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Conviction against Brendan Dassey in Teresa Halbach murder overturned
Conviction against Brendan Dassey in Teresa Halbach murder overturned
MILWAUKEE -- A major ruling for the man convicted for his role in the murder of Teresa Halbach. Brendan Dassey was convicted back in 2007. Now, a federal court ruling has overturned that conviction on Friday, August 12th. The court says he was coerced into a confession.
Brendan Dassey
This is a case that received national attention when the documentary, "Making a Murderer" was released on Netflix this past winter.
FOX6 News has been reading through the 91-page federal court decision overturning Dassey's conviction.
Brendan Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, were both arrested in connection to the death of Teresa Halbach -- a photographer who had been hired to come to Avery's Manitowoc County property to take photographs.
Teresa Halbach
The case sparked protests and calls for the convictions to be thrown out.
Friday, after years of appeals, a federal judge overturned Dassey's conviction ruling investigators made false promises to him during his interview and his confession was coerced.
The ruling states, "he did not seem to grasp the seriousness of the matter."
Dassey was just 16 years old when he was arrested. Once he was in custody, he confessed to helping his uncle rape and murder Halbach.
Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey
"His lawyer wasn't there, he was prompted, he was promised things, he had very clear mental limitations. At the end of this whole thing he thought he was going to go back to school at the end of the day," said Janine Geske, former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice.
Brendan Dassey
Geske says the video confession raised red flags.
"More people, legal observers, that saw it, I think were very uncomfortable about the way that interrogation happened," said Geske.
Dassey is represented by two attorneys from Northwestern Law's Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth.
They released the following statement:
After hearing the news, Steven Avery's former attorney, Jerry Buting, tweeted this out:
Dassey is currently serving his prison sentence at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage. The court has ordered that he be freed from prison within 90 days, unless the case is appealed.