Making a Perjuror (Many, in Fact)

I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…

Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey, convicted murderers serving life in prison and subjects of the Netflix documentary series “Making a Murderer,” each has an IQ idling around seventy points.

As the documentary strives to make achingly, infuriatingly clear, each was convicted by a jury of his peers.

Neither jury could see the lush forest of reasonable doubt, for the giant sequoias of planted police evidence, grandstanding prosecutors who never met an ethics class they didn’t ignore, and judges better suited to judging Little Miss pageants.

That is in no way to say these guys were innocent. But no one proved them guilty — certainly not the smug, self-satisfied, serial-sexting prosecutor who presented totally competing theories in their separate trials.

At Avery’s trial, the since-disgraced (technically, continuously disgraced) district attorney lies to the jury and says all the evidence, “everything in this case, pointed towards one person, towards one defendant.” Then at Dassey’s trial, with nary a blush, the DA lies to that jury and says Dassey and Uncle Steve murdered their victim together.

If you watch the documentary, you’ll see two of the finest criminal defense lawyers I’ve ever watched — Dean Strang and Jerry Buting of Wisconsin — at work in the fields of the devil. You’ll also see one of the worst, in Dassey’s case, seemingly doing everything he can to get his client convicted, grinning goofily the while, before the judge finally throws him off the case.

You’ll also see a parade of perjuring witnesses and wonder how they can keep their own goofy grins off their faces.

It’s gripping, it’ll take ten hours out of your life you won’t want back, and — God bless us, everyone — shines blinding light into the dark halls of what we like to call justice.