Supreme Court asked to review 'Making a Murderer' confession
Law Journals
Lawyers for a Wisconsin inmate featured in the "Making a Murderer" series on Netflix asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to review
a federal appeals court decision that held his confession was voluntary.
Brendan Dassey's legal team told the high court in their petition that the case raises crucial issues that extend far beyond Dassey's case
alone and that long have divided state and federal courts.
Dassey's lawyers claim investigators took advantage of his youth and intellectual and social disabilities to coerce him into falsely
confessing that he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape and kill photographer Teresa Halbach in 2005 in the Avery family's junk yard in
Manitowoc County. Dassey was 16 at the time. He was sentenced to life in prison in 2007.
"Too many courts around the country, for many years, have been misapplying or even ignoring the Supreme Court's instructions that
confessions from mentally impaired kids like Brendan Dassey must be examined with the greatest care — and that interrogation tactics
which may not be coercive when applied to an adult can overwhelm children and the mentally impaired," his attorney, Steven Drizin, said
in a statement.
A federal court in Wisconsin overturned Dassey's conviction in 2016, and a three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals
affirmed that decision last June. While the full 7th Circuit voted 4-3 to reverse the panel's decision to grant him a new trial, one
dissenting judge called the case "a profound miscarriage of justice."
The legal odds remain high against Dassey. The U.S. Supreme Court grants only a tiny fraction of the petitions for review that it
receives.
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Grounds for Divorce in Ohio - Sylkatis Law, LLC
A divorce in Ohio is filed when there is typically “fault” by one of the parties and party not at “fault” seeks to end the marriage. A court in Ohio may grant a divorce for the following reasons:
• Willful absence of the adverse party for one year
• Adultery
• Extreme cruelty
• Fraudulent contract
• Any gross neglect of duty
• Habitual drunkenness
• Imprisonment in a correctional institution at the time of filing the complaint
• Procurement of a divorce outside this state by the other party
Additionally, there are two “no-fault” basis for which a court may grant a divorce:
• When the parties have, without interruption for one year, lived separate and apart without cohabitation
• Incompatibility, unless denied by either party
However, whether or not the the court grants the divorce for “fault” or not, in Ohio the party not at “fault” will not get a bigger slice of the marital property.