First of all, great stuff here sleuthers. I've watched the doc twice because the first time I saw it, I felt something wasn't right with the way it was presented. It was way too one sided. I work in television editing and I know how EASILY things can be manipulated and you can persuade the audience to feel a certain way with various techniques. In particular, music. It seemed the filmmakers tried to get the audience to like SA and his family at every opportunity. Music played a big role. Anytime you had photos of SA and his family it was sweet, guitar, beginning to a beautiful day music. They forced you to feel good. Any time you had the police or prosecutor, it was dark and brooding music. Of course that is part of filmmaking, playing with emotions, but you have to be very careful when crafting a documentary.
I think the filmmakers definitely had an agenda. They succeeded at showing our system isn't nearly perfect and that people with no money are railroaded. If you have money, you can get a good attorney and "create" a defense of reasonable doubt. To witness, SA had a $400,000 settlement with which to purchase the best defense attorneys money can buy. But I think in successfully delivering the message of an imperfect system, they really did leave out important facts that could make the audience believe SA was guilty or even a bad person. There is way too much they decided to leave out of their "documentary". I've heard the term "defense propaganda piece" and I truly believe that suits the film better than the term documentary. One example, they downplayed the whole cat burning thing, letting SA describe it as, what was it, "messing around". I'm sorry but that cat burning can be described as nothing but heinous. And the filmmakers would not go into that, not because of "lack of time", but specifically because it makes SA look really, really bad. And the mission of the film is to make you pull for the underdog and rage against the system.
Other things like the whole incident with him running a woman off the road and pointing a gun in her face. Who does that? Criminals. That's a violent thing to do. SA is a career criminal. And honestly, if he wasn't a law breaker in the first place, he would never even have been considered a suspect for the rape in 1985. His actions, more than police actions, made him a suspect in that murder case. Would police consider someone with a clean record a suspect in the murder, generally not. Would they suspect people they know to be involved in criminal activity, absolutely. Now, they f'd up because they targeted him when they were already aware of the actual rapist and should have pursued that further instead of focusing so heavily on SA. But if SA hadn't recently run a woman off the road and pointed a gun in her face, he wouldn't have even been considered. Also, I do believe 6 years of his 18 years in prison were justifiably for the gun incident. Not sure if it was to be served concurrently but do believe he was convicted of that as well. He spent 12 years in jail for a crime he didn't commit which I wholeheartedly agree is a terrible miscarriage of justice and he deserved a settlement.
In the murder case, SA is super good at proclaiming his innocence. It seems like he's a great liar to me more than anything and I think that most sociopaths are probably good at that because they have no conscience. I also believe Brendan Dassey helped murder or helped clean up the murder. Bleach on his jeans on the very day there is a murder. He admits to his mom it came from helping SA clean the garage. It's just a bridge too far that he happened to be cleaning SA's garage the very day of the murder. This combined with SA's phone calls and being the last person to admit seeing TH alive is pretty strong. So much more to point out that's already been covered. Oh, Brendan telling his mom that SA would touch him inappropriately. That whole family has a history of sexual issues, convictions, etc. that were not even talked about in the doc. It's portrayed as a sweet family from the parents on down.
One other thing I've been trying to find is a report that SA was under investigation for two separate rapes in 2005, before he was arrested for the gun violation and later charged with Halbach's murder. Can't remember where I saw it. But I believe it was a newspaper report that said SA had confided to his girlfriend Jodi that he did indeed rape a particular girl. The story said the girl didn't want to come forward in order to maintain her privacy. And SA was already being charged with the murder, so it wasn't pursued. Anybody else hear about this? Dang, I wish I would've bookmarked it or something.
because most of us don't have super good eyesight LOL
