White House says no to petition for pardon

Steven Avery, at the center of the Netflix docuseries “Making a Murderer”, has new legal representation hoping to set him free from his 2007 homicide conviction.

Netflix Netflix documentary “Making A Murderer”, filmed over a 10-year period, follows the real-life case of Steven Avery of Wisconsin.

A petition on WhiteHouse.gov calling for the pardon of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, the subjects of the Netflix docu-series, reached enough signatures to require an official response this week.

“Thank you for signing a We the People petition on the Teresa Halbach murder case, now featured on the Making a Murderer documentary series”, reads the response.

The power to pardon is reserved for the president when a person is convicted of a wrongdoing on the federal scale.

However, a USA president’s authority doesn’t extend to state criminal offences.

Because of this and because of Avery’s and Dassey’s status as state prisoners, the President is powerless when it comes to freeing the pair. The petition bases its reasoning on the documentary series’ findings and the evidence presented.

Nevertheless it was stressed that the President was “committed to restoring the sense of fairness at the heart of our justice system”.

The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, would be the appropriate authority to pardon Avery and Dassey, but told WTMJ in Milkwaukee that he will not issue a pardon.

Avery, for the unfamiliar, spent 18 years in prison for a rape that DNA evidence shows he did not commit.

In the statement, the We The People Team at the White House wrote that they appreciated the interest in the Teresa Halbach murder case and then gave a brief civics and government lesson.

The petition now has almost 130,000 signatures, leading The White House to issue an official statement on the matter. Plus at the end of this January, Investigation Discovery will air a special on the case, hosted by NBC Dateline coorespondant, Keith Moorison.