Making A Murderer

I finished the series Making A Murderer. While it was an excellent documentary on storytelling, I had complicated feelings on quite a few things.

1. As presented in the documentary, there seems to be some serious issues going on with law enforcement. Wrongful conviction is one. I believe Brendon is innocent, at least.

2. The documentary is shot from the perspective and assumption that Steve Avery is innocent, as you probably can tell from the title “Making A Murderer” — someone is trying to make him a murderer. I found it put a tremendous effort on how Steven’s attorneys fought for him, but not presenting a wholistic view on all available evidence — I did a bit research online after finishing the show, and noticed quite a lot of evidence was left off of the series because of the overall time limitation. Understandable, but disturbing at the same time. Well, the audience is not lawyers, you can say that.

3. If not Steven, who else committed the crime? Who else planned to kill and burn Theresa, and did it in a place that was so closed to Steven’s home however let it go unnoticed? Nobody saw any trace of burning fire or burned stuff? I don’t have a clue about this.

4. I came across a 30-mininterview with Steven’s ex-fiancée Jodi. She said Steven looked a good person outside but a monster behind a closed door, and she believed he’s guilty and capable of committing the crime. While I’m holding my thoughts on this, I do think as audience, we can be biased if our understanding of this case is entirely based on this documentary.

5. Some of the attorneys from this cases have started working on wrongfully convicted cases and thinking what can be a better framework to find truths for them. I found that gives me great hope for a better society.

6. Oh my, humans are such complicated animals.