Making a Murderer, the compulsively watchable Netflix series that ate up a big chunk of the holidays for many of us, has a couple of major Chicago connections.
The future of his intellectually challenged nephew—who was 16 years old when he confessed to raping Halbach while she was chained to his uncle’s bed, slitting her throat, and helping torch her body—rests in large part with Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth. With Milwaukee-based attorney Robert Dvorak, the center has taken his case to federal court in Wisconsin, where a decision by district court magistrate judge William E. Duffin is pending.
The constitutional issues include whether Dassey’s confession was involuntary—whether the tactics used on him trumped his own will. Defense attorney Mark Fremgen, who replaced Kachinsky, can be seen in the documentary ascribing those tactics to the training that some police and investigators received from a Chicago firm, John E. Reid and Associates.
The one thing Drizin says he would like viewers of the film to understand is that “these interrogation tactics are not designed to be used with children and with people who are cognitively limited. Unless there’s a defense attorney present, it’s an unfair fight—it preys on their vulnerabilities and it increases the risk that they will confess to crimes they didn’t commit.”
