'Making a Murderer' petition elicits response from White House

White House responded to a petition saying that it does not have jurisdiction to pardon Steven Avery, the subject of the popular Netflix series, 'Making a Murderer.'

|
Netflix via AP
This image released by Netflix shows Steven Avery, right, in the Netflix original documentary series 'Making A Murderer.' An online petition has collected hundreds of thousands of digital signatures seeking a pardon for a pair of convicted killers-turned-social media sensations based on the Netflix documentary series that cast doubt on the legal process.

The White House has responded to a petition asking President Obama to free convicted and subject of popular series "Making a Murderer" documentary series Steven Avery alongside his nephew Brendan Dassey.

The petition, which started last December, has garnered over 350,000 signatures as of Thursday, well over the 100,000-signature threshold that the White House says will get a response.

The petition started after Michael Seyedian, from Arvada, Colo., watched the series on Netflix and concluded that Mr. Avery and his nephew had been wrongly convicted for the 2005 murder of freelance photographer Teresa Halbach. Many viewers of the show joined Mr. Seyedian and started the hashtags #FreeStevenAvery and #MakingaMurderer urging other viewers to join in signing the petition.

Avery had previously spent 18 years in prison for a sexual assault that he was later found, through DNA evidence, not to have committed. He was released in 2003.

In an interview with the Huffpost Live, Avery’s defense lawyer said that the public has good motives to start a petition, but that it is only the discovery of new evidence that can exonerate Avery and Dassey.

Indeed, the White House in response to the petition released a statement on the change.org website saying that the president lacks jurisdiction to pardon state prisoners.

“This clemency authority empowers the President to exercise leniency towards persons who have committed federal crimes. Under the Constitution, only federal criminal convictions, such as those adjudicated in the United States District Courts, may be pardoned by the President. In addition, the President's pardon power extends to convictions adjudicated in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia and military court-martial proceedings. However, the President cannot pardon a state criminal offense.”

In recent years, true-crime drama series have become wildly popular with the public.

"Serial" became the most downloaded podcast in 2014, with 5 million downloads, after it featured the story of Adnan Syed, accused of murdering his then ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee back in 1999. Produced by "This American Life" and narrated by journalist Sarah Koenig, Mr. Syed’s story garnered over 31,000 signatures and prompted a Baltimore city judge to grant a hearing, based on new evidence that was revealed in the podcast. That hearing is set to be held in February.

In February 2015, HBO aired its first episode of “The Jinx,” a documentary mini-series featuring Robert Durst, accused of the murders of two and the disappearance of his wife.

But this style of drama has its critics. The prosecutor in Avery’s case, Ken Kratz, accused the "Making of a Murderer" creators of presenting only Avery’s side of the story. “Anytime you edit 18 months' worth of information and only include the statements or pieces that support your particular conclusion, that conclusion should be reached,” Mr. Kratz said.

Both of these true-crime series present an emerging phenomenon among the public, with private citizens taking actions on social media sites to demand justice for the accused subjects.

“In this case, they've literally re-opened unsolved murder cases. Cases where lawyers couldn't pin it on the rich man. Couldn't place a high school kid in the library that fateful day. Are professional investigators ineffective? Bumbling? Somehow dumber than these journalists?” screenwriter Amanda Glassman asks. 

"These investigations – ostensibly germinating as forums for reality entertainment – have inadvertently launched us into a new stratosphere, where entertainment changes things," writes Glassman in a Huffington post essay about the effects of "Serial" and "The Jinx." The result of these shows, according to Ms. Glassman: "Cases broken and reopened due to the work of private citizens, whose main objective is to educate and entertain their audiences, not necessarily to put them behind bars."

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to 'Making a Murderer' petition elicits response from White House
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/USA-Update/2016/0108/Making-a-Murderer-petition-elicits-response-from-White-House
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe