Steven Avery’s Former Attorney Speaks Out

Keith Findley, co-director of the

Wisconsin Innocence Project

, penned an op-ed for the

Washington Post

regarding the immensely popular Netflix series “Making a Murderer.” Findley, who represented Steven Avery in his post-conviction appeal of the rape of Penny Beerntsen for which he was exonerated in 2005, said it’s impossible to know solely from a documentary series whether or not Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey are innocent of the subsequent murder of Teresa Halbach.  He notes however that the “injustices the series suggest are hardly unique.” 

“The enduring takeaway ought to be the recognition that the criminal justice system, as a human system, is inevitably flawed,” Findley writes. “It does sometimes send innocent people to prison. And while most police, prosecutors, defense lawyers and judges are good, honest people who do their best to achieve justice, they do sometimes fail and even, on occasion, cross the line into misconduct in their zeal to secure what they perceive to be a just outcome.”

Findley calls for law enforcement to comply with the best practices for eyewitness identification and interrogation, but also to have the humility to admit to mistakes, learn from them and never commit them again.

Read the op-ed

here

.