Avery is currently serving a life sentence He has tried appealing his conviction on multiple occasionspimgdivpNetflix
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Netflix's wildly popular docuseries "Making a Murderer" covers the trial of Steven Avery, who was convicted in 2007 of the murder of photographer Teresa Halbach. This was after being released from prison after 18 years for a previous crime that he did not commit.
The series closely inspects the evidence that led to Avery's conviction, leading to the conclusion that he may have been convicted on shaky grounds. Some even allege that he was framed by the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office.
Dean Strang, one of Steven Avery's lawyers and a favorite among fans of "Making a Murderer" for his valiant defense, tells Business Insider that there's a bigger problem that sets people like Avery up for conviction. He believes there's a reason the players involved in this trial did not acknowledge the many errors that occurred during the process.
"For me, it's whether or not there's humility among the actors in the criminal justice system and the institutions that compose our criminal justice system," Strang told BI.
What exactly does he mean by that?
"By humility I mean willingness to evaluate our levels of certainty critically. Willingness to ask if error is inevitable. Humility in acknowledging mistakes when we make them. Humility in trying to correct mistakes when we make them. Humility in demoting the value that we place on finality for its own sake as a way of putting our uncertainty in the past and denying our uncertainty and just moving on," Strang said.
Strang often speaks with a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity. And he thinks the kind of closure and clear distinctions he refers to aren't as important as many people seem to believe.
"I think the emphasis we place on finality is elevated far beyond what humble public servants and workers in the justice system would give it," Strang said.
That finality certainly had a lot to do with Avery being convicted for the Halbach murder, with a jury that had an initial vote of seven people saying not guilty before reaching its final guilty verdict.
People may finally be listening to Strang's message. Avery recently filed a new appeal to have his conviction thrown out. Two new lawyers have also agreed to work with him on the case, after he exhausted his right to a public defender and took up the case himself.
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