Small changes snowball out of control over time and have dire consequences. The butterfly effect, the straw that broke the camel’s back – whatever you want to call it – is pivotal to many situations in life. For Steven Avery, it was literally the difference between freedom and 14 more years in prison. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the star of the Netflix docu-series Making of a Murderer, Avery was wrongfully convicted on the basis of hate, pettiness and extremely thin evidence. This extremely thin evidence was the basis of the victim of a gruesome rape, Penny Beernsten, who allegedly had a perfect recollection of the entire event. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unfortunately, local law enforcement subjected her to many cardinal sins when it comes to eyewitness testimony preparations. The local sheriff in Manitowoc drew up a mock image resembling Steven Avery, but notably unlike the description Bernsteen reported to the police, showed it to Penny by itself and generated a confirmation that Steven was the perpetrator. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is effectively the drawing version of a showup. Without any other comparisons for Penny to decide between she was subjected to this image and asked “is this the guy?” As one can expect the answer was yes. Additionally, Steven had a prior record for other, less serious crimes so the image of Steven permeated the local law enforcement’s thoughts leading to a more aggressive investigation and ultimately prosecution of him. The sheriff and other law enforcement even had prior history with Steven personally which no doubt led to bias and overlooking the real criminal – Gregory Allen. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eventually, based on the proprietary DNA evidence that developed during the time of Avery’s sentence he was exonerated on the basis of a difference of one allele on one pubic hair – a very small development that made all of the difference. Clearly, an unbiased investigation, better structure of suspect identification with thoughtfully constructed lineups and the new technology that takes some of the importance off of solely eyewitness testimony would’ve gone a long way to preventing unfortunate people like Steven Avery from experiencing these wrongful convictions in the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Making a Murderer<\/em>. Directed by Laura Ricciardi, Netlflix, 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Small changes snowball out of control over time and have dire consequences. The butterfly effect, the straw that broke the camel’s back – whatever you want to call it – is pivotal to many situations in life. For Steven Avery, … Continue reading