5 Ways you can make a difference in Making a Murder

Netflix’s Making a Murder documentary laid bare some of the failings of our legal system — and has led to a groundswell of support for defendants Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey. Here’s a few ways you can help make a change:

The easiest way to get involved is to sign and share a petition

Sign the Free Steven Avery on Change.org, which has 360,000 signatures (now with a response from President Obama). Even though the petition has been answered, signing the open Change.org petition indicates your support and lets others (like Wisconsin state officials) see how many people care about this issue.

Also, sign the Free Brendan Dassey petition which has 60,000 signatures and asks Judge Duffin to hold a new trial for Brendan on violation of habeas corpus grounds.

The White House had a first petition with 130,000 signatures that was closed and answered by the White House, after they determined that pardoning Steven Avery was not under their jurisdiction:

Since Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey are both state prisoners, the President cannot pardon them. a pardon in this case would need to be issued at the state level by the appropriate authorities.

A follow-up petition has been created at WhiteHouse.gov that you can sign calling for an investigation into the Sheriff’s department instead.

After signing the petition, make sure to tweet and share the message, asking your friends to do so as well.

2. Contact the other parties involved

In each case, make sure to a) contact them daily or weekly, and b) tell your friends to contact them (especially those from Wisconsin).

3. Help find new evidence or expert feedback that could lead to a new trial or exoneration

Brendan’s lawyer, Dean Strang, sees two potential avenues to a new trial:

“What I can say is that his realistic hope for a new trial lies in the category of newly discovered evidence, that you might divide into two subcategories. One might be new factual evidence — someone who’s been carrying a secret for 10 years, someone who saw something, someone who heard something, a new alibi. Or, second, it might be in a subcategory that you could call scientific advance: new testing techniques that might be available or old testing techniques that might be now more economical or feasible for the defense to try to run if we seek retesting.” (Slate)

For point 2, if you have strong technical chops or friends that work in the relevant scientific fields, ask them to weigh in with what they need. Specifically, these are people who have a detailed knowledge of blood, EDTA, crime scenes, forensic research, DNA evidence, etc. If you don’t, you can help get the word out that people like this are needed.

You can also help collate and assess various information about the case:

New evidence can be provided to @JButing (Steven’s previous lawyer, the law firm can be directly contacted as well), @averydassey, or Steven’s new lawyer):

@helpstevenavery: ATTENTION WISCONSIN LOCALS: If you have new info or evidence regarding this case please get in contact with @JButing @averydassey #Speakup

4. Write a letter to Steven or Brendan expressing your support — and making sure they don’t give up hope

Carla Chase (@averydassey) is Steven’s niece and Brendan’s cousin, and is accepting letters or notes to either. She’ll print them out and mail them.

More updates can be found through @helpstevenavery and at the website run by the family. The official place to give donations to the family and family’s legal fund is here.

While Carla is the preferred way to reach out, you can also write to the inmates directly:

Steven Avery DOC #00122987

Waupun Correctional Institution

PO Box 351

Waupun, WI 53963–0351

Brendan Dassey DOC #00516985

PO Box 19033

Green Bay, WI 54307–9033

5. Contact the Governor of Wisconsin

Governor Scott Walker is one person who can pardon or change the sentences of the defendants (a call, email or letter is especially great if you are a Wisconsin resident). So far, he’s been consistent that there’s no way he’ll get involved — as the criminal justice system has it’s own process:

“There is a system … by which individuals can petition the courts to get relief like others have done in the past that shows that someone might actually be innocent. But I am not going to override a system that is already put in place.”

Mail, email, or call Wisconsin’s Governor Walker or tweet him (@GovWalker). Rather than asking for a pardon, ask for additional investigation to be done in the case.

There are also things you can do to ensure cases like this happen less frequently, including:

Call your local congressman/congresswoman, and ask them to support judicial reforms

Find your local congress person and let them know you support judicial reform. Do the same for your local state representative.

Some judicial reforms you may mention include requiring:

police electronically record all interrogations of suspects (some states already do)

police interrogate juvenile suspects in the presence of and after meaningful consultation with their parents (some states already do)

police have children explain back in their own words what the rights mean to them

police telling suspects that they could be prosecuted as adults in criminal court before accepting a waiver of their rights

the limitation of juvenile interrogations to 4 hours or less — and limiting questioning in early morning or late evening hours

a larger budget public defenders

a change in sentencing laws (which members of both parties support)

(Many of these judicial reforms were provided by Northwestern’s Wrongful Convictions of Youth Clinic; you can reference or forward their sample language)

2. Give money to organizations fighting judicial injustices

Thanks to members of the Reddit community (including s10081, captchacleat, thepatiosong, and others) for contributing to this post.

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