Lawyer: Dassey ruling tells important 'story'

The judge who overturned Brendan Dassey's murder conviction knew his audience would be different from the typical contingent of attorneys and legal junkies, and structured his decision accordingly, a law professor says.

Unlike most rulings in habeas corpus motions, the challenge to Dassey's conviction in the 2005 killing of Teresa Halbach was under an international spotlight because of the popular and controversial Netflix documentary, 'Making a Murderer.'

Marquette University Law Professor Michael O'Hear said that fact was likely on the mind of U.S. Magistrate Judge William Duffin as he worded the 91-page decision that says Dassey must be freed or granted a new trial by mid-November. Though the high-profile nature of the case didn't influence the ruling, O'Hear said, it clearly had an impact on how it was structured.

"Right from page one, you're not in a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo — you're in a story," he said. "I think Judge Duffin was writing a legal opinion that a lot of lay people would be reading, and he structured it to make it more widely accessible. And I think that's a good thing."

RELATED: Dassey ruling puts Avery watch in overdrive

RELATED: Judge overturns Dassey murder conviction

Dassey and his uncle Steven Avery are serving life sentences in the death of Halbach, a photographer who went to the Avery family's auto-salvage yard in northwestern Manitowoc County to photograph a car for Autotrader magazine. Both claimed innocence, but were convicted in jury trials.

The case became an international sensation with the December release of "Making a Murderer," the 10-part docu-series seen by more than 19 million American viewers in the five weeks after it debuted. It polarized viewers: supporters of Avery and Dassey believe the pair had been railroaded and possibly framed, while critics said film-makers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos left out significant pieces of evidence that supported the juries' verdicts.

Both Avery and Dassey pursued appeals. Avery's lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, is expected to file paperwork on his behalf any day and promises "a tsunami of new evidence" she says will exonerate her client.

Dassey's appellate lawyer. Laura Nirider of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth at Northwestern University, argued that Dassey's constitutional rights were violated, in part by prosecutors' investigators who made false promises to the then-16-year-old Dassey during multiple interrogations.

Duffin agreed, finding investigators violated Dassey's constitutional protection against self-incrimination and his right to equal protection under the law.

“These repeated false promises, when considered in conjunction with all relevant factors, most especially Dassey’s age, intellectual deficits, and the absence of a supportive adult, rendered Dassey’s confession involuntary under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments,” the judge wrote.

O'Hear said the length of the Dassey decision was not uncommon for successful habeas corpus motions — a process used to get a state-level conviction in front of a federal judge to review legal questions about the defendant's arrest, imprisonment or detention.

What is rare, however, is that the petition was granted.

O'Hear cited a study that found a success rate in such cases is 0.82 percent. When the plaintiff doesn't have legal representation — and many habeus corpus petitions are filed by prisoners acting as their own attorneys — the success rate falls to 0.4 percent, another study found.

“Every year, 16,000 to 18,000 habeas cases are filed by state prisoners," Vanderbilt University Law Professor Nancy King, who studied almost 2,400 such motions, said in 2011. "Only a minuscule fraction of those cases succeed.”

Dassey, now 26, is serving life in prison for first-degree intentional homicide, second-degree sexual assault and mutilating a corpse, each as a party to a crime. He is eligible for parole in November 2048.

Avery, now 54, was convicted in 2007 of first-degree homicide as party to a crime, and being a felon in possession of a firearm. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

dschneid@gannett.com and follow him on Twitter @PGDougSchneider