My very first post on MAM highlighted what I felt were the real issues we were getting a look at. and I still feel exactly the same. ( incidentally, Missy, your first post was three posts from mine lol! We both watched at the same time! Haha!) I wanted to re-post that first post here, because
these are still the issues I would hope to see recognized, when Zellner does what she does best. MAM is not about Steve Avery
sbm
"One thing that is beyond a shadow of a doubt; Making A Murderer exposed the problems in the system with brutal clarity.
"The documentary wasn't about whether Avery was guilty or innocent. It was about the abuse of authority;
confirmation bias;
mishandled conflicts of interest;
the fiction of presumed innocence;
the self-fulfilling prophecy of criminal suspicion;
the impact of emotional coercion in securing witness testimony;
the indulgence and self-congratulation of white hat press conferences and political posturing;
the saccharine of violence-reporting in the media;
the low quality product of state appointed public defenders;
the difficulty of maintaining a plea of innocence in the face of diffident (and seemingly lazy) counsel whose livelihood would be much simpler if everyone would just plea-bargain;
the dilemmas that poverty and low IQ present in a judicial system which presupposes and requires threshold levels of both money and intelligence in order to yield a just outcome;
the impact of pretrial publicity in prejudicing would be jurors;
the unimpeachable status of police 'character' and 'testimony';
the fraternal devotion that officers harbor primarily for their own;
the moral hazard of paid professional witnesses supplying scientific support as hired and directed by the prosecuting team;
the delivering of awards for securing high-profile convictions;
the cavalier and callous attitude that justice officials and employees often have with regard to the frustrated and broken lives of simple suspects;
the inadequacy of appearances in identifying sexual deviants/predators (Right Kratz?);
the troubling idea that a justice system may sufficiently fulfill it's social/communal purpose by merely providing the illusion of justice.
I think the directors did an excellent job of highlighting those problem elements of criminal litigation that are most relevant to cases beyond Avery. I'm persuaded that these types of problems plague almost all criminal proceedings. Again, the question is not whether Avery was or was not guilty (even though this is the leitmotiv that captivates the audience), it's about whether we can trust every single one of the thousands of other convictions reached in a system that is fraught with all of the above impurities."
I imagine most of us knew there was corruption in the system, but the In-Your-Face depiction of the callous disregard for the lives of those deemed somehow, less deserving of a fair shake, was what knocked the wind right out of me.
Last edited by Safeguard; 01-06-2016
http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...n-Steven-Avery-2/page14&highlight=steve+avery