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Attorney General wants Dassey's conviction confirmed

Posted at 6:01 PM, Oct 19, 2016
and last updated 2016-10-20 20:19:19-04
UPDATE: In August Brendan Dassey's conviction for the murder of Theresa Halbach was overturned when a Federal Court ruled his confession was coerced.
 
The state's Attorney General is working to keep Dassey behind bars despite that ruling.

Within the documents just filed on Wednesday, the Wisconsin Attorney General asks a Federal Appeals Court to reverse a decision made by a District Court just this summer. It was in that decision that a judge ruled that investigators manipulated Dassey into confessing that he helped Steven Avery murder Teresa Halbach.

In that case the courts ruled Dassey be released from prison unless prosecutors appealed or decided to retry Dassey in court. Today the state's district attorney is asking the court to reverse the ruling and accept Dassey's confession as lawful.

"What I think will happen is either the federal judge's decision will be upheld, in which case Brandan Dassey will be released, or the federal judge's decision will be reversed in which case his conviction will be upheld and he will remain in prison under the sentence for that conviction," says Legal Analyst Avi Berk of Appleton.

If the state loses their appeal, to let the original life sentence on Dassey stand, their last resort to keep him behind bars would be to convince the Supreme Court to take up the case.

The 7th District US Court of Appeals will likely take months to decide the outcome for Brendan Dassey and whether or not this case should go any further or if Dassey should be released from prison.

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MADISON, Wis. (AP) -- Wisconsin's attorney general has asked a federal appeals court to let stand the conviction of a man found guilty in a case profiled in the popular "Making a Murderer" series on Netflix.
 
A federal magistrate judge ruled in August that investigators tricked Brendan Dassey into confessing he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape, kill and mutilate photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005.
 
In a brief filed with the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Wednesday, Attorney General Brad Schimel urged rejection of Dassey's claim that his confession was coerced.
 
Schimel says "substantial police coercion" is required for any confession to be involuntary, and that the Wisconsin Court of Appeals was right to affirm in 2013 that Dassey's was voluntary. So he says the magistrate's ruling to the contrary should be reversed.
 

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An opening brief was filed today by Attorney General Brad Schimel on behalf of the prosecution in Brendan Dassey's quest in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit. 

On August 12, 2016, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin granted Brendan Dassey’s petition for writ of habeas corpus. On Sept. 9, 2016, the state filed a notice of appeal in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.

The state is appealing the judge's original decision to grant the writ of habeas corpus, according to NBC26 legal expert Avi Berk, who said the case will now go the federal circuit court of appeals in Chicago.