Making a Murderer Season 1: Justice, Evidence & Jury
This paper offers an episode-by-episode analysis of Netflix's documentary series Making a Murderer, Season 1, focusing on Episodes 7 through 10. It examines the ethical complications of police self-oversight when the investigating agency is the same one being sued by the suspect, Steven Avery. The paper explores the credibility of physical evidence, the dynamics of jury deliberation, and the trial of Brendan Dassey — Avery's intellectually impaired nephew — whose confession was obtained under potentially coercive circumstances. Taken together, the episodes raise fundamental questions about the fairness of the American criminal justice system and the protections owed to vulnerable populations.
- The Problem of Policing the Police: Conflicts of interest in the Avery investigation
- Jury Deliberation and the Weight of Evidence: Competing evidence and the jury's difficult task
- Brendan Dassey and the Risks of Coerced Confessions: Dassey's vulnerable status and questionable confession
- Appeals, Closure, and the Limits of Justice: Failed appeals and unresolved questions about fairness
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves systematically through individual episodes, using each as a distinct analytical lens rather than summarizing the series as a whole — a disciplined organizational choice that keeps arguments focused.
- It consistently balances competing interpretations (guilt vs. innocence, planted evidence vs. legitimate discovery) without resolving them prematurely, mirroring the documentary's own epistemological restraint.
- The discussion of Brendan Dassey introduces a distinct dimension — vulnerability and intellectual impairment — that broadens the paper's thesis beyond the Avery case alone.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses a case-study approach to build a cumulative argument: each episode analysis adds a new layer to the central claim that systemic failures — not merely individual bad actors — threaten the fairness of criminal trials. This technique allows the writer to ground abstract claims about justice in specific, concrete evidence from the documentary.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized around four episodes (7–10) of the documentary. Each section introduces the episode's central conflict, presents competing perspectives, and connects the specifics to broader principles of criminal justice. The conclusion synthesizes these threads into a final judgment about the documentary's overall contribution and the unresolved questions it leaves behind.
The Problem of Policing the Police
Episode 7 of Making a Murderer focuses on the complexities of the investigation of Steven Avery, given that he had a civil suit pending against the very county that was investigating him for the murder of Teresa Halbach. As a result, as officers gathered evidence, they were nominally under the supervision of an outside police force. The outside officers testified that the investigation was carried out according to acceptable protocols — yet when incriminating evidence was discovered, it was consistently found during moments when those supervisory officers were not present in the room.
There is always cause for concern when police officers are required to supervise one another's conduct. Police misconduct is notoriously difficult to investigate precisely because of the professional loyalty that exists among officers, regardless of the agency or county in which they serve. Concerns about the integrity of the investigation are immediately raised in the viewer's mind, despite testimony from the officers involved that they were not influenced by their awareness of the civil case. Compounding these doubts, the investigating police force was the same one being sued by Avery, and many of the individual officers were the same ones whose prior conduct had contributed to his wrongful imprisonment.
Although Making a Murderer is a compelling narrative on the individual level — centered on Avery's own story — this episode highlights the broader problem of holding law enforcement accountable. While the vast majority of police officers are ethical, when improprieties do occur, gathering evidence against officers and proving wrongdoing is exceptionally difficult. The manner in which Halbach's keys were discovered seems extremely questionable. The episode also showcases the debate over whether blood was planted as part of the investigation — an argument the prosecution's FBI experts deny is possible, citing the absence of the chemical preservatives typically found in test-tube blood samples. This denial represented a serious setback for the defense.
Jury Deliberation and the Weight of Evidence
Episode 8 highlights the difficulty of the jury's task in weighing the defense and prosecution's competing evidence. The defense articulated a clear alternative narrative, stressing the motivation of the police to plant evidence. Its principal weakness, however, was the inability to suggest a plausible alternative explanation for the murder itself — to identify who else might have wanted the victim dead, or how they could have killed her. In contrast, the prosecution had the cumulative weight of physical evidence behind it, reinforced by expert witness testimony from the FBI defending the authenticity of some of the most incriminating items against Avery. The jury deliberated for an extended period of time, and one juror was replaced following a family emergency. Initially, the majority leaned toward acquittal, but ultimately the verdict went against Avery.
This outcome suggests that a very spirited debate unfolded in the jury room. The viewer cannot know which arguments ultimately turned the jury against Avery, or whether the substitution of one juror proved decisive. It is possible that the replacement juror was highly persuasive in shifting the seven who had initially favored acquittal. Trial by jury is an inherently subjective process, and the Avery case was both complex and ambiguous — qualities that explain, in large part, why it attracted the attention of documentary filmmakers in the first place.
The episode underscores how much weight rests on the shoulders of a small number of individuals, and how the evolution of deliberations can be shaped by personalities and persuasion as much as by evidence. Notably, the filmmakers decline to take a definitive side on Avery's guilt or innocence, reinforcing the genuine difficulty of the jury's task and refusing to offer the viewer an easy resolution.
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