From the start of Steven Avery’s case he was being targeted to be the person convicted no matter if he did the crime or not. This was a hit the Sheriff’s department wanted to have on the Avery family. They weren’t like everyone else in Manitowoc County, never fitting in and outcast to their scrapyard on the street with their name. The people of Manitowoc cared about their appearance and education, and the Avery family were the opposite. They were seen as dirty and uncaring. They were loathed by the community and Steven was just the outlet to take it out on them.
With the Beerntsen case, The police took over practically forcing Beernsten to pick Steven out of the lineup. The sketch created of what the perpetrator might look like was almost identical to Steven’s mugshot from an earlier misdemeanor rather than the description Beerntsen gave, and even forcing Beerntsen to sign documents when she wasn’t able to even read what she was signing. The police fabricated this whole case against Steven by dismissing his alibi and sweeping the chance that it could possibly be anyone else under the rug. Had the police not done this I think Steven could have walked away innocent. Beerntsen picked Steven out of the lineup not because he was the one who looked like her assailant but because of the information the Police had been feeding her. Steven was the only person who looked familiar to Beerntsen so she is going to select him out of the lineup.
This all reminds me of the video we watched in class of how the people created false memories based on what the person was telling them. This is the same as Beerntsen as she truly believed that Steven was her rapist from what the police were telling her despite the description she gave being very dissimilar to Steven. In the end, I think faulty identification could have been avoided without foul play from the police trying to book Steven in the first place without any evidence.
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