Media Rants By Tony Palmeri
From the March 2016 edition of the SCENE
Like large numbers of Netflix subscribers, I binge watched Laura Ricciardi
and Moira Demos’ “Making a Murderer.” Before watching the series, my knowledge
of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey was similar to most Wisconsinites: I knew
that Avery spent 18 years in jail for a crime the Innocence Project proved he
did not commit, got released with much fanfare and not too long afterwards was
convicted of murdering young photographer Teresa Halbach. The evidence against
the hapless Dassey never seemed as strong, but I remember in 2006 being
convinced by prosecutor Ken Kratz’s media presentations that he was probably
guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
After watching the series I’m not quite ready to say that I think Avery/Dassey
are innocent or even that enough reasonable doubt exists to warrant a new trial.
But I am troubled by two things. First, in hindsight it is now clear that media
coverage (especially television) of the Avery arrest and trial in 2006 and 2007
was awful. Second and more important, outrageous wrongful convictions are
something that people of color in American have had to deal with for many
generations. Why has there been so little public outrage at that fact?
On the awfulness of the media: some of the most cringe inducing scenes
in “Making a Murderer” involve press conferences with prosecutor Ken Kratz.
Most of the so-called journalists in the room come off as deer caught in
headlights; they seemed unable or unwilling to press the prosecutor to support
his statements. The most egregious example occurred on March 2, 2006 when Kratz held a press conference providing lurid details about how Ms. Halbach was
brutally raped, stabbed, shot, and burned to death by Avery and Dassey. The
press conference, which included charges for which Kratz did not have evidence and were ultimately not what Avery was convicted of, succeeded in making it next to impossible to impanel a jury that did not
already have an impression of the case. Because media outlets across the state
chose to report Kratz’s comments, Avery’s attorneys saw no benefit to asking to
move the trial out of Manitowoc County.
In fairness to the media, they could not have known in 2006 that Mr.
Kratz would turn out to be a major league dirtbag. On the other hand,
Journalism 101 should have taught them to be more inquisitive before becoming
mouthpieces for the prosecution, especially given what we now know were highly questionable methods used to extract a confession from Dassey.
What about the lack of public outrage over wrongful convictions? Given
the massive public outrage as regards Avery’s case (over a half million people
signed an online petition asking President Obama to pardon him—something he has
no power to do), you would think that wrongful convictions are rare. Not so.
Reporting about the National Registry of Exonerations, the New York Times said that, “A record 149 people in the United States
were found in 2015 to have been falsely convicted of a crime, and of those,
nearly 4 in 10 were exonerated of murder . . . All told, its researchers have
recorded 1,733 exonerations since 1989.” Five of the convicts exonerated in
2015 were facing death sentences, which should make even the most ardent pro death
penalty advocates pause and reconsider their position. None of the exonerated individuals
were the topics of documentaries, media sensationalism, or petition drives, yet
the injustice against them was every bit as great as what happened to Avery for
18 years and what some believe is happening to him again.
African-Americans face the most blatant injustices in the system. According to criminal justice reporter Michael McLaughlin: “There's no
way to know for sure, of course, but data about wrongful convictions show that
blacks who are exonerated after a bogus conviction have served 12.68 years on
average before the good news, according to Pamela Perez, professor of
biostatistics at Loma Linda University. It takes just 9.4 years for whites and
7.87 for Latinos.”
White Americans sometimes
get involved in efforts to raise awareness of the plight of African-American
inmates falsely accused. Probably the best historic example was the case of
Ruben “Hurricane” Carter, the boxer whose quest for freedom took off after a
book and a Bob Dylan song raised public awareness. Mumia Abu Jamal and Assata Shakur have whites supporting them, but primarily in the activist community.
Would “Making a Murderer,” and Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, be
getting so much open show of support if the parties accused were Black? The
painful truth is probably not. Let’s close with a reworking of Paul McCartney
and Stevie Wonder’s “Ebony and Ivory.”
Ebony and Avery covered
differently on the ‘Net and TV
Google “National Registry of Exonerations” on my laptop keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?
We all know that cable television
is the same where ever you go
There is exploitable good and bad
in everyone
But when the show’s about a white
convict we learn to live, we learn to give each other
What we need to survive together
alive
Ebony and Avery covered
differently on the ‘Net and TV
Google “National Registry of
Exonerations” on my laptop keyboard, oh Lord, why don't we?
Ebony, Avery covered differently
on the ‘Net and TV
Ebony, Avery, oh
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