ARTS & CULTURE
Tuesday, January 19, 2016 13
Disturbing Justice:
Netflix’s Making a Murderer Brings Justice Issues
to the Spotlight
-
nancy sarmento
My fellow peers were right in recommending
Making a Murderer as an engaging and compelling
docu-drama narrowing in on our perceptions of
administration of justice. Netflix introduced the documentary in late 2015, just in time for law students to
binge on the entire collection, post exam-stress and
right before the new term. It seemed to be the consensus, at least among my peers, that Steven Avery
is the harrowing example of how deeply a targeted
abuse of power can harm in our society, compromising the administration of justice.
Episode 1 of Making a Murderer chronicles
the wrongful conviction of Steven Avery in the
1985 brutal attack and attempted rape of Penny
Beernsteen. The series sets off by detailing the Avery
family history: The family was not well received
within the community of Minitowoc County,
Wisconsin, viewed as non-conformist, troubled,
dealing in “junk”, poor, and formally uneducated.
The first episode makes explicit mention that Steven
Avery’s IQ was restricted to about 70. By 23 years old,
he fathered 5 children, the youngest of which were
twins, born only days before Penny’s attack. Having
seen her assailant’s face,
Penny was able to provide police with identifying details, including
eye-color, and build of
her attacker, and some
investigating officers
supposed that the assailant was known to them,
based on the description and the nature of the
crime, as Gregory Allen,
who was suspected for recent and similar crimes in
the vicinity of Penny’s attack. Despite these suspicions and an abundance of evidence to the contrary,
Steven, whose physical appearance was inconsistent
with Penny’s initial descriptions of her attacker, was
detained, and tried for the crime. Despite questionable evidence, and the evidence supporting Steven’s
alibi, including multiple witnesses and receipts,
Steven was convicted and sentenced to 36 years in
prison.
In the years that followed sentencing, the Avery
family exhausted their resources appealing Steven’s
conviction, each time without success. Steven’s
mother sought to garner attention to the issue of the
questionable conviction by appealing to media programs, again without success. The matter eventually became known to the Wisconsin Innocence
Project which undertook various efforts in examining evidence such as fingernail scrapings and bodyhair. Initial efforts with the fingernail scrapings
were unsuccessful in firmly eliminating Steven as
the assailant, however, the subsequent investigation of the body hair revealed that Steven was not the
attacker, and it was, as suspected by some officers
18 years back, Gregory Allen. Even more disturbing could be that within the archiv