Manitowoc County Assistant District Attorney Michael Griesbach says that the wrongful conviction of Steven Avery was “an injustice that festered for years.”
Five years before Making a Murderer debuted on Netflix, Manitowoc County prosecutor Michael Griesbach took a deep dive into the the true-crime saga of Steven Avery and published a book exploring Avery’s wrongful conviction, exoneration and the grisly homicide that put Avery behind bars again.
Griesbach, who started working for Manitowoc County in 1991, also serves on the board of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, which helped free Avery in 2003. An advocate for reforms to the criminal justice system, he says he was “pretty ticked off” at his predecessors for their handling of the first Avery case.
“It was really clear that the police and the prosecutors did some bad stuff — horrible stuff,” says Griesbach, who published an excerpt of his book in Isthmus in 2011. He was so outraged by their conduct that in 2003 he took the case to then-state Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager for review. She declined to bring criminal charges or ethical violations against any of the involved officials.
But when Avery was accused and convicted again, this time for the 2005 killing of 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach, Griesbach says the criminal justice system got it right — an opinion he maintains, even in the face of renewed scrutiny brought on by Making a Murderer.
“I still firmly believe that Steven Avery is guilty,” he says.
The 10-episode documentary series was an immediate sensation when it began streaming on Netflix last month, earning high praise from critics and engrossing viewers with its depiction of Avery as a man repeatedly targeted by law enforcement and possibly framed by police for Halbach’s murder. More than 300,000 people have signed petitions calling for the release of Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, who was also convicted in the case.
But Griesbach says the documentary presents an “agenda-driven, one-sided narrative” that downplays the severity of Avery’s past run-ins with the law and omits key facts and evidence from the trial, such as the state’s cross-examination and rebuttal.
“It’s pretty disingenuous,” he says.
Making a Murderer presents Avery as a ne’er-do-well with a troubled past — he was cited for burning a cat and for running a woman off the road with his truck and holding her at gunpoint. The documentary characterizes the incident with the cat as accidental, but police reports show that Avery doused the animal in gasoline.
Griesbach says the truck incident is downplayed in the documentary as well. Avery says he confronted the woman, who was the wife of a sheriff’s deputy, after she spread rumors about him. But the police report says that Avery had been watching the woman with binoculars for weeks, sexually gratifying himself as she drove by his house and at one point running out into the road naked.
“It’s weird, but it happened,” Griesbach says. “For [the filmmakers] to leave all that out is telling.”
Former Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz, who served as the special prosecutor on the second Avery case, agrees, telling The New York Times that the documentary “really presents misinformation.” Kratz has received death threats from Avery supporters.
The law enforcement community in Manitowoc has also been “bombarded” with threats and criticism since the documentary aired, Griesbach says, with most of the contact coming from people outside Wisconsin.
“One guy emailed me last week [and said], ‘I’ve read your book, I’ve watched the Netflix documentary, and I’ve concluded that you are either an utter fool, or you’re in on it too,’” Griesbach says.
Despite his criticisms of Making a Murderer, Griesbach says the series has played an important role in drawing attention to failures within the legal system. He was particularly troubled by the interrogation techniques the police used on Dassey — an intellectually challenged minor who was questioned without legal representation and confessed to assaulting and helping kill Halbach. Dassey later recanted the story, and the documentary presents his statements as having been coerced.
“I think the courts need to look at interrogation techniques,” Griesbach says, adding that coerced confessions is a current topic of interest for the Wisconsin Innocence Project. “This is an issue that’s really important to explore.”
But beyond procedural reform to the criminal justice system, Griesbach says the most important factor in preventing wrongful convictions is ensuring that those in positions of power adhere to a code of ethics.
And while he doesn’t go so far as to place blame on the system for Halbach’s murder, he does wonder how things might have turned out if Avery had not been wrongly imprisoned.
“[Avery] suffered an injustice that festered for years,” Griesbach says. “If that hadn’t happened, who knows what else wouldn’t have happened.”
On Jan. 8, the suburban Chicago-area law firm Kathleen T. Zellner and Associates announced plans to represent Avery and present new evidence that could vacate his conviction. Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel told the Wisconsin State Journal that his office has not received any new information regarding the Avery case, but that the state Department of Justice would “certainly take that seriously.”
