****Spoiler warning!****

Making a Murderer tells the real-life story of Steven Avery, a man who was imprisoned for 18 years for a crime he didn’t commit, only then to be accused of another more serious crime upon release - by a county sheriff’s department who were in the process of being sued by Mr Avery (for $36 million) for the previous wrongful conviction. Whether viewers found him guilty or not of the second conviction, they united in the acceptance that there was nothing ‘fair’ and ‘just’ about his trial.

The show has gripped audiences all over the world, with its apparent tale of injustice, accusations of corrupt officials, and the devastating impact the case has had on the local community. People were outraged at the seemingly unjust conviction. Jarett Wiselman wrote in Buzzfeed that “there is a fundamental inequity at work in countless branches of [the US] legal system.”

This was followed by the inevitable backlash, as online sleuths dug deeper into the case, finding evidence the documentary omitted, while figures from around the case were sought and interviewed by a hungry press hunting for a new angle.



It would be impossible to produce a documentary that satisfied everyone. As Bronwen Dickey wrote in Slate (The Emotional Manipulations of Making a Murderer), when editing 700 hours of material into a 10 hour narrative, the viewer only sees 1.4% of the footage, so the task of making it truly representative is always going to be a challenge. The show may not have got across every aspect of a complicated trial, but does it matter? Regardless of what the show included or did not include, it clearly showed the importance of a fair trial in criminal proceedings.

We’ve written about the different aspects of the right to a fair trial, but this case showed beyond doubt the importance of access to a lawyer, which was highlighted in more than one episode.

The show illustrated the problems Mr Avery had in finding a lawyer without money, with the observation in episode 3 that ‘poor people always lose’. Questions were also raised around the lawyer of Brendan Dassey, Steven’s 16 year old nephew. Perhaps the most shocking aspect of the series is the interrogation that Brendan underwent without either a responsible adult or a lawyer. Fair Trials has worked extensively in the EU surrounding the protection of vulnerable suspects.

The show also highlighted the presumption of innocence — and we saw how this can be impacted upon by any number of things. The press coverage of the case was extensive, and from the documentary it certainly wasn’t balanced. The filmmakers also showed a number of occasions when Steven Avery was paraded before the press, wearing handcuffs and prison clothes, which brought into question whether he was really being treated as innocent until proven guilty. How can a jury maintain a fair presumption of innocence when the press and prosecutors have already publicly denounced the suspect as guilty?

A fundamental element of the Right to a Fair Trial is that every person should be presumed innocent unless and until proved guilty following a fair trial. This certainly could not be said to be the case here.

The Right to a Fair Trial means that people can be sure that processes will be fair and certain. It prevents governments from abusing their powers. A Fair Trial is the best means of separating the guilty from the innocent and protecting against injustice. Without this right, the rule of law and public faith in the justice system collapse. The Right to a Fair Trial is one of the cornerstones of a just society.

Whether Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey were guilty or not, they deserved a fair trial. Fair Trial rights start not upon first stepping into court, but when they first accused. We might not have seen the complete story through the course of the show, but we saw enough to see that their defence rights were not protected, and that leaves both sides of the argument unsatisfied.

For those that think them not guilty, the abuse of those rights led to their imprisonment. To those who consider them guilty, they’re left with a questionable conviction, which brings much less comfort than should be the case, undermining all involved in the prosecution. Either way, the right to a fair trial was absolutely not adhered to in this case, and raises stark questions about the justice system in the US.

If you are a journalist interested in this story, please telephone Fair Trials’ press department on +44 (0) 20 7822 2370 or +44 (0) 7950 849 851.

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