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Wisconsinites should watch Making a Murderer, Part 2,
and bear witness to the crucifixion of human beings by
Wisconsin at its most-depraved.
If it were in my power, I would make viewing both series
of Making a Murderer obligatory for Wisconsin
public school students and staff. |
Revenge and malicious prosecutions — State terror in the Badger state
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"I hate injustice. I guess that's about the only thing I really do hate."
Ben Shahn, anti-fascist artist (1898–1969)
Madison, Wisconsin — We finished
Making a Murderer, Part 2 (Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos) with critical minds and open hearts.
Lifelong Wisconsinites, both my life partner and I felt we were bearing witness. Such is the power of this pioneering documentary.
Making a Murderer, Part 2 shows attorney Kathleen Zellner's dismantling another wrongful conviction of
Steven Avery, and a second, equally dedicated defense team led by attorney
Laura Nirider, working for the other wrongfully convicted victim,
Brendan Dassey, (induced into a wild, false confession of sorts), in this account of the Wisconsin criminal justice system.
Step-by-step, piece-of-evidence by piece-of-evidence, Zellner offers not just a compelling case of Avery's innocence, but an equally compelling case of criminal guilt by
Wisconsin cops and prosecutors.
Wisconsin is not equipped, not wired, to expose, challenge and change its hellacious criminal justice system. We need help.
This documentary series brings viewers a spectacle of brutality and state violence, what
we did to
Steven Avery and Brenden Dassey and their families, victims of a framing scheme perpetrated by the
Manitowoc and Calumet County (Wisconsin) Sheriff's offices and multi-jurisdictional prosecutions in
kangaroo federal and state courts.
Bearing witness in viewing a series is assuming a duty to speak out and state,
this is what happened and this is not done in our name.
It means asking the Wisconsin people to consider that having prosecuted and convicted innocent people for horrific crimes, it follows that the guilty are free and likely not leading lives in the tradition of
Bertrand Russell and
20th century radical pacifists.
Avery
was framed for murder because he was about to expose the ugly realities of Wisconsin
law enforcement in his
$36 million civil lawsuit for his first wrongful conviction.
I don't know how these
County cops live with themselves. Then again I don't think I really understand killers and those who would lie with the objective to destroy lives.
Making a Murderer Part 2 is a brilliant chronicle, showing viewers the moral equivalent of murder committed twice against Avery, and once against Dassey in east-central Wisconsin.
The murderers are Ken Kratz (
disgraced former district attorney and sex offender); Mark Wiegert, (sergeant at the Calumet County Sheriff's Office); Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation
investigator); Gene Kusche, the Manitowoc County chief deputy sheriff under Sheriff Tom Kocourek; Manitowoc County Sheriff's Lt. James Lenk; and Sgt. Andrew Colborn, all of whom acted in their official capacities to imprison the innocent, and inflict the psychological and physical deterioration of Mrs. and Mr. Avery, and Barb, Brenden Dassey's mother. Dozens more.
What horrific human garbage.
This visual presentation of torture inflicted on the Avery and Dassey families is critical to understanding what a few dozen yahoos in Wisconsin are capable of — a state crucifixion of ordinary people in Wisconsin,
a pleasant place to live, a great place to grow up, but a region full of by-standers,
ignoramuses, and cowards.
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I know. I grew up in east-central Wisconsin in Fond du Lac, about 45 miles southwest of Manitowoc.
I
loved what for me was a privileged first 19 years amid nigger jokes,
Jew jokes, and a population steeped in committed ignorance. But none of it touched me, though on more than one occasion I felt like I was bearing witness to a region steeped in stupidity and racism, and every public official bar none who failed to speak out.
The same dehumanization and madness behind racism are at play in Manitowoc and Calumet counties.
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There is plenty of footage in
Making a Murderer Part 2 on
Attorney General Brad Schimel (R), a typical Wisconsin Republican sadist who has kept the torture going.
Schimel was just defeated in his bid for reelection last November by a young Democratic candidate,
Josh Kaul, another native of east-central Wisconsin and my hometown—Fond du Lac.
In the campaign for attorney general, crucifying the innocent was never an issue. It remains unclear how
Kaul and the new governor, Tony Evers, also from east-central Wisconsin, will perform in their offices to put a stop to these obvious-to-any-rational-observer wrongful convictions.
With respect to Tony Evers, I don't think the man is equipped in intellect, character or inclination to correct an injustice through commutation or pardoning. Evers is just another by-stander, a bureaucratic non-entity.
When it comes to criminal justice and human lives, Wisconsin's political and legal cultures range from numb to malicious. Evers is numb.
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That addresses a question implicit in
Making a Murderer Part 2: How did the Avery and Dassey crucifixions happen?
How do depraved criminals like Ken Kratz and the Calumet and
Manitowoc County Sheriff's office get away with framing innocent people?
We in Wisconsin let them.
The injustice inflicted upon Avery and Dassey evokes
Sacco and Vanzetti.
The innocent Sacco and Vanzetti were targeted, tortured and killed.
The killers murdered them because they could and because they would.
This is the role of the police in American society: To carry out injustice.
What our role as citizens becomes is precisely what we make of it.
Viewing
Making a Murderer, Part Two, it's clear that we as citizens gave cops and assorted killers a free pass to seek revenge against Avery and Dassey.
Avery was about to publicly display
Manitowoc County as stupid and malicious, and Dassey was available.
It's the way it is here for killer cops, for
Penny Brummer, and so many innocents to list.
Watching
Making a Murderer, Part 2 is to experience an ongoing hope that at some point, surely some decent force, some authority with a regard for liberty and humanity, is going to put a stop to this madness in Manitowoc.
After-all, the state and governmental authority are mere instruments to assure the liberty and happiness of the individual.
There is the
writ of habeas corpus petition, the great writ, the last-chance for the innocent — weakened in 1996 in the
Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). [Thank you, Bill and Hillary Clinton for that.]
There's two broad methods judges can employ in considering post-conviction, habeas petitions in federal litigation.
Judges can consider the wisdom of Richard Posner (U.S. Court of Appeals for the
Seventh Circuit, (1981-2017)), on judicial opinion writing in federal
appellate court: "Be sure to read every case, statute, regulation
article, treatise, etc., [case documents]," (p. 257,
Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press. 2013)).
Alternatively, an appellate judge such as
David F. Hamilton can effectively stick his head in a hole, dismissing facts and understanding of police and judicial action against a prisoner of the state.
Hamilton and appellate judges
Frank Easterbrook, Michael Kanne and Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit chose the head-in-hole approach to habeas jurisprudence.
"[O]ur job as a federal court reviewing a state conviction under § 2254(d) [
application for a writ of habeas corpus] is not to consult scholarly literature in search of new best practices," intoned Hamilton in his astonishingly dismissive opinion that overturned a federal district court and a
three-judge ruling granting habeas relief to Brendan Dassey, (p.111,
Dassey v. Dittman).
Avery's attorney, Kathleen Zellner, was clearly appalled at this Dred Scott of Habeas litigation.
Reading Hamilton's opinion on intentional ignorance of scholarly literature, Zellner replies, icy and incensed: "Really? Why not? Why would you not be availing yourself of what experts have determined about false confessions?" (Episode 8; 24 minutes, 45 seconds).
Steven Avery is demonstrably innocent. Avery's case will become a
wrecking crew of injustice. We're that close.
When Avery wins his legal fight,
Brendan Dassey will be released. He cannot be an accomplice to a crime that did not occur.
But have we come to public crucifixions in Wisconsin? Has Wisconsin really come to that?
"It 'came to that' the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent."
The quote is from Spencer Tracy as a composite character of Robert H. Jackson and other jurists in
Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), a film worthy of the topic.
Wisconsin does not have the death penalty, but the bodies are piling up.
