MADISON, Wis. – The lawyers representing Brendan Dassey, who was featured in Netflix’s docuseries “Making a Murderer” for his conviction in the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach, filed a petition Wednesday for executive clemency with Gov. Tony Evers.

The petition asks Evers to consider either a pardon, which would result in Dassey’s release from prison and the restoration of some of his legal rights, or a commutation, which would result in his release or a shortened sentence.

His lawyers focused on his alleged innocence and the “extreme length of his sentence,” according to a copy of the petition obtained by USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. Dassey, 29, is serving a life sentence and won’t be eligible for parole until 2048, when he will be 59.

Laura Nirider, one of Dassey's attorneys and co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, said Dassey "has spent nearly half his life behind bars for a crime he didn’t commit."

“The time is right for Brendan to go home,” she said.

Evers re-created the pardons board in June after his predecessor, Scott Walker, halted the process eight years ago. But since Evers took over as governor, his office has been flooded with requests from people seeking more information about a pardon.

Steven Drizin, another of Dassey's attorneys and also a co-director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions, said Dassey has continued to be well-behaved in prison and despite all the ups and downs in his case, he remains hopeful.

“He’s an extremely resilient person," Drizin said. "That has sustained us.”

Dassey was charged after Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer, went missing Oct 31, 2005. Her remains, along with several other pieces of forensic evidence, were discovered days later at the Avery Salvage Yard outside of Manitowoc. Steven Avery, Dassey’s uncle, was arrested, but no forensic evidence linked Dassey to the crime.

Months later, though, Dassey was interviewed four times by investigators — but only once with an adult present. At the time, Dassey was a 16-year-old attending Mishicot High School. Dassey's attorneys later learned that special education professionals assessed his overall cognitive abilities and found they were well below average, with significant delays in his language skills.

Dassey's lawyers claim investigators elicited a coerced confession from Dassey by seizing on his cognitive disabilities, feeding him false information and pushing him toward implicating himself in Halbach's murder. Dassey's confession was the primary evidence used against him at his trial in April 2007, which ended with his conviction.

To support Dassey's case for executive clemency, his lawyers have enlisted the support of several experts, including Dave Thompson, who works for Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates, a Chicago-based firm that teaches interrogation techniques to investigators around the world.

Thompson has used the tapes of Dassey’s interrogations and his confession to teach investigators what not to do when questioning a person suspected of a crime.

He described being left with a "sick feeling" in his stomach after watching "Making a Murderer" for the first time and seeing portions of Dassey's interrogations. He also felt compelled to do something about it.

“We recognize that if we don’t say anything, it’s just as good as condoning or accepting this type of technique,” he said.

Dassey's interrogations have been shown "countless times" during his firm's classes, Thompson said, and the reactions tend to be similar: "Overwhelming support" for Dassey and a "distaste for the methods" used by the investigators who interrogated him.

Thompson described Dassey as the "stereotypical vulnerable subject," due to his cognitive disabilities and the lack of any legal representation or support in the interrogation room.

The investigators interrogating Dassey made a variety of threats and promises, while feeding him information, essentially redirecting Dassey's statements to fit their theory of the crime, Thompson said.

Instead, investigators should have approached Dassey with open-ended questions and allowed him to tell his own story, Thompson said. And Dassey should have had an adult in the room to support him.

“That would have prevented a lot of what happened in this conversation,” Thompson said.

But taken as a whole, Dassey's experience during his interrogation was “a perfect recipe for an unreliable, involuntary confession," Thompson said.

Mark Osler, a professor at the University of St. Thomas School of Law in St. Paul, Minnesota, has spent a significant portion of his career becoming an expert on clemency.

He described clemency as "a tool for mercy or justice that has the ability to override our sometimes imperfect appellate system," typically used by those who have exhausted their other options with the courts.

Dassey's case is an interesting candidate for clemency given the "deeply troubling underlying facts," Osler said.

"When people look at this case closely, I think it affects them at a gut level," he said. "That’s where clemency operates. It’s those hard cases. The ones that move the soul. And this is one of those."

Dassey has handled the turmoil of his case well, including when he came within days of being released about two years ago, after his conviction was overturned by a federal magistrate. His conviction was reinstated by a divided appeals court, with one dissenting judge describing his continued incarceration as a "profound miscarriage of justice."

Nirider said Dassey appreciates the letters he has received from people all over the world who saw "Making a Murderer" and wanted to express their support.