This isn't exactly a new case (circa 2005-2007), but has come to the attention of myself and others due to a recent documentary called Making a Murderer. It's hard to make it concise but I'll give it a shot: Stephen Avery is a man from rural Wisconsin, lives in a trailer and works for his parent's Auto salvage company. Probably relatively low IQ (70s-80s). Had some convictions related to burglary and lighting a cat on fire - and he readily confessed to these. A cousin of his is the wife of a sheriff (deputy?), and this cousin apparently spread rumors at his expense. This resulted in him running her off the road and threatening her with an unloaded gun, and is the beginning of things getting personal between him and the sheriff's office. When a woman is raped and describes a person sort of like Avery (but not really), the sheriff's office has a hunch it is Avery. Victim picks him out of a lineup (that didn't contain the actual rapist). Avery is convicted based upon, basically, the word of the victim. Avery will serve 18 years for this, but evidence came to the Sheriff's office making it clear Avery didn't do it. One was the fact that the victim had DNA under her fingernails incompatible with Avery's or hers, and in this case a judge dismissed it, and the other came from another LE office stating another person had confessed to the crime Avery was serving time for. The sheriff's office completely ignored this until Avery was released: Avery was eventually exonerated and released per efforts from the innocence project using DNA evidence. So, unsurprisingly, Avery sues for something like 36 million dollars. This consists of lots of people from the sheriff's office "not remembering" things. While the lawsuit is ongoing, a photographer who had visited the Avery lot goes missing. She was there to photograph a car. Eventually a search for her reveals her poorly hidden RAV4 in the Avery lot. It had a few branches on it. The lot is equipped with a car crusher. So this could be chalked up to either Avery being stupid, or law enforcement taking it there. So Avery and everybody else is kicked off the property for 8 days while law enforcement searches. Officially it was supposed to be a neighboring county that did the search of the property, but the local officials were involved in the search. The same local officials being sued for $36 million dollars. These same officials have a sample of Avery's blood from his prior conviction. So after the "search" my understanding is the evidence that was "found" included small amounts of blood from Avery in the car and under the hood of the car, incinerated remains of the victim indicating she had a gunshot wound to the head, a bullet fragment in the garage (unclear if we know it's from Avery's gun) with the victim's DNA, and the key to the RAV4 next to Avery's dresser. All of this, of course, any one of the police officers would have been capable of planting during or before the property was searched - hardest part being the body itself and the RAV4 would have to have been placed there prior to the search. During the time the murder and cleanup would have allegedly taken place the family was in contact with Avery and nothing was seen to be amiss - but this was mostly phone calls. His original alibi had been his nephew - a 16-year-old soft-spoken, apparently also stupid person. Police drilled him without a lawyer present and got him to "confess" to participating in the rape and murder of the photographer. Haven't seen a full confession video, but from what is presented in the documentary has all the hallmarks of a false confession. Basically the cops weren't going to take "nothing" for an answer and gave him hints as to what they wanted to hear from him, getting a range of things from him some of which was in accord with forensic evidence and some of which were not. It is unclear to me if he really offered them anything new that they didn't already know and had spoon-fed or led him to it. Of course if he did have something for them that they didn't lead him to, that would lend credence to the confession. So either this is a guy who was innocent but made worse by prison and commits a murder 2 years after being released, apparently with sexual-power motives, or this is a conspiracy by one or more of the cops to get away from embarrassment and financial ruin. Personally I think it was a huge mistake to allow local law enforcement to be involved in the search at all, because that's where my reasonable doubt is coming from. I don't believe all of that evidence could have been planted while the Averys were there, but it seems much more plausible while the police had 24/7 control of it for over a week. But then do I believe the cops had been willing to stalk and murder the photographer? Maybe. Or maybe it was somebody else (perhaps on the property) but ambiguous who did it so the police just planted evidence to strengthen the case and make sure they convicted who they wanted to. Avery wasn't the only one with a history of violence on the property. Personally I wouldn't be beyond a reasonable doubt at this point. I do think it's more likely than not that Avery is guilty, because it would require a bit of a conspiracy to make it happen in a way that doesn't involve him. But again, needs to be beyond a reasonable doubt - at least in theory. I'm not sure I believe jurors actually follow that standard. What do you think?
I have read of a lot of stories where police detectives "made the evidence fit" to secure a conviction, all because they believed the suspect was guilty and did not want to let him get away. It's not some secret conspiracy, it is part of the police culture in many places, they are fiercely loyal to each other and would be very reluctant to turn each other, in many cases they have much to fear if they betrayed the group. This is understandable and goes with the job territory, the laws are not always fair and if they did not look out for each other there would be a good any one of them could have their life ruined when mistakes are inevitably made. But this also makes it easy for real abuse to be covered up too. No one believes a group of police could get together and do this, but it does occasionally happen. Sometimes it's not the group, it's just one officer who acts without the knowledge of the others, maybe to plant evidence before he knows a search is scheduled to take place. It's actually much easier than most people think to frame someone. I suspect what may have happened here was the photographer happened to get murdered, by coincidence and probably somewhere else, and when the police found out about it they thought it was their lucky break. Now they could just move a few things around and make it seem like Avery had done it. Or maybe one of the officers was out planting evidence when the photographer stumbled onto the property and caught the officer in the fact. She was a photographer after all, so likely snapped incriminating pictures. The officer could have killed her on the spot in the heat of the moment and then framed Avery. I wouldn't be surprised if more than one officer acted independently on their own accord to make it look like Avery was guilty. You may think this would be too unlikely of a coincidence to happen, but from several cases I have read about, this does happen. The phenomena is too complicated to get into here, but basically there is automatic assumption the suspect is guilty and each law enforcement officer involved builds a little bit more on the information others have given them, sort of like a "game of telephone". By the time the information comes out the other end it is distorted beyond recognition and the accused looks certainly guilty. No one can dare admit to wrongdoing after the fact, of course. If the suspect merely might be innocent, why take the risk of ruining your career and facing a lengthy jail sentence? That being said, I can also see how someone wrongly accused and put in prison for 18 years could become very bitter and angry, maybe it could even change him into the type of person who could commit murder. But do we really have a plausible reason he would want to target the photographer? It just does not seem very likely.
I recently finished the Netflix series about this. Never in my life have I seen such corruption within the criminal justice system. Corrupt cops and prosecutors, and corrupt juries. Pitiful.
