Whether we enjoy thinking about it or not, wrongful conviction is an all too common nightmare many Americans have faced. While this might seem like a niche irregularity, the Innocence Project estimates that between 2% and 5% of individuals incarcerated in the United States are wrongfully convicted, meaning of the States’ 2,000,000 inmates—by far the largest incarceration rate in the world—more than 40,000 are locked away while innocent. Despite this dismal statistic, there are true, real life warriors fighting the broken system. Laura Nirider and Steve Drizin are the wrongful conviction lawyers who were featured on _Making A Murderer_, the twenty-episode Netflix docuseries which focused on the cases of Steven Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey.
“We represent people who are in prison for crimes they didn’t commit,” says Laura Nirider. “We exonerate them through DNA testing, forensic testing, or a reinvestigation of the case. We help innocent people reclaim their life, we help them get home.” Nirider, along with her legal partner, former professor, and, most recently, podcast co-host, Steve Drizin, achieved notoriety for their tireless commitment to the Dassey case. They, like the rest of the world, watched in horror as Dassey, who Nirider and Drizin believe to have severe intellectual limitations, was coerced into a confession. Steven Avery was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated for 18 years and then released, only to be sentenced for the murder of Teresa Halbach two years later. Dassey’s alleged involvement with his uncle in Halbach’s murder is currently in a state of limbo, after federal magistrates overtuned the conviction, only for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals to reaffirm the conviction afterwards.
The passion Nirider and Drizin showed for helping someone society had turned its back on convinced dedicated viewers around the world that Dassey was innocent. However, their pursuit for rightful justice hasn’t stopped there. Together, after Dassey’s case, they formed the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth, or CWCY, a non-profit which specifically represents youth wrongfully convicted (the first organization in the world to do so), and their work, exonerating more than 50 individuals, has transformed CWCY into one of the most successful innocence organizations in the country. Nirider and Drizin’s newest venture, a thirteen-episode series titled _Wrongful Conviction False Confessions_, brings awareness to more cases like Dassey’s through the power of the podcast.
“These are stories of horrible, personal trauma,” remarks Nirider. “They are stories of survival, and stories of fight and struggle, and long suppressed truths revealing themselves at the end.” The question remains: how did America get here? When did the punishment start arriving before the evidence? “It’s been happening ever since police officers have been questioning suspects,” says Drizin. “Our work has exposed the fact that psychological tactics can be almost as powerful as physical abuse and can lead to true and false confessions.”
But why does this happen? This question initially hooked Dirizin back in 1995 when he worked on the case of an eleven-year-old boy charged with the murder of the boy’s 83-year-old neighbor. “The only evidence against this kid was a confession, given to the police officers during an interrogation that took place outside of the presence of his parents or an attorney. He immediately recanted it,” recalls Drizin. “I had to understand how it is that people, not just children, could be manipulated into confessing horrible things they didn’t do.”
Nirider’s fixation on this growing epidemic, as well as her introduction to Drizin, happened by accident. “She actually signed up for someone else’s class,” jokes Drizin. Nirider, a student at Northwestern University who’d already planned her future in business law, ended up taking a Wrongful Convictions class taught by Professor Drizin. Later in the semester, the teacher assigned his brightest student a role aboard a case he represented in which a young man sought an appeal. “He handed me the interrogation videos of Brendan Dassey,” remembers Nirider. “My heart broke. I saw two seasoned adult detectives manipulating a frightened 16-year-old. That was it for me. It was a life-changing moment.”
_Wrongful Conviction False Confessions_ serves as Nirider’s and Drizin’s manifesto. It’s filled with cases where, amazingly enough, justice prevails. This is evident in the second episode, where Robert Davis, whom the state of Virginia charged with the 2003 murder of Nola Charles and her 3-year-old son when Davis was eighteen years old, walks free after serving thirteen years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Not all stories end on such a hopeful note, though. Sometimes a judge finds it impossible to see past a prior confession. “In the first month after _Making A Murderer_ came out, 20 million people confirmed what Laura and I had felt about the way Brendan was interrogated,” shares Drizin. “The sad part of it is, we were unable to convince a majority of judges to agree with that vision.”
Undeterred by the magistrate’s recommendation, in December 2017 the Seventh Circuit upheld Dassey’s conviction with a 4-3 vote in favor of the original ruling. Dassey remains behind bars at Oshkosh Correctional Institute, but despite everything, he keeps good spirits. Nirider notes he _still_ receives at least five to ten letters each day from fans around the world.
“For a kid who never had many friends before, it’s a thing of beauty,” acknowledges Nirider. Much like the phoenix rising from the ashes, Dassey has created a new life for himself, even if it’s only answering mail from people who admire him—people he now thinks of as family. Let’s hope _Wrongful Conviction False Confessions_ brings more of these unjust stories to light.
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