Brendan Dassey

Brendan Ray Dassey (born October 19, 1989) is an American convicted murderer from Manitowoc County, Wisconsin, who at 16 confessed to being a party to first-degree murder, mutilation of a corpse, and second-degree sexual assault. He was sentenced to life in prison with the earliest possibility of parole in 2048. His videotaped interrogation and confession, which he recanted before trial, substantially contributed to his conviction. Parts were shown, but much was left out, in the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer (2015). The series examined the 2005–2007 investigation, prosecution, and trials of Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, both of whom were convicted of murdering the photographer Teresa Halbach on October 31, 2005.

After his conviction, Dassey's case was taken by the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth. In August 2016, a federal magistrate judge ruled that Dassey's confession had been coerced and overturned his conviction and ordered him released, which was delayed during appeal. In June 2017, a divided panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit affirmed the magistrate judge's order overturning Dassey's conviction. In December 2017, the full en banc Seventh Circuit upheld Dassey's conviction by a vote of 4–3, with the majority finding that the police had properly obtained Dassey's confession.

Brendan Ray Dassey was born to Barbara and Peter Dassey in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin. He has three brothers (Bryan, Bobby, and Blaine) and a half-brother (Brad).^[1][2] His mother remarried, becoming Janda. His stepmother Lori Dassey was previously married to his uncle Steven Avery.^[3][4]

Dassey lived by the Avery Salvage Yard and attended Mishicot High School, travelling on the school bus with his brother Blaine. Although quiet and respectful to teachers, he was enrolled in special education classes. School tests found an overall IQ in the borderline deficiency to low average range, while verbal IQ was in the very lowest category. He was only in some regular classes due to legislative requirements.^[5]

His uncle Steven Avery, who had always been in prison, was exonerated of a violent rape and released in September 2003 to much media attention, eventually moving into a trailer next door.^[6][7][8]

Photographer Teresa Halbach, born March 22, 1980, in Kaukauna, Wisconsin,^[9] was reported missing by her parents on November 3, 2005.^[10] Halbach, who had not been seen since October 31, resided next door to her parents in Calumet County.^[11] Halbach was known to have visited the Avery property in Manitowoc County on October 31, 2005. Steven Avery had called Auto Trader in the morning requesting her again, and she had arrived around 2.30pm to 2.35pm. Bobby Dassey, who was home alone next door, also said he saw her.^[12]

On November 5, 2005, her Toyota RAV4 vehicle was discovered partially concealed on the Avery Salvage Yard. Calumet County Sheriffs obtained search warrants and, on November 7 and 8, Manitowoc County Sheriffs and others retrieved her charred electronics (cell phone, camera and PDA), license plates, car key and some burned bone fragments. Some of the fragments were visually determined to be human on November 9 and 10, then a piece retrieved from storage gave a partial DNA profile matching Halbach. Blood found in the Rav4 on November 6 had since been matched to Halbach (cargo) and Avery (front). On November 15, Avery was charged with the murder of Halbach and mutilating the corpse.^[13]

Brendan Dassey was first interviewed on November 6, 2005, in a police car. From the twenty minute mark the officers became confrontational, suggesting based on information they had received that he should have seen Halbach when he arrived home on the school bus on October 31, which Dassey then said he had. He was interrogated again on November 10, about a bonfire alleged to have occurred on November 2 or 1, which he then talked about attending.^[14]

In early 2006, investigators reinterviewed several people. Dassey would be interrogated on four occasions over a 48-hour period, including three times in a 24-hour time frame. He had no counsel or parent present, although Dassey and his mother consented to the interrogations, in which investigators made false promises to Dassey using approved interrogation techniques.^[15][16] Dassey was interrogated via the Reid technique,^[17] which was developed to permit and encourage law enforcement officers to use tactics that pressure suspects to confess.^[18] Dassey had been clinically evaluated as being highly suggestible,^[19] which makes a suspect more compliant and can ultimately lead to improper interrogation outcomes such as false confessions.^[20][21]

While being interrogated, Dassey confessed in detail to being a co-conspirator in the rape and murder of Halbach and the mutilation of her corpse.^[16] His confession was later described as "clearly involuntary in a constitutional sense" by a US magistrate judge whose opinion was overturned by an appellate court. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the appellate court by refusing to hear the case.^[22]

Dassey was ,arrested and charged on March 1, 2006, with being party to a first-degree homicide, sexual assault, and mutilation of a corpse. New charges of kidnapping and sexual assault were brought against Avery, though prosecutors would get them dismissed before his trial, likely due to lack of forensic evidence.^[23] The special prosecutor Ken Kratz held a major press conference about the two cases, discussing the charges against Avery and Dassey, and reading verbatim elements of Dassey's confession. It was widely covered by TV and newspapers.^[24]

As a result, a trainee school counselor contacted investigators to say Kayla Avery had previously expressed concern that Avery had asked a cousin how to bury a body - but the counselor didn't know which cousin (at Avery's trial there would be controversy about Bobby Dassey testifying that Avery made such a comment in his presence). Detectives therefore interrogated Kayla Avery again, who now said Brendan had told her several different incriminating things. By trial she would retract all those responses.^[25][26]

On March 10, when Dassey first spoke with his new state-appointed attorney, Len Kachinsky, he told him his confessions under interrogation were false, and asked to take a lie detector test. After Dassey repeated the request on April 3, Kachinsky found on the internet Michael O'Kelly, who administered the unreliable polygraph to Dassey on April 16. Kachinsky, who wanted Dassey to cooperate with the prosecution of Steven Avery, then agreed that O'Kelly would interrogate Dassey alone on May 12, where O'Kelly told Dassey the polygraph showed deception and so he should confess further.^[14] Later evaluation of the polygraph data reportedly concluded it did not indicate deception.^[27]

In June 2006, Dassey recanted his interrogation confessions in writing to the trial judge, except for keeping the suggestion that he attended a bonfire on October 31, 2005. Kachinsky told the media he believed the letter was influenced by Dassey's family.^[28] In August 2006, the Wisconsin public defenders office decertified Kachinsky from serious cases because he had allowed Dassey to be interrogated by police on May 13 without a lawyer, and the judge then removed him from the Dassey case.^[29][30]

Kachinsky was replaced by public defender Mark Fremgen, who had declined then agreed on condition expert fees were paid to hire lawyer colleague Ray Edelstein, who dealt with the interrogation tapes. Fremgen dealt with the forensics, the client and the personality psychologist Robert H. Gordon. He did not hire a psychology expert who could testify on the police interrogation methods, such as Richard Leo or Lawrence T. White.^[31][32]

In March 2007, Steven Avery was convicted of murdering Halbach. He did not testify and the prosecution did not put forward any case that anyone else was involved. Dassey was barely mentioned, although during jury selection it was apparent the jurors were aware of the Dassey story from press conferences.^[33] The school bus driver Lisa Buchner did testify that she took Brendan and his brother Blaine to school in the morning and dropped them back between 3.30pm and 3.40pm as usual. She had a recollection (a version first told to police on November 5, 2005) of seeing a lady like Halbach photographing a junk vehicle nearby, but accepted she wasn't sure what week or month.^[34]

The Dassey trial began on April 16, 2007, with a jury from Dane County, Wisconsin.^[35][36] The trial lasted nine days, with a verdict delivered on April 25, 2007.

Contrary to his own defence that held the police interrogators responsible along with his own suggestibility, Dassey testified that he might have got details from books, mentioning Kiss the Girls.^[37][38] His lawyers were surprised and Edelstein rushed to a store to find it, although a day or two prior Dassey had started saying to them maybe he got the ideas from books or dreams.^[32]

The prosecution did not make a case that any forensic evidence of Dassey was found at any alleged crime scene or item. They argued that some of his statements in 2006 and at trial were truly from him and thus linked him to some evidence found in 2006, such as the DNA of Avery on the RAV4 hood latch, the DNA of Halbach on a bullet, and bleach stains on his jeans.^[39]

In closing argument, Edelstein, to the surprise of Fremgen and without consulting Dassey, offered to the jury that Dassey had seen Halbach in a fire, even though Dassey had testified he hadn't.^[32] The prosecution stated to the jury that innocent people don't confess in such detail, then just "Innocent people don't confess".^[40][41]

The jury deliberated for four hours, plus time for pizza, finding Dassey guilty of first-degree intentional homicide, rape and mutilation of a corpse.^[42][43] On August 2, 2007, he was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole in 2048.^[44] He was incarcerated at the maximum security prisons of Green Bay Correctional Institution and later Columbia Correctional Institution, in Wisconsin.^[45]

Dassey's case was taken up by confession expert Professor Steven Drizin and his student Laura Nirider at the Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law. In August 2009, they entered a motion for retrial. In October, they founded the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, which included Dassey's case. The televised postconviction hearing took place over several days in January 2010.^[46][47] The motion was denied in December by Judge Fox. The denial was affirmed by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in January 2013, and the Wisconsin Supreme Court declined to review it.^[48]

The release of Making a Murderer in December 2015 generated a wide, international audience and was met with significant media attention. There were numerous discussions regarding the prosecution of criminal cases.^[49] The Netflix series, which chronicles the trials of Dassey and Avery, has generated global dialogue centered around wrongful convictions, coerced confessions, interrogation of minors, and criminal justice reform.^[50][51] By July 2016, Making a Murderer 2 was in production, focusing on the post-conviction process for Dassey and his family.^[52]

In December 2015, Dassey's attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court for release or retrial, citing constitutional rights violations due to ineffective assistance of counsel and a coerced confession.^[53][54] In January 2016, former juror Robert Covington said he had questioned Dassey's competency on the stand and thinks there should be a retrial.^[55]

There were petitions for Dassey's freedom and the implementation of the "Juvenile Interrogation Protection Law in Wisconsin", which would prohibit police from questioning minors without a lawyer present.^[56] Petitions were also submitted for the investigation of the police officers who interrogated Dassey.^[57][58] Rallies in support of Dassey (and Avery) were held in the United States, UK and Australia.^[59][60][61] Prominent legal analyst Dan Abrams pointed out that much of the country was divided over whether “they” did it, ignoring the likelihood that Dassey is innocent regardless.^[62] Supporters have been communicating with Dassey via letters and contributing to his prison commissary.^[63]

In August 2016, United States magistrate judge William E. Duffin ruled that Dassey's confession had been coerced, and was therefore involuntary and unconstitutional, and ordered him released or retried.^[64][65][66] Legal analysts suggested the state would not want a retrial, due to lack of independent evidence and the solid alibi Dassey had until at least 5.20pm.^[67]

In November 2016, the Wisconsin Justice Department appealed Duffin's decision to the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit (a region covering Wisconsin), which blocked Dassey's release pending a hearing.^[68] But in June 2017, a three-judge panel of the Seventh Circuit upheld the decision to overturn Dassey's conviction.^[69] Judge Ilana Rovner, joined by Judge Ann Claire Williams, affirmed, over the dissent of Judge David Hamilton.^[70][71] However on July 5, the Wisconsin Department of Justice submitted a petition requesting a rehearing en banc (the entire 7th Circuit panel).^[72] In August, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals granted the request for September.^[73] On December 8, the en banc Seventh Circuit upheld Dassey's conviction by a vote of 4–3, with the majority finding that the police had properly obtained Dassey's confession.^[74][75][76] Judge Hamilton's majority opinion was joined by Judges Frank H. Easterbrook, Michael Stephen Kanne, and Diane S. Sykes. Then-Chief Judge Diane Wood and Judge Rovner both wrote dissents, joined by Judge Williams.^[77]

On February 20, 2018, Dassey's legal team, including former U.S. Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari (review) to the United States Supreme Court.^[78] On June 25, 2018, certiorari was denied.^[79]

• Dassey v. Dittmann (12 August 2016) (PDF). Grant for writ of habeas corpus (unlawful detention)
• Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth: Brendan Dassey Documents, Expertise and Impact
• Affidavit of Dr. Richard A. Leo, 2009 Reviews the interrogations of Brendan Dassey and the pretrial report by Joseph Buckley of Reid Inc