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A year ago, life was very different for criminal defence lawyers Dean Strang and Jerry Buting. They were weeks away from the December launch of Making a Murderer, the harrowing, compelling 10-hour documentary Netflix series about the dubious case facing Wisconsin man Steven Avery in a 2007 murder trial. "I thought this is not a Christmas movie. This is a bad mistake," says Buting. "Then when I heard they were releasing the entire 10 episodes at once, I thought that was a mistake, too – why don't you let it build some suspense?" The series, one of Netflix's biggest binge-watch successes, has maintained a continuing and fierce sense of engagement among fans since it was released. "That's why we're in law and not in film," says Strang, dryly, of their initial assessment of the series launch. The pair are still grappling with their unlikely fame, having become effectively the superhero poster boys for the cult phenomenon. They're held aloft as the voices of justice and reason in the case, and have been affectionately championed on social media. Buting says he was sent an image via social media this week of a couple dressed as the pair for Halloween. "We've really made it when we're being portrayed as Halloween costumes," he says. The documentary, by filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, is a fascinating and extensive insight into the story surrounding Avery. He was convicted of the 2005 murder of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach, whose remains were found on his rural scrap-yard property, and received life imprisonment without parole. At the time of his arrest, Avery had a $US36 million ($47 million) lawsuit pending against local officials after being exonerated for a rape and attempted murder conviction for which he served 18 years in prison. It's a documentary not just about the Halbach case assembled against Avery, and his 16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey who was allegedly coerced into a confession and then sentenced to life imprisonment, it's about the wider implications of the criminal justice system, and the lack of scrutiny of and redress against its failures. Buting and Strang have used the spotlight on themselves to launch a global speaking tour to continue discussions about the Avery case, the criminal justice system and its failings, and take questions from the audience. The most common question they face is: who killed Teresa Halbach? "We have our own guesses, like everybody else does, and we're not going to share them," Strang says. "Because that was a fight to be fought in court. We fought it there, we fought it hard, we lost and I'm not going to sit on a stage in Cleveland, Ohio, or Sydney, Australia, and accuse somebody of murder." They also say Dassey, a hugely tragic figure in the documentary who had little comprehension of what was happening to him, is also most frequently asked about. "People are very, very disturbed about what they saw, and sadly it happens every day in America," says Buting. But it could happen anywhere, says Strang. "Almost anywhere you are on earth, the criminal justice system subsists heavily on the poor," he says. "The victims disproportionately come from an impoverished social stratum, the defendants almost uniformally come from an impoverished social stratum. Many witnesses, people who just happen to observe a crime, are from the lower socio-economic stratum. "That's important for people to understand – that the criminal justice system heavily uses as its fuel or food, the poor." One of the most engaging, fascinating parts of the documentary is the footage and recordings featuring Avery and his family, particularly his mother Dolores whose face is picture of heartbreaking bewilderment. They're plain-spoken folk speaking in clipped Wisconsin tones, living an impoverished existence. They are hugely vulnerable but almost oblivious to their fate. Dolores Avery, mother of Steven, as featured in Making a Murderer. Photo: Netflix "There's a local richness to many of the people in the film," says Strang. "The Avery family, their accents, the environs have such a literally local quality that I think it's probably interesting if you're looking at it from afar. "There's an American Gothic quality to the setting and to many of the people who populate this." Adds Buting: "I think the filmmakers clearly had an eye on a bigger goal, bigger interests than just this case. They showed how the system works, or doesn't work in this case, in a small town in America that could be anywhere. You see the tensions between the socio-economic classes very well done." The pair say law is an insiders' game, impenetrable to those outside the system, which operates with little accountability. "I think one of the messages we want to try and bring to people is you need to take ownership of your own justice system," says Buting. Dassey's conviction was overturned in August but it's facing an appeal by prosecutors which Strang predicts could take up to 15 months to be resolved before Dassey potentially walks free. Strang and Buting say Avery's chances of ever being released are stronger following the documentary because it has sparked fresh information from tips, witnesses and scientific advances. "He's got a good attorney [Kathleen Zellner] who is exploring all of those. There's a motion pending that allows her to test a lot of evidence with different kinds of tests," says Buting. "And so if those results come back favourable, then he has a very good chance of getting a new trial," he says, conceding that the process could take years. The pair say acknowledging the uncertainty around the reliability of convictions and what happens in courts is the first step to building greater confidence in the criminal justice system. "These cases stick with you, they should," says Strang of the Avery trial. "You carry them around forever, especially where you retain a strong sense that you should have won. That in a fair and well-functioning system of justice your client would not have been convicted." Dean Strang and Jerry Buting during the 2007 trial of Steven Avery. Photo: Netflix Behind the fascination about the Averys and the truth behind the case and any potential miscarriages of justice, however, is a dead 25-year-old woman. Halbach features as a somewhat lesser player in the whole Making a Murderer story and the scale of the publicity its brought back to the case would no doubt have affected her family. "I feel badly about it," says Strang. "Any responsible, thoughtful, true-crime story carries costs for the victim's family that are unavoidable and not shared. That burden can't be shared by other people. "There is a social trade-off here that's brutal from the perspective of the victim's family and the direct impact on it, which is by exploring a past case you are reopening wounds for the victim's family. Unavoidably you're doing that. "If that's justified, it's justified because the focus is not on the exploitation of the death or the crime but rather the focus is on exploration of how our institutions of justice respond to the pressures of a crime and how they serve all of us. "The problem is that the good that's produced is diffuse and very public. The pain that's produced is focal and very private and it's unavoidable. "I hope that viewers of Making A Murderer will take away the enormity of the horror that is involved in every murder. "I hope they will take away a recognition that this is not a story that glories in one person's death or trauma, but rather a story that is focussed on what do we do as a society and how well institutions of justice are serving us in trying to prevent future tragedies and administer justice to everybody involved." A Conversation on Making a Murderer with Dean Strang and Jerry Buting is at the Sydney Opera House on November 3, Concert Hall, Perth on November 5, QPAC, Brisbane on November 6, and Hamer Hall, Melbourne on November 8.

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Making A Murderer's Dean Strang and Jerry Buting on whether Steven Avery will ever be free Sarah Thomas