'Making A Murderer' State Asks Supreme Court To Deny Dassey

MANITOWOC COUNTY, WI — The odyssey that is Brendan Dassey's murder conviction in the October 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach in Wisconsin has taken another abrupt turn as the Wisconsin Department of Justice officially filed a request with the U.S. Supreme Court to deny Dassey's request for a hearing before the high court.

In a brief file on May 10, the Department of Justice claims that investigators used proper interrogation techniques to question and interrogate Dassey following Halbach's murder.

"Throughout the three-hour, noncustodial interview, investigators used only standard techniques such as adopting a sympathetic tone, encouraging honesty, and challenging his story when they believed he was lying," the Wisconsin Department of Justice said in the brief. "Less than an hour in, Petitioner unexpectedly confessed to investigators that, at his uncle’s urging, he had raped the victim while she was tied up in bed and begging for mercy, and soon thereafter confessed to helping
kill her and burn her body. Petitioner now asserts that investigators fed him this confession, but the only plausible source for his admissions was his guilty conscience, as investigators did not even suspect several key aspects of his confession, such as his rape of the victim."

Read the full brief here: https://www.supremecourt.gov/D...

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In 2005, Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, were charged in Halbach's killing. She was shot twice in the head, and her bones and belongings were found burned in a barrel near Avery's trailer. Both Dassey and Avery were sentenced to life terms in 2007, convicted of first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault, and mutilation of a corpse.

Halbach, 25, was an aspiring photographer who was hired to take photographs for Auto Trader magazine when she disappeared.

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.

Making a Murder premiered on Nexflix in December 2015. The 10-episode series was filmed over a course of ten years. It covers the life of Avery as a worker at an auto salvage yard in Manitowoc. The series covers his role as well as covers the arrest, prosecution and conviction of Dassey in the murder of Halbach.

Here are recordings from Dassey's interrogation by authorities during their investigation:

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