CHICAGO – A federal appeals court in Chicago narrowly overturned a ruling Friday that could have freed a Wisconsin inmate featured in the “Making a Murderer” series from prison.
The full 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reviewed Brendan Dassey’s claims that investigators tricked him into confessing that he took part in raping and killing photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005. Dassey was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 after telling detectives he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape and kill Halbach.
The 4-to-3 opinion conceded a ruling wasn’t obvious or easy, but said it came down to whether findings by Wisconsin state courts that Dassey wasn’t coerced into confessing were reasonable.
But Judge Ilana Diamond Rovner strongly disagreed. “His confession was not voluntary and his conviction should not stand, and yet an impaired teenager has been sentenced to life in prison,” she wrote in her dissent. “I view this as a profound miscarriage of justice.”
