This is what happens when you’re not around kids much and you go loving on your ‘just getting over a cold’ godson. I brought it home, shared it with Duty and then I was able to join in on the fun.
Good news is he’s mostly all better and I think I’m a day or two behind him. I do feel like I got run over by a bus (or reindeer!) mostly and spent the weekend mostly acting like a sick person. Duty even made me chicken soup (which was yummers!).
Here’s a measure of how crap I feel: if I’ve had one cup of coffee a day, that’s a lot recently. Normally, I drink 3-4 cups a day. Now? It tastes weird. Most food does. So, I’m listening to Sweet Body and not eating a lot. Trying to drink water, though. And Nyquil helps.
My cold afforded me an opportunity to binge-watch a Netflix documentary called “Making a Murderer” about the 2007 trial of Steven Avery for murder.
In a nutshell, Avery was sentenced to 26 years in prison for the sexual assault of a woman in 1985 which he steadfastly claimed he did not do. DNA evidences exonerated him 18 years later pointing to a local sex offender that the police department failed to consider even though they had him on 24/7 watch.
Avery gets out of prison, sues the Sheriff’s dept for a buttload of money and was on the verge of winning close to a 36 million dollar settlement when a young photographer went missing on his property. Her car was found in the adjacent junkyard (not hidden too well) and her charred remains were found near Avery’s trailer. The Sheriff’s office considers no one else for the murder but Avery (for reasons only they know) and from there on, it’s a clusterfuck of impropriety on the parts of the DA and the Sheriff’s office. I’m not sure how the jury ever came to a guilty verdict because there was no clear cut evidence (blood, motive, etc.) that pointed to Avery. There WAS an disproportionate amount of fuckerty perpetrated by the Sheriff’s department, though, and they got called on it when up on the stand.
Didn’t matter to the jury, however. They sent Avery and his nephew to prison for life. (His nephew is a whole other story – learning disabled and coerced so damn clearly it’s heartbreaking.)
It’s a 10-part series and I find this kind of thing fascinating (at one point, I wanted to be a lawyer) and I’m all about watching the process.
I’m following it on Reddit (don’t ask me why) and there’s a person who says he’s a member of Avery’s family and they’re certain he did it and that he’s a hideous beast of a person.
That may well be. I have no feeling (intuitive or otherwise) about his guilt – I don’t see a motive but I’m not ruling out that he’s a maniac and snapped somehow. What does concern me is something that happens a lot more than we realize – innocent people are often railroaded into prison for political or other reasons especially when they don’t have the means ($$) to mount a spectacular defense. Avery did have excellent counsel since he took a $400,000 settlement after he was charged with the murder instead of pursuing the $36 million lawsuit.
What was done to the nephew is appalling. Just awful. I believe he is entitled to a new trial based on the incompetence of his court-appointed lawyer (who colluded with the DA in Avery’s case to get a confession that’s clearly bogus).
Riveting to watch and sad at the same time, this documentary was really well-done and will likely highlight the topic in our media (until tRump says something else inane and sucks all the air out of the room).
