Dassey V Dittmann

Dassey v. Dittmann; the Voluntary False Confession S00619043 Table of Contents I. Introduction .......................................................................................................................1 II. Dassey v. Dittmann; the Seventh Circuit Split ................................................................2 A. Public Outrage Over Making a Murderer .................................................................2 B. March 1st Interrogation and Confession ..................................................................6 C. A Court Divided ........................................................................................................10 III. Law of Confessions: How They Are Failing the Most Vulnerable .............................12 A. U.S. Statistics on Exonerating the Voluntary False Confession ...........................12 B. Fifth Amendment: Rights Against Self-incrimination ..........................................16 C. Fourteenth Amendment: Protection Against Coercive Police Tactics .................21 D. Sixth Amendment: Right to Representation .........................................................26 E. Standard of Review: Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 ..28 IV. Previously Proposed Remedies and Their Obstacles ...................................................30 A. Banning the Reid Technique and Other Accusatory Police Interrogation Tactics .....................................................................................................................................30 B. Federally Mandated Video-recording of Interrogations .......................................35 C. The Admissibility of False Confession Experts at Trial ........................................37 D. Supreme Court Clarification of “special care” ......................................................40 V. Waiving Constitutional Rights.......................................................................................43 A. Comparative Law: Waiving the Right to Counsel; Easier than Buying a Mattress .....................................................................................................................................43 B. Sixth Amendment Expansion ..................................................................................51 VI. Conclusion .......................................................................................................................55 S00619043 I. Introduction His confession was not voluntary and his conviction should not stand, and yet an impaired teenager has been sentenced to life in prison. I view this as a profound miscarriage of justice.i On December 8, 2017, in a 4-3 decision, the en banc Seventh Circuit reversed its own panel, as well as the district court below, to hold the confession of a mentally-impaired, sixteen year old Brendan Dassey voluntary under the Fourteenth Amendment’s due process clause.ii The majority concluded, under due process, the truthfulness or reliability of the confession is essentially irrelevant;iii rather the determining factor of the confession’s voluntariness under the Fourteenth Amendment is, in view of the totality of the circumstances surrounding the confession, a question of whether Brendan Dassey’s will was overborne.iv The en banc Seventh Circuit determined it was not.v This comment uses the interrogation, conviction, and appeal of Brendan Dassey to highlight the gaps in legal protections for those who voluntarily give unreliable confessions; it proposes a Sixth Amendment solution to remedy the proliferation of false confessions at the intersection of police interrogation tactics and constitutional rights by mandating the presence of counsel during custodial interrogations. II. Dassey v. Dittmann; the Seventh Circuit Split A. Public Outrage Over Making a Murderer “[O]ur society has a high degree of confidence in its criminal trials, in no small part because the Constitution offers unparalleled protections against convicting the innocent.”vi Public opinion disagrees with Justice O’Connor; there is an ever-decreasing confidence in the criminal justice system.vii On December 18, 2015, film-makers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos released the docu-series, Making a Murderer, on Netflix streaming service.viii The ten hour 1 long series documents the wrongful conviction, exoneration, separate investigation, trial, and final conviction of Manitowoc County resident Steven Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey.ix The convictions were instantly decried as a blatant failure by the justice system.x Although Netflix has yet to release the number of times the docu-series has been viewed due to company policy, it is estimated in the dozens of millions across the world.xi On social media and websites that facilitate user interaction, outrage has exploded over the interrogation tactics used by investigators, the behavior of Brendan’s defense counsel, and the admissibility of Brendan’s taciturn confession by Wisconsin State Judge Jerome Fox, all of which led to Brendan’s life sentence with the possibility of early release in 2048.xii The judiciary has an interest, not only in upholding the Constitution’s unparalleled protections against convicting the innocent,xiii but to quell public outrage and bitterness toward the justice system.xiv With the 2017 Netflix release of Confession Tapes,xv which chronicles criminal convictions based solely on recanted confession, and a second docu-series of the Avery and Dassey cases due to premiere,xvi public ignorance of a system that convicts defendants based only on recanted confessions that have zero substantial corroborating evidence is waning and ire rising.xvii B. March 1st Interrogation and Confession Early on October 31, 2005 Steven Avery placed a call to Auto Trader wanting to sell a minivan using their services.xviii Teresa Halbach, a photographer for Auto Trader, responded to the assignment, traveled to the Avery Salvage Yard, took photos of the car to place in the magazine, and, according to Steven Avery, left the premises.xix She was never seen again.xx Steven Avery was placed under arrest for murder.xxi As investigators began to build its case against Steven Avery, suspicion around Brendan began to form.xxii Brendan’s cousins had made comments to police about Brendan losing weight 2 rapidly and acting more morose than normal.xxiii Over the course of forty-eight hours, investigators questioned sixteen year old Brendan four times.xxiv On March 1st, 2006, agents Fassbender and Weigert went to the Mishicott school system, withdrew Brendan from school, and took him to a police station to conduct a custodial interrogation.xxv Neither his mother, Barb Janda, or an attorney were present in the room with Brendan during the interrogation.xxvi Brendan signed a waiver of his constitutional rights articulated to him via a Miranda warning.xxvii Eventually, Brendan described a detailed account of how he, along with Avery, raped and murdered Teresa Halbach then incinerated her body in a barrel in a salvage yard.xxviii After confessing to the crime, Brendan then asks for permission to be taken back to school so that he can turn a project in for his last class of the day.xxix Brendan was placed under arrest.xxx By the time of the trial, Dassey’s attorney filed for a motion to suppress the confession, which was denied after Judge Jerome Fox, found “[n]othing on the video tape visually depict[ing] Brendan Dassey as being frightened or intimidated by the questions of either investigator”.xxxi The video is admitted to trial, shown to the jury, and Brendan Dassey was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Teresa Halbach.xxxii During trial, investigators presented no substantial physical evidence linking Dassey to Halbach’s murder; he was convicted on the confession alone.xxxiii C. A Court Divided After exhausting his state appellate remedies, Brendan filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the federal district court claiming his confession was false and elicited involuntarily.xxxiv The district court granted Brendan habeas relief citing that in light of the totality of the circumstances, Brendan’s confession was inadmissible because it was involuntarily coerced.xxxv On appeal, the Seventh Circuit panel affirmed, however the opinion was vacated pending an en banc hearing.xxxvi On December 8, 2017, in a 4-3 en banc vote, the Seventh Circuit upheld the 3 voluntariness of Dassey’s confession, denying him habeas relief.xxxvii The majority opinion undergoes a totality of the circumstances analysis of Brendan’s confession.xxxviii The Court weighed factors such as the fact that Brendan Dassey was sixteen years old at the time of the interrogation, previously had limited interaction with police, and had an IQ in the low 80s against factors such as Brendan’s access to the bathroom, food, and water throughout the interrogation, the non-confrontational tone of the interrogators’ questioning, and his general calm demeanor.xxxix Police use of deceptive tactics and their effect on Brendan were discussed, but ultimately, the majority held the Wisconsin appeals court determination that Brendan’s will was not overborne was reasonable under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996.xl Concerning the reliability of the confession, the majority joins with the dissent in noting “some of the confession’s inconsistencies [are] startling”,xli but ultimately concludes that the reliability of the confession is only one factor in a Fourteen Amendment due process analysis.xlii The majority

Load more