Yesterday’s piece by columnist and RendezView editor Sarrah Le Marquand produced plenty of heated debate among fans of the Netflix documentary series Making a Murderer.

Here, two writers (and fans) respond to Sarrah’s conclusion that the show is nothing more than manipulatively edited propaganda and reject the accusation that liking the series means they are “dummies”.

MATT KELLY: IN DEFENCE OF MAKING A MURDERER

“Don’t you dare take on Sarrah Le Marquand, Matthew,” says a voice in my head.

“This column is about television. She was a television writer for years, she knows her stuff, back away from the computer now...”

The boss (boy, I don’t hope don’t get in trouble for calling her that) wrote an article yesterday about Making a Murderer and described it as television for dummies who think they are smart.

I object. Well, sort of.

Her points are valid, and I have to admit I agree with many of them. Creators Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos have done a stellar job in manipulating their audience.

I chewed up everything they spoonfed me and by the end didn’t need to make up my mind as they’d made it up for me — Steven Avery is innocent.

media_camera Columnist and fan of Making a Murderer, Matt Kelly

I then went to work trying to put all the pieces together to solve the mystery myself.

But in that very moment I stopped, and thought about this documentary in a completely different way.

I got so swept up in what I had seen most recently that I forgot the importance of the earlier episodes.

And that is where my opinion differs from Sarrah’s.

I think Making a Murderer is a brilliant piece of television.

I think that what gets far too lost in the enormity of the A-Strand (the murder of Teresa Halbach), is that at one point in time, the legal system in the state of Wisconsin was flawed. And I think much of the subtext to that aspect of the story suggests incompetencies may lie deep within any legal system.

Ours not excluded.

It seems unlikely that any documentarian would delve into Australia’s legal system in the hope of unravelling why certain disgraceful decisions are made.

Why the bloody hell are known offenders let out on bail when there’s a high chance they’ll offend again? How can two Court of Appeal judges cast aside a murder conviction and replace it with manslaughter? Why, in general, are so many criminals given such a soft sentence?

It seems unlikely. But with Making a Murderer now creating a worldwide conversation, it’s more likely.

Asking Aussie filmmakers to follow Ricciardi and Demos’ lead I am not. But hopeful that one day there might be an overhaul of Australia’s legal system, I am. And I’m sure I’m not alone.

Making a Murderer may well be “TV for dummies”. But to me it’s a television series that creates discussion on injustices and the shortcomings of the law.

And there’s nothing dumb about that.

EDDIE WRENN: IN DEFENCE OF MAKING A MURDERER

Making a Murderer needs very little introduction. It has swept the planet, creating an army of vigilante justice-seekers and taking on a life of its own, doing for Netflix what Serial did for podcasts.

It became such a talking point that I was sorely tempted to ignore it — that irritated feeling you get where something’s been so over-hyped you turn against it. Thank God I dismissed that thought, and sat down to 10 hours of gripping television.

So I was irritated (it is my News Year’s Resolution to be more irritated at things) when my colleague Sarrah ripped into the show yesterday.

Everyone’s entitled to an opinion — heck, if they weren’t, Making a Murderer would not have been so successful.

But to say this thoughtful and challenging TV is “everything that is wrong with the era of social media” and “television for dummies who think they are smart” is a cruel distortion of the facts — ironically the entire point of the show.

type_quote_start “Everyone’s entitled to an opinion — heck, if they weren’t, Making a Murderer would not have been so successful” type_quote_end

The recap, for those who need it, is the story of Steven Avery, jailed for 18 years for a rape he categorically did not commit.

He ended up losing two decades of his life on the back of a police receptionist who thought the description of the offender sounded “a bit like Steve”, and a police captain who even after Avery’s release remained proud of his artist’s impression sketch that sent an innocent man to jail.

So far, so interesting, and that’s episode one of 10.

And then, just a couple of years later, Avery is sentenced to life imprisonment for the kidnapping, rape and murder of 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach, and then burning the body.

If you’ve not watched it, go and watch it. If you have, I can stop recapping and get to the meat of the matter.

Sarrah takes offence at what she sees as real life tragedy dressed up as our entertainment. And it’s a fair point. Every moment, every piece of evidence and motivation has been discussed and assassinated to death. Reddit is broken and Facebook is buckling. Twitter has PTSD.

Anyone remotely touched by the case is now an unintentional internet celebrity.

In the case of the defence lawyers, they are now sex symbols. For the good people of Manitowoc County, they can add death threats to their list of things to avoid this year.

Meanwhile, Halbach, the victim, is the smallest part of the story — she is purely the MacGuffin that drives the plot.

And there is truth that the “documentary” is not so impartial. It does lean towards the defence and take a very sympathetic viewpoint to Avery.

But they are right to do so.

For when the catalogue of errors made against Avery are shown, it is right that he is the victim.

Netflix has, wisely but not necessarily fairly, positioned this as a Whodunnit — can we solve the crime and stop this second miscarriage of justice?

And many, many watchers have taken this at face value, and donned their respective Sherlock deerstalkers, Poirot moustaches, and Colombo jackets to come up with enough theories to fill a Doctor Who fan convention.

But this is not what the show is about, and Sarrah is wrong to snipe at the success of the show, and the well-meaning intentions of those who sympathise toward Avery.

media_camera Columnist and anti-fan of Making a Murderer, Sarrah Le Marquand

Regardless of innocence or guilt, we watched a man with the presumption of innocence be arrested and charged by the men who cost him 18 years of freedom, who were now publicly embarrassed and facing a potentially uninsured $35m payout.

We watched officers who were meant to be off the case repeatedly and determinedly search his home and property, while ignoring other suspects and leads (in a case of history repeating itself).

We saw those same officers illogically find circumstantial evidence in rooms that had been thoroughly searched before.

We saw prosecutors announce in graphic detail to a community (and jury pool) an action-movie account of Halbach’s shackled rape and murder (which was never supported forensically by the evidence) and these details themselves are based off testimony from a low IQ teenager who we watched being seemingly forced into a false confession.

We saw early defence lawyer Len Kachinsky amateurishly tell the public their client was guilty, in what appeared to be nothing more than a personal desire to befriend the prosecution and become a judge.

We eventually saw the prosecution convict two men of the same crime, using completely different scenarios for each men during the trials.

This is the story that Making a Murderer was telling us.

type_quote_start “Not a question of guilt or innocence” type_quote_end

It had nothing to do with the questions of whether Avery was guilty or innocent, or whether the jury came to the right decision, or whether should there be appeals and retrials.

It boiled down to this, the only important lesson of these ten hours: Steven Avery never had a fair investigation, therefore he could never get a fair trial.

That’s the reason this show has been so successful. Not because I (we) necessarily believe he is innocent, but because reasonable doubt was kicked in the teeth and then spat out of the courtroom long before the jury is seated.

This was NOT television for dummies. This was a damning indictment on the American justice system — or at least in this particular case. If Netflix did their best to make it marketable and baited people to watch it, fair play to them.

In the search for justice, the search always has to be for truth.

And it is a beautiful indictment on our species that, so far, humanity’s best workable system is to get 12 anonymous strangers in a room and put the weight and responsibility of that person’s life in their hands.

We may be neurotic, emotional beings but we strive for better, and the evolution of the legal system is one of the best examples we have of that.

Making a Murderer is holding this standard up to the mirror, and asking us to look closely.

It is, with respect, not about Halbach. It is not even about Avery. It is about a trial being poisoned before it ever began, and we all need to acknowledge that.

If some people are “determined to feel self-righteous for the least possible righteous of reasons”, as Sarrah’s column indicates, well, it’s always going to happen.

Indeed, a whole legal team once did that while a 23-year-old Steven Avery looked on from the dock.

Making a Murderer is an original Netflix series.