The [Avery, April 12] motion on its face shows that it [witness's affidavit] was filed in violation of Wis. Stat. § 802.05(2), applicable here via Wis. Stat. (Rule) 809.84, because it was filed for an improper purpose and without a reasonable inquiry into its factual basis." (State Response to motion for remand, Introduction, p.2)

Attorney Zellner replied that the vetting of witness Thomas Sowinski included an extensive three-month examination, using expert investigators in a reply detailing the examination as being so thorough, it makes liars and fools of the DoJ.

The WorkwithKZ website — that translates legal filings for the general public because of the far-reaching implications of the Avery case — sums up Kathleen Zellner's filing as follows:

In a nutshell, Kathleen says the State is wrong about everything they said and she's insulted that they would accuse her of not researching the validity of a witness. She said their claims that she didn't conduct proper background research into this witness was based on an incorrect assumption they made and listed the ways she feels the state did just that in the initial trial (re: Bobby). She detailed the timeline of her contact with the witness, her research, and their conversations. She provided a copy of the email he [Sowinski] sent her in December, the email he sent to the Innocence Project in 2016 to support his claim that he tried to contact Avery's attorneys at that time, newspaper clippings showing the witness was an employee of the paper, and previously filed statements from Blaine Dassey and Kevin Rahmlow, which she says corroborate the claims this witness is making. She also included a text from this witness, which says he's not interested in the reward. In response to the state saying she didn't perform an open records request, she showed that when she requested this information previously, the response to her was that they didn't have it, so why would she ask again?

So much for the State's assertion that Zellner did not conduct a reasonable inquiry into the factual basis of witness Thomas Sowinski's oft-repeated claims, ignored and effectively buried by the Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Office.

An examination of Zellner's legal filings appears to show that she laid a trap for the reckless and dishonest DoJ, knowing it could not resist a personal insult and a contentious statement of fact.

This DoJ development supplies a point of disagreement that militates for Avery and Zellner's requested remand to County Circuit court and an evidentiary hearing.

The DoJ has throughout this post-conviction litigation ignored its own misconduct that would lead a different attorney general committed to lawful operation of the DoJ to demand several probes to find out how and why rampant misconduct happens with such frequency in Wisconsin law enforcement.

Writes Zellner:

It is a supreme irony that in one of the most blatant examples of a wrongful conviction the State's only response is to falsely accuse Mr. Avery's lead counsel of nefarious conduct for discovering a 6th Brady violation. Rather than seeking justice, the State wants to 'slay the messenger' by putting forth more false allegations, a skill that it has mastered over the last 16 years. The State turns a blind eye towards its past actions of withholding exculpatory evidence. When the State disclosed a CD of violent porn from the Dassey-Janda computer 12 years after the CD was created and concealed from prior counsel, the State argued, as it does now, that Mr. Avery was attempting to add new material to his § 974.06 motion. (740.5). When the State facilitated the destruction in 2011 of evidence it had agreed to allow Mr. Avery to test, the State argued, as is it does now, that Mr. Avery was attempting to add new material to his § 974.06 motion. (See 770.2). This Court did not accept those disingenuous responses then, and it should reject the same disingenuous response now. (pp 1-2. Reply to State's Response, April 22, 2021)

The community behind Steven Avery's second exoneration remains optimistic that complete vindication is near at hand.