To
GOVERNOR TONY EVERS.
The 46th Governor of the State of Wisconsin.
E-mail: EversInfo@Wisconsin.gov.
Website: https://evers.wi.gov/.
Dear Governor Evers,
I, and those undersigned, on behalf of millions of viewers of „Making A Murderer“ abroad, and of thousands of European activists who have relentlessly and meticulously studied the original files in this case, implore you to use your authority to grant clemency to Brendan Dassey and commute his sentence with immediate effect, so he can go home tomorrow.
Brendan Dassey is now in prison since 2007, when he was 16 years old, serving time for a crime, the existing evidence demonstrates, and always has shown, he did not commit. Three different judges tried to right the wrong and give back his freedom, but the system allowed them to be overruled again and again.
I will lay out – in the shortest possible form – three powerful and undeniable reasons, which demand exactly the immediate commutation of his sentence and force you in a special position of responsibility to act
Number one: Brian Dassey, when he was a very vulnerable teenager with learning disabilities and an IQ in the borderline deficiency range has been failed and denied the protection of his rights as well as due process by state actors on every level of his case, including intentional obstruction of justice, leading to a wrongful conviction that should never have come to pass.
Number two: Brian Dassey can make a most compelling case for actual innocence and is actually deserving of a full and complete exoneration, which the state’s system, represented by you as Governor, due to technical and legal reasons cannot give him anymore.
Number three: The interrogation, trial, conviction and incarceration – all of the above without good cause and in irreconcilable conflict with the evidence – of an impaired 16 year old child without any protection, and the shocking inaptness of the state’s system, which you as Governor personally represent and personify, to correct this outrageous miscarriage of justice, became internationally known and had a lasting and irrevocably damaging effect on the reputation of the state of Wisconsin as well as its justice system.
Now, let me explain and detail this very reasons and why they demand action from you.
NUMBER ONE: THE JUSTICE SYSTEM FAILED BRENDAN DASSEY
1. Brendan Dassey was failed by the state’s system and justice system on very level.
2. First, he – a 16 year old teenager with an extremely high level of suggestibility, learning disabilities and intellectual deficiencies – was allowed to be interrogated by two police officers without any protection. No adult or lawyer was present, during those five interrogations, of which one is not even recorded; Brendan, during the interrogations keeps guessing, what officers Fassbender and Wiegert might want to hear, and they are guiding and directing him, while constantly fact-feeding him like a parrot, towards the desired answers, until he happens to stumble across them. Promises of leniency are made frequently, he is constantly lied to, deceived and excessively manipulated, even though he seems unable to even comprehend his own situation and was left under the impression he could go home and watch Wrestlemania after confessing to rape and murder.
3. Secondly the state failed him, when it bestowed on him public defender Len Kachinsky who, in effect, made zero attempt to defend Dassey, but acted like a second prosecutor and was, on every step, an adversary to his own client’s best interests: He declared him publicly guilty on television, without having EVER met him or read the case file, and later had his own investigator pressure Brendan Dassey into signing a declaration of guilt, he did not want to sign, and was also never present during the interrogations to protect his client
4. Thirdly the state failed Brendan when, it allowed prosecutor Ken Kratz, without any consequences, to present and use details from his “confessions” in a public, televised press conference, when there was no proof of the validity of any of those descriptions and no factual corroboration of any of his alleged “confessions”. There is none, until this very day.
5. Fourthly, the state failed Brendan Dassey when it allowed Ken Kratz to indict Brendan, without being able to present any other evidence against him, on the sole basis of his so called “confessions”, obtained by manipulation of a disabled minor at a time he had no proper legal representation, which would not even have been admissible in any civilized country of the western world.
6. Fifthly, the state failed Brendan Dassey, when, after Brendan’s alleged confessions wouldn’t add up with the facts, it allowed prosecutor Ken Kratz to present in two trials – against Brendan and his uncle -, two completely irreconcilable theories of one and the same crime, which negate each other. These shenanigans by a state agent would never have been even legal in any civilized country of the western world.
7. Sixthly, the state failed then 17 years old Brendan Dassey, when it allowed him to be convicted, solely because he confessed “to anything”, when even the state freely admits that there was no other solid forensic evidence to even tie him to the murder, and those “confessions” were entirely refuted by the existing evidence in the case.
8. Seventhly, the state failed Brendan Dassey, when the prosecution fought two acquittals of federal Judge William E. Duffin and a 3-judges panel of the 7th circuit court, who both ruled Brendan’s alleged “confessions” to be involuntary and the result of “overpowering his will” and both ordered his release, to keep a clearly innocent person in prison.
9. Eighthly, the state failed Brendan Dassey when the Wisconsin Supreme Court flatly refused to hear the case.
10. Ninthly, the state failed Brendan Dassey, when Governor Tony Evers, first confronted with the case in 2019, refused to act, actually arguing that for a pardon Brendan must first serve his wrongful conviction in full.
You, as the Governor of Wisconsin, have the authority to grant clemency and you can and should commute the sentence of Brendan Dassey on the grounds of the justice system failing to protect Brendan Dasseys rights at any time whatsoever.
NUMBER TWO: BRENDAN DASSEY IS ACTUALLY INNOCENT
Brendan Dasseys case is probably the most compelling and shattering case for the actual innocence of a convicted person, you are likely to encounter during your own lifetime.
Brendan Dassey was convicted on the basis of his - technically inadmissible – “confessions”, which detail the alleged murder and rape of Teresa Halbach on the premises of his uncle, either in his trailer and/or garage, as well as a bleach stain on his jeans and a bullet with the victims DNA on it, being found where he allegedly said it would be (He didn’t).
THE CONFESSIONS:
1. During the interrogations Brendan Dassey guesses wildly, while being constantly led, guided and fact-fed by officers Fassbender and Wiegert, who plant all relevant information into the interrogation and therefore the “confessions”. There is not one word of perpetrator’s knowledge coming out of the mouth of Brendan Dassey. Not one. On the contrary he seems to know absolutely nothing about the murder.
2. He describes, with an awful lot of help by the interrogators, the murder and rape allegedly taking place in Steven Avery’s trailer and garage. The state in its own documents freely admits that there is neither one single forensic trace of the murder or any other crime, nor the victim, NOR OF BRENDAN DASSEY in that garage and that trailer.
3. In his so called “confessions” Brendan describes, with an awful lot of help by the interrogators, that Teresa Halbach was raped, stabbed, shot at and had her throat cut by him and his uncle in the trailer and/or garage. The state in its own documents freely admits that there is neither one single forensic trace of blood or semen in either the garage or the trailer.
4. The state in its own documents freely admits that there is not one single forensic trace of a crime scene clean-up in either the trailer or the garage, which would have been unavoidable. A crime scene clean up would be the only explanation for the absence of any evidence of the crime at those spaces, other than the events never occurred.
Therefore it must be considered scientific fact, that these are not crime scenes, and, consequentially, that Brendan Dassey’s “confessions” are not even true – because ALL traces of the events he “confessed” to, are entirely missing. Those events therefore can never have taken place, they’re technically impossible.
5. The state in its own documents freely admits that there is not one single forensic trace to connect Brendan Dassey to Teresa Halbach or the murder of Teresa Halbach.
6. The state in its own documents freely concedes that it cannot even establish that Brendan Dassey in his entire life ever met Teresa Halbach.
THE BLEACH STAINS:
On March 2, 2006 officers Fassbender and Wiegert privately took the jeans Brendan Dassey wore on October 31, 2005, when, as the state believes, Mrs. Halbach was murdered, and entered them into evidence. Those jeans show two bleach stains in the knee area.
However those bleach stains – even if they indeed should have originated on October 31, 2005, which was never proven - are not incriminating but further exonerating Brendan Dassey:
Color bleach, the only sort of bleach which can bleach out jeans fabric, is chemically incapable of permanently removing blood traces – and therefore cannot explain their complete absence. This means that the bleach traces in Dasseys Jeans directly refute the idea of a crime scene clean up (the unavoidable traces are missing entirely anyway) and strongly support Brendan’s original, truthful, statement that he helped to clean up some motor oil in his uncles garage.
THE BULLET IN THE GARAGE:
During the fourth interrogation, on March 2, 2006, Brendan Dassey allegedly told the investigators that Teresa Halbach was shot on the floor of his uncle’s garage, and, bingo, a later search yielded a bullet that in the lab allegedly exhibited Teresa Halbachs DNA. However: Almost nothing of the sentence you’ve just been reading happens to be true.
If you read the transcript of that March 2 interrogation, you can see that the investigators want Brendan Dassey to establish or confirm the fact that Mrs. Halbach was shot into the head. They keep asking “You did something to her head, right?” and have Brendan Dassey guessing for several pages about all kinds of possible injuries to Halbachs head, because he seems to know absolutely nothing about the victim having been shot. Until they lose patience and actually directly TELL Dassey that Halbach was shot in the head. He simply, as always, confirms. After that, Dassey seems unable to name the place where she was shot at, and, only after more wild guessing and two “wrong” answers, Fassbender and Wiegert manage to direct him into the garage and on the floor.
So, the facts that
1.) Halbach was shot,
2.) was shot in the head and
3.) was shot in the head on the garage floor (where the bullet, Item FL, was later found)
are all exclusively introduced by the investigators and none of them by Brendan Dassey.
The question how probable it is, for such bullet to be found after more than 140 days, in a room which scientifically must be excluded as a crime scene, waiting on the floor in plain sight, after having allegedly been overlooked when that same room had been searched for 8 consecutive days in November 2005, and being found on the exact spot investigators clearly knew about BEFORE the alleged perpetrator did, is yours to answer.
If that bullet ever really contained the DNA of the victim is anything but certain. The alleged trace was entirely used up during the lab experiments by the state’s forensic scientist and can therefore never be independently checked again.
The state in its own documents freely admits that there is no other physical or other evidence, and not one single witness, to connect Brendan Dassey to Teresa Halbach or the murder of Teresa Halbach.
The state in its own documents also freely admits that it could never establish any motive for 16 year old Brendan Dassey to rape and murder a complete stranger he never even met.
This is the entire “case” against Brendan Dassey.
Every lay person can immediately see, that his conviction was wrongful and a plain, outrageous miscarriage of justice that never should have happened in the first place.
The Verdict against Brendan Dassey has zero integrity.
You are the Governor of Wisconsin, you do have the authority to grant clemency and you can and should commute the sentence of Brendan Dassey on the grounds of actual innocence.
NUMBER THREE: THE WISCONSIN JUSTICE SYSTEM DAMAGED ITS REPUTATION
The miscarriage of justice concerning Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey is one of the most highly publicized cases world-wide. Millions of viewers, abroad, especially in Europe have watched “Making A Murderer” in horror and dismay, and tens of thousands have become activists and have followed the case ever since, have read every single page of the original files, documents and court filings and have also followed Kathleen Zellner’s unyielding fight for Steven Averys freedom.
And we have watched the way in which the Wisconsin Justice System has presented itself to the world and international society with even more horror and dismay. By the way it dealt with the Brendan Dassey case the Wisconsin Justice System defined the public, international image of the state of Wisconsin.
The justice system in your state has exposed itself as highly dysfunctional and obviously incapable or even unwilling to fulfill its most basic duties and promises. The amount and perseverance of outright denial of reality within it are absolutely shocking.
We have seen how Brendan Dassey was failed again and again.
We have seen, how a vulnerable child could be subjected to the most harrowing emotional and psychological abuse by law enforcement, prosecution, the courts and the public, how confessions who are, frankly, not worth the paper they’re written upon, were manufactured, and how jurors could be ever so easily misled to convict on the sheer basis of lies when they were not even equipped with one single piece of evidence to somehow substantiate their verdict.
When the value of any society is to be judged upon how this society treats and protects its most vulnerable members, the state of Wisconsin in the case of Brendan Dassey has passed a more than devastating judgment on itself.
We have seen how the justice system in your state failed to acknowledge even the most fundamental principles of logic, and has refused repeatedly, to see, what is obvious for absolutely everyone who has eyes and ears.
We have seen, that justice was not served, and that the Wisconsin Justice System does not even seem to care about it. We have seen that fighting for the sheer finality of a verdict, no matter how, seems to have become its sole and only purpose, regardless of the truth, regardless of the costs, regardless of the concept of justice.
That is the unequivocal message that the Wisconsin Justice System has sent, so powerfully, resoundingly and loudly, that it was heard and keeps ringing its dissonant sound all around the world.
But a justice system, that willingly and easily forfeits justice as its underlying core principle, abdicates the justification for its own existence. And when a fallible system focuses primarily on justifying its fallacies and burying its mistakes, then it develops into an imminent threat for the ideas it was founded to protect.
You are the Governor of Wisconsin, you do have the authority to grant clemency and you can and should commute the sentence of Brendan Dassey on the grounds of necessary restoration of trust into the justice system.
CONCLUSION:
You are the Governor of Wisconsin, you do have the authority to grant clemency and you can and should commute the sentence of Brendan Dassey, a sentence that, in a modern, civilized society and within a functioning justice system, that bears at least similarity to its name, should never have been imposed upon him.
You should commute his sentence because the state’s system which you as Governor are the prime representative of, failed, abused and let down Brendan Dassey on every single step of his nightmarish ordeal, you should commute it because Brendan Dassey is – without question – factually innocent and justice is not served by the symbolic incarceration of people who never committed any crime; and you should commute his sentence because it is the only way by which you can restore some of the dignity and some of the trust that the Wisconsin Justice System has destroyed over the course of this case.
You represent the system that failed Brendan Dassey so brutally and completely, you personify, as Governor, the state, so often cited and referenced in the legal documents of the case, and, as a former educator, are in the unique position to understand, clearly , rationally, what went so horribly wrong in this case, better than almost anybody else.
Since you have the power to right this wrong, you have also the duty to do so. You can show an act of mercy that in this specific case becomes an act of justice.
We encourage you, we beg you, we implore you do just that.
Send him home, were he belonged from the get-go.
To paraphrase the words of Atticus Finch:
“Now, we are confident, that you will review, without passion, the evidence you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of god do your duty. In the name of god, believe Brendan Dassey”
Respectfully submitted,
Sincerely,
Stefan C. Limbrunner
Bavaria,
GERMANY