Read Brendan Dassey's Letter to Wisconsin Gov. Asking for Pardon
In April, Brendan Dassey wrote a handwritten letter to Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers asking for a pardon.
Now, his attorneys and celebrities alike are pushing for that letter to become reality.
(Read the full letter below)
The letter from Dassey to Evers is a list of things Dassey wrote about himself "for you to get to know me." It reveals things like his favorite drink is Orange Crush, he likes Doritos and Funyuns, his favorite season is fall and more.
It ends by asking Evers for a pardon "because I am innocent and want to go home."
"If I would get to go home, I would like to get a job involving video games," he writes. "I would like to help take care of my mom and one day have a son and daughter of my own. I would name my daughter Grace and my son Mizar which is the name of a star in the big dipper."
The letter has since been tweeted by Kim Kardashian West, who urged Evers to read it.
Attorneys for the "Making a Murderer" subject have filed a petition for clemency in his case, asking Evers to pardon or commute his sentence "on the basis of actual innocence and his extreme sentence." (Read the full petition here)
Dassey is serving a life sentence after being convicted of first-degree homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilation of a corpse following the 2005 murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. His uncle, Steven Avery, is also serving a life sentence for the crime.
Attorneys Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin, both with the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University, argued Dassey was a 16-year-old high school "special education student with no criminal history" at the time of his confession to the crime. He has an IQ of 74, and a speech-language function in the bottom percentile, they said.
"After undergoing four police interrogations in 48 hours, he found himself charged with involvement in one of the highest-profile homicides in Wisconsin history – and, subsequently, sentenced to life in prison – based on a videotaped confession about which state and federal judges, national police authorities, prosecutorial groups, and psychological experts have since expressed the gravest doubts," they wrote in their petition. "Indeed, his confession is disproven by the physical evidence found at the crime scene, including DNA. The confession is also marked by Brendan’s utter inability to describe accurately the method by which Ms. Halbach had been killed until he was told by police that she had been shot in the head. And it is punctuated by Brendan’s staggeringly guileless requests to go back to school even after agreeing to confess to murder."
The petition to Evers is the latest attempt at clearing Dassey in the case, which has been closely followed by Netflix in multiple seasons of "Making a Murderer."
The series followed Avery and Dassey as they try to overturn their convictions. Avery had argued that his conviction was based on planted evidence and false testimony.
The series spawned conjecture about the pair's innocence, but those who worked on the cases accused the filmmakers of leaving out key pieces of evidence and presenting a biased view of what happened.
Previously, a federal judge in Milwaukee overturned Dassey's conviction, but several legal proceedings later, an appeals court kept Dassey behind bars and the Supreme Court declined to weigh in on the controversial case.
"Like no other case in this State, and indeed few around the globe, the case of Brendan Dassey cries out for relief. Seeking clemency from the Governor is now one of the last remaining legal options available to him," the 26-page petition filed Wednesday reads.
In a press conference Wednesday, attorneys, joined by a large group of experts and advocates, described the many issues they saw in Dassey's confession.
"From the first interrogation through the last these investigators told Brendan they were not cops - they were more like father figures or friends," Drizin said. "They threatened him by telling him that the district attorney’s office was ready to charge him with a crime or a cover-up of a crime."
They argued the confession was coerced.
"He actually believed that he would be set free if he just told police what they wanted to hear," Drizin said, adding "true confessors don’t need help with their narratives."
Both Avery and Dassey are still fighting for freedom.
Photo Credit: Herald Times Reporter/Eric Young via AP, Pool/File
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