Brendan Dassey, one of the central figures of the Netflix hit series Making A Murderer, will be making another attempt to be released from behind bars. Dassey, who confessed to helping his uncle Steven Avery murderer photographer Teresa Halbach, was 16 at the time and has served 13 years for the crime.
However, Dassey has long had his defenders who believe Dassey was coerced into his confession.
Now, his legal time is set to file for clemency.
“We’re filing a petition for executive clemency with Governor Tony Evers of Wisconsin,” Dassey’s attorney Laura Nirider said, via CBS News. “This is his best shot, and the moment is now. The moment is now for Brendan to come home.
“When Brendan Dassey was in special education, he was in 10th grade, he required an aide to sit next to him in the classroom to help him understand the teachers’ spoken sentences. Then shift him into the interrogation room where he was barraged with 1,500 questions over 3.5 hours… You don’t have to be a lawyer to understand how an interrogation like that would overwhelm someone like Brendan Dassey.”
Dassey’s team is hoping for a pardon or to have his sentence shortened to time served.
“Brendan Dassey, by and through his undersigned counsel Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law, Seth Waxman of WilmerHale, and Robert Dvorak of Halling & Cayo, hereby respectfully requests that the Governor of Wisconsin exercise his clemency powers by granting him a pardon or commutation of sentence to time served,” the filing reads. “This is Brendan’s first petition for executive clemency.
“Should the Governor decline to issue a full pardon on all three convictions, Brendan asks at least for his freedom via a commutation of his remaining sentence(s) to time served with no remaining supervision time. This Board has not, to undersigned counsel’s knowledge, adopted any rules limiting eligibility for commutations. Undersigned counsel also notes that any form of relief that does not include a pardon of the second-degree sexual assault charge will likely require Brendan to register as a sex offender.”
You can read the entire filing for clemency from attorney Laura Nirider here.
