Should President Obama Free Steven Avery?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock over the festive season you’ve probably spotted friends and family recommending Netflix’s massively popular Making A Murderer on every social media channel known to man.

The USA Today is reporting that signatures are now mounting from viewers of the Netflix series calling for clemency for Avery, who is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

The show asks questions about the circumstances of the trial and presents various theories that paint him as an innocent man.

“We were contacted by one of the jurors who sat through Steven Avery’s trial and shared with us their thoughts”, revealed Ricciardi. But now, as Ricciardi and Demos attest, it seems one of the jurors has come forward to say they believe that Avery deserves a new trial, and if he gets one, it should take place “far away from Wisconsin”.

Demos said the juror told them that “they were afraid if they held out for a mistrial – that it would be easy to identify which juror had done that and they were fearful for their own safety”.

Another 20,000 people have signed a similar petition on WhiteHouse.gov, asking Obama to pardon Avery. “Making a Murderer”, the new Netflix docuseries released December 18, explores the suspicious legal case against Steven Avery, an exonerated ex-con who found himself back in jail after trying to sue the people who put him there the first time.

The juror also told the filmmakers said each of the verdicts Avery faced were “a compromise”, claiming there was trading of votes during deliberations among jurors. He was eventually released after DNA evidence proved his innocence.

The Change.org petition, started by Michael Seyedian of Arvada, Colo., has more than 187,920 signatures as of Monday morning. Two years later, when he brought a $36 million lawsuit against the county, the sheriff and the district attorney for damages, he was then accused of the murder of 25-year-old Teresa Halbach, a photographer for Auto Trader magazine.

The documentary series was filmed over the past decade and focuses on the trial and conviction of the two men in Manitowoc, Wisconsin.