Bob CollinsFew TV documentaries have gripped the nation harder and quicker than Netflix’s “Making a Murderer,” which has raised questions about whether Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man convicted of a 2005 murder of a woman in Manitowoc County, Wisc., was railroaded by prosecutors.
The filmmakers, Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, certainly left the impression he was.
“Our opinion is that we included the state’s most compelling evidence,” Ricciardi tells the New York Times.
But that’s not so, argues Ken Kratz, the special prosecutor of the case.
Kratz, who lives in Superior, Wisc., and is now a defense attorney, told the Times that the documentary is a propaganda film for Avery. He toned that down a bit today when he talked to Duluth’s Northland News Center, calling it “an advocacy piece.”
” (It was) intended to be something that supported a particular defense theory,” he said. “It was made by and for the Avery defense team and it really only suggests one theory about what happened and cherry picks evidence from an 18-month process that supports this one conclusion, that he was improperly convicted, that it was a miscarriage of justice and… that evidence was planted and he was the victim of some vast conspiracy.”
Kratz says he wasn’t given much opportunity to participate in the documentary the way the defense team was.
“Steven Avery committed this murder and this mutilation, and Steven Avery is exactly where he needs to be,” also told the Times. “And I don’t have any qualms about that, nor do I lose any sleep over that.”
He says if all he knew about the case is what was shown on the Netflix documentary, he’d come to the same conclusion as viewers. “I’m not upset at all with the general public who has expressed such angst over the case. What I’m upset about is Netflix and these filmmakers when they purposely withold the other side of the case, and suggest it’s a documentary where you’ve seen everything there was to see. I think it’s unconscionable to make that suggestion,” he told the Duluth station.
