Why "Making A Murderer" Season 2 Will Make Chair Detectives Happy, According to Filmmakers

This could be difficult for some Make a murderer Filmmakers Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos have never sought to solve the murder of Teresa Halbach. "We did not have the intention or the intention to believe that[[[[Make a murderer]would put viewers in a place to make decisions about what happened, "tells Ricciardi to Bustle on the phone. Guilt or innocence. "

It's always their intention with Make a murderer Part 2, Steven Avery, who was convicted of the murder of Halbach in 2007, a crime he's always said he did not commit, and Avery's co-accused and nephew, Brendan Dassey, sentenced to prison at living at 16 after confiding in detectives in confessions that his lawyers argued that they were under duress and false, that he had helped his uncle to kill Halbach. "We never try to find answers or investigate crime, we try to document people's experiences," says Demos. "Your own point of view or your own feelings about something do not play any role at all," Ricciardi adds. "You know you're here to watch this unfold."

In Part 2, the directors closely follow the experience of Avery's lawyer, Kathleen Zellner, which becomes a substitute for all the wheelchair detectives who tried to prove if Avery had actually been wrongly convicted of murder. Zellner actually is Trying to solve Halbach's murder – it's his best chance to prove Avery's innocence and help the Halbach family to go forward.

"A lot of her motivation is to try to respect Teresa and find out what happened to her," says Demos about Zellner, who, according to his website, "justified more wrongful prosecutions than any lawyer private in America ".

At the beginning of the season, Zellner declared that as a lawyer she must know the victim to get a better idea of ​​the crime. That's why Zellner spends so much time in Part 2 meeting with forensic experts – an analyst of bloodstain patterns, a forensic neuroscientist, an expert in forensic science – who l & rsquo; help to recreate the murder at a time when the prosecution had planned to sentence Avery more than a decade ago. This is the proof that she finds in these reenactments that helps Zellner investigate new potential suspects in the Halbach affair.

The first season's complaint from the prosecution in the Avery case was that she was biased in favor of Avery, said Avery's attorney for the cause, Ken Kratz. , at The New York Times. "When we read or heard these reviews," says Demos, "most of the time, it was as if these people had missed the goal of this series." Filmmakers say the goal was to take a closer look at the justice system and expose its flaws. They wanted to show the consequences of the system on the families of the victim and the accused, especially when the guilt of someone is strongly involved. This was particularly evident in the case of Dassey, whose conviction was overturned by a federal court in 2016, but remains in jail after a federal court of appeal overturned that decision, upholding his conviction.

"It's really its complexity," says Demos, referring not only to the court system, but also to the emotions felt by those affected by all the cases. Make a murderer prosperous about ambiguity; he can not give you answers and really does not want to. "There is no voiceover narration," notes Ricciardi. "It's not our voice that's in the story, it's the subjects who speak for themselves and share their experience of things."

Filmmakers want viewers to honestly see and feel what interviewees are experiencing and hope it forces them to ask the big questions about justice and whether the system is in place. They want viewers, says Demos, "to start having conversations that could lead us to solutions, because if we do not understand the underlying root of things, we'll simply place a Band-Aid at a place where another, but not really progress. "

As far as the documentary is concerned, the progress of Ricciardi and Demos has been to reach out to as many people as possible so that they can better understand the post-conviction process. However, given the worldwide success of the first part – what the filmmakers addressed early in the first part – many potential subjects chose not to participate. Each episode ends this time with a list of those who chose not to participate. This includes the Halbach family. "We understand that and fully respect that decision, "says Demos, but admits it makes it harder to tell his story.

Chris Nerat, an academic friend of Teresa, agreed to an interview for the second part and hearing his concerns offers a different perspective. According to Demos, it's one of the "undeniable sufferings" caused by the loss of Teresa, but also the increased pain of the post-conviction process that you know are in the process of recovering them. "

Pain is a recurring theme of the season, as Ricciardi and Demos look back on the emotions the affair caused to Avery's aging parents, along with his mother, father, and father-in-law. Dassey. In the third episode, Zellner claims that knowing the human consequences of a new procedure in a post-conviction case is the hardest part of his job. "You know you're causing a lot of pain to the victim's family," Zellner said in the opening of episode 3. "People want certainty, they want a resolution, and they like it. have the impression that the person is held responsible. "

Thanks to Zellner, this season shows that those in Halbach and Avery camps want that sort of thing, and she certainly seems to want it too. "There are people on all sides who care a lot about Teresa, so it's not so contradictory that way," says Ricciardi about the second part. "It's sort of an effort to get the same side: the search for the truth." This is precisely the case Ricciardi and Demos are on, too.