Street Roots • Nov. 11-17, 2016
News
Page 9
" II yo« fust bought this street paper and yon are worried about criminal justice, you need to worry about why
the people you walk by, and have simple transactions with every day, can't take for granted a roof over their head, or a
next meal. That's where justice begins. Not in the courthouse but out on the street corner where you bought this paper."
DEAN STRANG I STEVEN AVERY'S DEFENSE ATTORNEY IN "M A K IN G A MURDERER"
probably still would’ve done i t I mean,
we’ve both done high-profile cases before,
where there’s been more local reaction. But
this is different
judicial craft, whether you agree with the
outcome or not. I do. I think it was the right
outcome, but it is important that it was
done in the right way.
D.S.: For myself, I wonder, because I
remember distinctly at the time, once we’d
decided to cooperate with the filmmakers,
thinking, ‘OK, they’re bright and they’re
hardworking but they are, after all, students.
They are talking about making a
documentary.’ I remember reassuring
myself that if they sell their movie, it’ll be
110 minutes in a theatrical release in some
arthouse in Greenwich Village and 17
people will ever see it. I remember telling
myself that. (Laughs.) I got that one wrong.
INSP: Are you convinced that both Avery
and Dassey are innocent of Halbach’s murder?
J.S.: At the most, we thought there might
have been a DVD that was way down in the
catalogue of mail-order through Netflix
mailing or Blockbuster, or whatever it might
be. There were really only a few
documentaries like that at the time ... and
really only one that had given the defense
perspective - a film called “The Staircase”
that very few people have seen.
M AKING A MURDERER'VNETFLIX
Attorney Jerry Buting defends Steven Avery during Avery’s murder trial.
INSP: Did you ever worry that “Making a
Murderer” made Teresa Halbach’s death into
water-cooler entertainment?
INSP: We heard in the program about there
being hundreds of thousands of dollars
available for Avery’s defense. It sounds like a
lot of money, but, as I understand, it is
actually not that lucrative to take on these
J.B.: The case or the program? Not the
case.
INSP: Not the case as it happened in the.
courtroom, but the film and then the ongoing
coverage of the case became something that
people discussed in the way they discuss any
TV program.
s o r ts o f cases. H o w hard do you have to think
before taking on a job like that?
D.S.: There was enough money here that
our partners were not going to banish us
from our law firms. Was it going to be a loss
on paper? Yes. Was it going to be a
disastrous loss? No. It’s not just the short
term economic decisions that govern
whether you’re going to take a case like
th a t Part of it is, is the case compelling to
me? Do I like the client? Do I think there’s
a potential injustice that’s developing? It
was a chance to work with Jerry Buting
again. We had worked together before and
that goes toward whether it will be a
valuable experience.
In the long run, a case that gets heavy
publicity can potentially advance a lawyer’s
career. In the short term, it doesn’t
necessarily mean you’ll get more work. But
in the long run, if your colleagues generally
think that you handled yourself well - win or
lose - it can tend to burnish your reputation
and lead to referrals over time. There’s also
the wonderful ethic of our profession that
says sometimes you do things for free or
sometimes you take a loss, because it’s the
right thing to do.
J.S.: And you have to think, it’s not just
the economic cost of working on a case this
big. They are just black holes for the rest of
your practice. You get all-consumed in that.
It also affects your family life, and we knew
th a t All these things had to be sorted out
before I agreed that I wanted to participate.
I already had another big Innocence Project
case going on already that I was doing pro
bono. (The Innocence Project is a nonprofit
legal organization committed to exonerating
wrongly convicted people; Strang and
Buting are both involved with it.)
D.S.: “Convinced of innocence” is not the
way I’ve ever put i t I’ve never been at all
convinced of guilt, and I’ve suspected
innocence. But I’m not omniscient; I wasn’t
there. In the end, this is part of what we are
trying to talk to the public about. Guilt or
innocence is really not the modest question
that the criminal justice system can hope to
answer. The modest - but critically
important - question for the criminal justice
System and for human affairs is: Is the state
able to prove your guilt beyond a reasonable
doubt so that, with whatever level of
uncertainty remains, we’re comfortable with
taking somebody’s liberty for the rest of his
life? I think that both of us are utterly
convinced that this case was not proven
beyond reasonable doubt.
"M AK IN G A MURDERER'VNETFLIX
Attorney Dean Strang defends Avery during the trial.
D.S.: Yeah, and you had kids in high
school.
INSP: K>w certainly both looked like you
cared beyond the paycheck, that there was an
element of it being the right thing to do. Did it
have a big impact on both of your lives at the
time?
J.B.: No question. For two months, we
had an apartment that was an hour and a
half from our homes. For most of the two
months we were there, I would come home
for less than 24 hours every weekend, and
that was it. I would try to get home for
Saturday mornings when the kids were
having their basketball games or whatever.
INSP: Brendan Dassey (Avery’s nephew,
who was also convicted for Halbach’s murder,
in a separate trial) has recently had his
murder conviction overturned, on the basis
that his confession was coerced. He is to be
released within 90 days unless the state wins a
retrial. Did you think this was the right
decision?
J.S.: Absolutely. In fact we were very
disappointed that the state courts never did.
Although, not terribly surprised because in
Wisconsin those state court judges are
elected. And try as they might, it’s very hard
for an elected judge to throw a confession
out that could mean a whole case might get
dismissed. I frankly never really expected
that either one of these defendants, if they
lost at the trial, would succeed at appeal
until they got to federal court, where it is
very different because the judges are
appointed. They don’t have to run for
election, and they can therefore make the
decision on the law rather than whether
their opinion would be politically unpopular.
D.S.: What I’d like to add to that is not
only do I think that the federal court came
to the right outcome, I think it came to the
right outcome in the right way. Even people
who disagree with the outcome probably
would acknowledge this federal court in the
right way. It was indisputably a thoughtful
decision, a factually well-documented
decision, a careful decision and a thorough
decision. The judge gave full and fair
consideration to every argument the state
was making, every argument the defense
was making and what prior courts had said
that bound him. It was a very good piece of
J.B.: Some of it did concern us. That’s
why we wanted to do a speaking tour. It can
be dealt with in a very shallow way, or you
can deal with the real issues. There have
been people who have taken it very
seriously. There are people on social media,
on Reddit, where they’ve just gone down in
the rabbit hole. Some of it is bizarre, but a
lot is n o t Some of it is very well thought-out
All in all, I think it has not been abused as
entertainm ent There is some entertainment
aspect to it; otherwise you’re not going to
get people interested in watching it.
D.S.: I guess it’s entertainment in the
sense that people watch a film in their
leisure time, but the importance of any
victim’s experience or any defendant’s
experience - or their families’ experiences
- is not a voyeuristic peak at their grief or
their pain, and it’s certainly not revelling in
the details of somebody’s death. The
importance of any victim or any defendant
or any family member’s experience is in
what it tells us about how well we’re doing
in the criminal justice system in trying to
provide justice for victims, for their families,
for defendants, and ultimately for all of us.
You certainly can say, I’ll never commit a
serious crime. You cannot say that you’ll
never be accused of one. And you certainly
cannot say that you’ll never be the victim of
one. So you can wind up involuntarily
needing whatever effort at justice lawyers
and judges and police officers can muster.
There is a great public interest, I think, in
See ATTORNEYS, page 10