Alison Dirr, and Andy Thompson

Post Crescent

The Netflix docu-series "Making a Murderer" is a hot topic — and not just among armchair sleuths.

Its impact is also being felt in classrooms, courtrooms and at least one state capitol.

The 10-part series chronicles the cases of Steven Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, who were convicted in the 2005 slaying of 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc County. Both men are serving life terms in the state prison system but have appealed their convictions.

The series has many viewers up in arms about what they perceive as a huge miscarriage of justice: The conviction of two innocent men. That, and threads dissecting the evidence in the cases, are some of the primary conversations online.

But offline, the analysis is focusing more on the system itself — the topic the filmmakers, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, have said the series was meant to raise questions about.

DAILY NEWSLETTER: Sign up for "Making a Murderer" updates

'Real world examples'

It's too early to know whether the series will spur certain viewers to pursue careers related to criminal justice.

In the meantime, the issues brought up in the series are already making their way into law and law enforcement classrooms.

At the University of North Carolina School of Law, at least a couple professors are planning to discuss the series, which features UNC alum Jerry Buting.

"One of Avery’s lawyers, Jerry Buting, is a hard-working and impressive example of a UNC-trained lawyer fighting the good fight in the real world," Richard E. Myers II, Henry Brandis Distinguished Professor of Law at UNC School of Law, said in an email. "Criminal practice can be incredibly difficult, and having real-world examples to grapple with and inspire them will help UNC Law students to become sensitive to how important their work is in pursuing justice."

Myers used the first episode in his Ethics in Criminal Practice class, a professional responsibility course for students interested in becoming professors or defense attorneys. The episode highlighted issues with DNA exoneration, tunnel vision and the need to pay attention to potential exculpatory evidence, he said.

His class will also be watching interviews of Dassey by police and his defense team and hearing the recorded phone calls with his mother. Those parts demonstrate the challenges of working with juvenile defendants, especially those with low IQs, and show how important it is to corroborate confessions with forensic evidence, he said.

Another UNC Law professor, Joseph E. Kennedy, wrote, "The show illustrates what can happen when police officers trust their own intuitions absolutely and regard the presumption of innocence and procedural rights as mere technicalities."

Lisa Kern Griffin, a professor at Duke Law School and a former federal prosecutor, said the issues raised in "Making a Murderer" will resonate outside of Wisconsin.

"The experience of viewing the documentary and feeling empathy for the defendants speaks volumes that a lot of textbooks can't communicate," she said.

Kern Griffin said the documentary doesn't answer the question of who killed Teresa Halbach, but reveals that errors occur in the criminal justice system, even when people are acting in good faith. She said the problem doesn't just occur in small communities like Manitowoc, but in larger cities across the U.S. as well.

"I don't blame Wisconsin," she said. "It's an illustration of what happens (elsewhere)."

TIMELINE: History of the Steven Avery case

RELATED: “Making a Murderer” coverage, archived stories and more

The series also seems to have spurred at least some interest in forensic science.

Joe LeFevre, forensic science department chair at Fox Valley Technical College, said just anecdotally that his department is seeing more interest from police.

He's fielding more questions about forensic science, he said, and since Jan. 1, his department has received calls from 11 police agencies asking about the evidence technician school. The department usually gets just three or four calls around that time, he said.

LeFevre said certain questions related to evidence have come up, including how to know if a bone is from a human or another animal and how DNA evidence works.

Halbach's bones were found in a burn pit outside Avery's trailer.

He hasn't really heard students saying that the series got them interested in his program, but he thinks it has reinforced with some of his students the need to do a good job and take their studies seriously so when they're out in the field their tactics aren't called into question.

Courtroom spillover

It didn't take long for the docu-series to make an impact on the local court system.

During the questioning of potential jurors in a Jan. 12 sexual assault trial in Outagamie County, prosecution and defense attorneys brought up "Making a Murderer" as they tried to gauge the jurors' attitudes toward police officers.

The intent, according to defense attorney Jeffrey Kippa, was to determine whether any jurors considered police to be untrustworthy or unreliable due to concerns raised in the Netflix series. The concern, he said, is that jurors will think all police officers are corrupt or that all defense attorneys will do anything to get their clients off.

In virtually every criminal case, attorneys ask prospective jurors if they are related to a police officer, or if their experiences with police have been positive or negative. Given the extremely high public interest in "Making a Murderer," their reactions to the series can provide attorneys with valuable insight, Kippa said.

"I think it cuts to the heart of what we're getting at," he said.

Kippa, whose client was found not guilty, said the pendulum seems to have swung since the series first aired in mid-December. At first, viewers tended to believe that Avery and Dassey had been unjustly convicted, but as more pro-prosecution information has been reported on what was left out of the docu-series, more people seem to believe that the two men are guilty of killing Halbach, he said.

For the foreseeable future, Kippa intends to ask jurors in the trial selection phase if they have watched "Making a Murderer."

"I'll probably use it again," he said.

Out-of-state impact

Like many viewers across the nation, Tennessee State Rep. Mike Spears, was taken aback while watching the interrogations of Dassey, who was interviewed by police without an attorney present.

Dassey, who was 16 at the time of Halbach's murder, confessed to being involved in the slaying, but later maintained that the confession was coerced. His appeal is now before a federal magistrate in Milwaukee.

"I think it was tragic," Sparks said of the questioning process. "I don't think anybody can see that and not be moved."

Sparks said what happened to Dassey, who was convicted of murder and will first be eligible for parole in 2048, gives additional credence to a bill he introduced in the Tennessee legislature that would prohibit juveniles from being interrogated without a parent, guardian or legal counsel present.

"It wasn't the original reasoning (for the proposal), but (the Dassey case) added some validation to it," Sparks said. "I think the (juvenile) system needs some reforms."

Alison Dirr: 920-996-7266 or adirr@gannett.com; on Twitter @AlisonDirr. Andy Thompson: 920-996-7270 or awthompson@postcrescent. com; on Twitter @Thompson_AW.