‘Making a Murderer’ defendant Brendan Dassey given cause for hope by Chicago court – WBNews

Could Brendan Dassey — the intellectually challenged defendant whose story is told in Netflix’s documentary series “Making a Murderer” — be getting out of prison soon? A hearing Tuesday in front of a three-judge panel of Chicago’s 7th Circuit U.S. Appeals Court may just give his lawyers hope. Dassey was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 after he confessed to teaming up with his uncle, Steven Avery, to rape, murder and burn the body of photographer Teresa Halbach on their family’s property in rural Wisconsin. That conviction was overturned in August when a U.S. magistrate judge in Milwaukee found that Dassey’s confession was involuntarily given and unconstitutionally coerced by cops who took advantage of his young age and limited intelligence — a point forcefully made by the campaigning documentarians behind “Making a Murderer.” Dassey — who was 16 at the time of his video confession and who has an IQ of just 73 — has remained behind bars while the state of Wisconsin appeals the decision to quash his conviction. But U.S. Appellate Court Judge Ilana Rovner had pointed questions for Wisconsin Deputy Solicitor General Peter Berg from the get-go at Tuesday morning’s hearing, interrupting Berg almost as soon as he started speaking. When the cops who interviewed Dassey told him, “Let’s get it all out today and then it’s all over,” Rovner asked, wouldn’t Dassey have interpreted that as an offer that he could go home if he told them what they wanted to hear? “I want you…more detail