Viewer Privilege and how "Missing Evidence" invalidates Making a Murderer

Making a Murderer came in on a storm of recommendations and insistent family friends saying we'd get hooked. My girlfriend and I were skeptical. It was a TV show being called "addicting" and "shocking." Right, I rolled my eyes, these are what everyone says about new TV shows.



Steven Avery, a man exonerated of rape after serving eighteen years in prison winds up accused of murder. The problem is there seemed to be a degree of bias in the county police department's investigation of Avery's rape case, and the same officials are once again involved in this murder case.

As a viewer, you have a lot of sympathy for Avery. The show explains that he has a low IQ, he had a case against the department because of the exoneration, they had a lot of money to lose. The show, even from the very start, is approaching with a case of framing.

His defense lawyers took up this position in the court case. The show concerns itself for episodes about the evidence involved in the framing defense and in the prosecution of murder. And yet at every turn logic seems to say, Steven Avery would not have done this. And equally, every turn says the police department must have framed him.

Your confusion and frustration and doubts build and build as the show goes on until it's replaced by a cold rage. A man so clearly innocent with clearly so much to lose as Steven Avery against a police department who clearly had more to lose with Avery being free than in jail turns into a solid battle of good versus evil in which evil wins. We watch, sad, as Avery goes down for murder, his nephew - an equally inept and easily manipulated young man - goes down for murder, and you're left wanting to sign petitions and rally a coup of the Wisconsin Government.

At least this is basically how the show affected the people who watched it. And myself included. I was angry but something in the back of my mind seemed off. The show was so obvious, how in the world could anyone have convicted him? It just didn't make sense. Something had to be missing.

And something was.

In the form of an article featuring "missing" evidence from the show, I seemed to have found precisely what I thought must be missing. Of course, Avery was doing creepy stuff to Halbech days before she winds up missing. And my response was why wasn't that on the show?

That's when I knew I was going to write this blog post.

Originally I wanted to write something that would offer an alternative viewpoint on the Steven Avery case in Making a Murderer. I wanted to point out that he very well could have done it, that some of this missing evidence made me believe he did do it.

But that article left me with the same feeling the show did. I mean, if this was here, it should've been obvious. And I tried to look for a source and couldn't find the original one, it seemed like this popped up out of nowhere on the internet.

However, before we throw out the "missing" evidence as fake, I want to make a point. The filmmakers directly responded to the idea that there was missing evidence from the show. They did not specifically respond to the claims directly instead opting for "we used what we felt was necessary," and that's essentially all I need to tackle this topic and say what I want to say.

I have two points: 1. In leaving out evidence that directly connects Avery with the predatorial mindset capable of attacking Halbech, the filmmakers have committed the same crime by all of us that the prosecutors committed on Avery, and 2. As simple viewers of a biased TV show, we have absolutely no say in matters of judicial grayness that led to the sentencing of Avery. That we are missing ANY evidence speaks to an inability to properly process anything other than the filmmaker's opinions on the subject.


Left Out Evidence

Evidence was left out of the show and what remains is what is an approximation of the viewpoints of the defense and prosecution in the case. The defense lawyer from the show and the filmmakers have both said this. They characterize showing all the evidence as "showing 200 to 240 hours of courtroom proceedings" which "no one would watch."

We have to implicitly trust the filmmakers to pick and decide the evidence we'll be most interested in. And when the whole show begins by building a case for us to distrust one party and trust another, we're already playing catch up.

Imagine, for a moment, that someone you never met told you a story about how their wife cheated on them by sleeping with their brother. Now remember, you have no connection to either party. This guy could be anyone. These filmmakers could be anyone. Then they begin backing up their claims, but later you find out that they left out the part where they also cheated on their wife.

It may sound like I'm comparing apples to oranges, but one should not underestimate the storytelling process.

Because let's be honest, how interested would we have been if it was obvious Steven Avery was guilty? Is that a show that's going to change True Crime forever? Is that even what the audience is interested in?

The fact is a lot was left out because the show had to be made watchable. But what gets sacrificed there is our ability as viewers to make an informed and educated opinion. Most of us have really only interacted with this show by watching it, or being on social network.


The Problem of Viewer Privilege

Making a Murderer as a show has unearthed and exposed something I think is, unfortunately, true about our justice system. The fact is that prosecutors and personnel involved with the actual case have somewhere in the thousands of hours more hands-on experience, deliberation, and office work involved with the case than the whole internet on ten hours of sitting in bed and judging the whole case from a birds-eye perspective.

There is a consistent means of the show bread crumbing us along - uses of traditional storytelling, such as cliff-hanging and evidence manipulating, parallel scenes and non-chronological information - which continues a falsely applied scheme of a drama.

For instance the fact that we are privy to only five minutes or so of the Dassey interview which was used to prosecute Steven Avery. The show makes a point that the prosecutors only show two and a half hours of a four-hour tape. We saw ten minutes of a four-hour tape and we are judging this? The jury saw more than we did, the investigators saw more than we did, and the filmmakers admittedly saw more than we did.

Once you've been preached and drenched in a single viewpoint there's a defensive musk around your whole body. Alternative points of view, no matter how much you should consider them, will come off as fake, wrong, entirely untrue. It becomes incredibly impossible to remember that you could have been lied to from the start, that someone could've left out something that would've made you far more balanced in your judgment.

And while I have not a shred of evidence by which to properly proclaim that Making a Murderer has done something wrong, I need to point out that no one truly knows if they did or not besides the very people involved in that case. We have to trust.

And the thing is we really can afford to.

We have no direct involvement in this. How many of us have the last name, Avery? Who here knows Steven personally? How many of us were with him when the supposed actions happened?

We have no stake in what happens here. Signing that petition is like playing barbie with people's lives?

Here's the thing: What if Steven Avery killed her? And you knew it, and then someone made a show that riled everyone else up into believing he didn't, furthermore, did so on such little evidence, such a small part of the case built against him, that everyone's fury was inspired by something so small as to be quashed if they only knew the truth?

And there's nothing you can say that argues that that isn't the case here.

It's alarming to me the amount of vitriol this show inspired, not only in me but everyone I talk to about it. That we act as if someone is insulting our favorite high school teacher, or accusing a personal friend. Making a Murderer was clearly made from the viewpoint that Avery was innocent and in presenting itself as such has made us all shoulder its argument and call for motivations and movements that we don't really know ourselves, weren't there to witness at any point, and with a substantially small amount of the evidence used in the case.


What We Can Do

If this article has somehow come off as saying I didn't like the show, it's only because of the social outcry it seems to have created. Making a Murderer is a very affecting and interesting shift to what we traditionally know as a True Crime show. While the reality of editing and viewpoint can be as corrupting to the truth as the "reality" in Reality TV, long-form true crime shows about a single case now have a possibility of getting made. Imagine how many other cases would benefit from such an up close look at the evidence and people involved as this show did?

As far as what we can do in terms of Avery's case or learning the truth, we just have to go forward with a healthy dose of skepticism. I don't mean we need to whistleblow bullshit on everything that's presented, but when so many people have an opinion we need to decide if we trust the people giving us the information.

I do believe the filmmakers have made a genuinely powerful case for the framing of Steven Avery. What they did not do was convince me of his innocence, especially not in the face of potentially missing evidence. It is wrong, in my mind, to ask for a pardon of Avery. I think it's correct to ask for a retrial.

It also makes a compelling argument in the case of reviewing how we use eyewitness testimony in cases and the pressure that investigators, detectives, and police use to get these testimonies. The viewpoint that any witness story must be the truth just because they told a police officer seems to be as inundated in police proceedings as the idea of black and minority males being physically dangerous criminals worthy of being shot. American Police philosophy needs to undergo a serious change to adapt to the social environment it has found itself in.

And furthermore, if you're worried about people "making a murderer" ensure that you aren't "making an innocent."

------
Plug Time!

Did you like this post? If so, consider signing up for the e-mail list so you never miss out on the latest film, tv, music, or video game post from Expository Conundrum! (Hint: It's in the upper right-hand corner of the page!!)

Also, consider donating to the blog! Your eyes are enough, but generosity and support can go a long way to making us both feel a lot better. Support your local artist (by local I mean Internet local.)

And finally, you can hang around the Facebook page or Twitter to keep up on Social Media. This doubles as the easiest way to harass me, but you wouldn’t do that would you?

-----

Making a Murderer is available through Netflix, but there are several books and products related to the show. If you found the mystery and corruption intriguing consider checking out the Paradise Lost trilogy, about three boys accused of the murder of a child in their home town.