12 stories of false confession. Essential listening for any true crime addicts.
Laura Nirider and
Steve Drizin, lawyers who have represented Brendan Dassey following his conviction for the murder of Teresa Halbach, are set to host a true crime podcast titled Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions.
Nirider and Drizin were prominent in Season 2 of Making A Murderer and their new podcast series will focus on 12 true stories of false confessions. As viewers of the Netflix series will remember, the circumstances surrounding Dassey's testimony and confession were highly controversial.
Each episode of the podcast will use real interrogation audio to chronicle real stories. Nirider says: “We bring you inside the fight to exonerate these innocent people.”
Each episode will start with the depiction of a real life crime. The narrative will then follow the investigation into it.
The stories that will be discussed range from a Brooklyn teenager who falsely confessed to killing his own mother, to an innocent New Zealander who was wrongly imprisoned for rape and murder.
Speaking with
ABA Journal about the podcast series, Drizin says that he's driven by a need to inform and educate the public about the nature of wrongful convictions.
“For me, the primary reason for doing this is to educate and inform the public," he said.
"The biggest hurdle anyone has in representing someone who has falsely confessed is getting the jury, the general public, police officers and prosecutors to understand that someone would confess to a crime they didn’t commit, especially a murder or a rape, a crime that could lead someone to death row or life in prison. That is extraordinarily difficult to do."
The executive producer of the podcast is Jason Flom, a founding board member of the Innocence Project and producer of the podcast Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom.
In the case of Brendan Dassey, last month, he was
denied a bid for pardon because the Wisconsin Governor felt that he does not meet the necessary criteria.
Dassey has spent over a decade in prison after he was sentenced to life in prison after he was convicted, at the age of 16, of the rape and murder of Teresa Halbach, a magazine photographer.
Dassey's uncle, Steven Avery, was also arrested and imprisoned for his alleged role in Halbach's death. Avery was charged with Halbach's murder, kidnapping, sexual assault, and mutilation of a corpse on 11 November, 2005.
Both Dassey and Avery have consistently said that they are innocent.
Here's a brief look at what
Wrongful Conviction: False Confessions has in store. It can be downloaded here.
https://twitter.com/LauraNirider/status/1230284522350108673
