'Making A Murderer' Conviction Upheld: Court

CHICAGO, IL — A federal appeals court has upheld Brendan Dassey's conviction, saying his confession to police was voluntary.

The 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Friday that police properly obtained Brendan Dassey’s confession. The decision means that the Making A Murderer documentary subject will remain behind bars.

The court ruled 4 to 3 that Dassey’s confession not coerced by investigators.

Dassey was charged and later convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse and second-degree sexual assault in the 2005 murder of photographer Teresa Halbach in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.

Just 16 at the time of the murder, Dassey was convicted of helping his uncle, Steven Avery, cover up the crime in a case made famous by the Netflix documentary "Making a Murderer." Dassey was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole for 41 years.

Dassey's release blocked
In November 2016, a U.S. magistrate judge ordered Dassey's release from prison. But Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel moved quickly, filing an emergency motion in Wisconsin's Seventh Circuit court seeking a stay of the judge's ruling.

Ultimately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago blocked Dassey's release while considering the appeal. Dassey remained behind bars at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.

Conviction overturned

In August 2016, a federal judge overturned Dassey's conviction, ruling that investigators used deceptive interrogation tactics to coerce a teenage Dassey to confess to helping Avery rape and kill 25-year-old Halbach.

In that ruling, the judge said Dassey's youth and "intellectual deficits" played a role in his conviction. The judge's decision noted, "It is clear how the investigators' actions amounted to deceptive interrogation tactics that overbore Dassey's free will."

Details of the state's appeal

The tactics investigators used were "not constitutionally impermissible acts," Schimel contends in a statement released at the time of his appeal.

"We believe the magistrate judge's decision that Brendan Dassey's confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law," Schimel said in a prepared statement.

"Two state courts carefully examined the evidence and properly concluded that Brendan Dassey's confession to sexually assaulting and murdering Teresa Halbach with his uncle, Steven Avery, was voluntary, and the investigators did not use constitutionally impermissible tactics."

Watch Dassey's initial police interview for yourself:

Patch.com will update this story as more information is released.

Main image: 2007 file photo of Dassey/Dan Powers/The Post-Crescent, Pool, File