Appeals court: No immediate release for Dassey
MADISON, Wis. — A Wisconsin inmate featured in the hit Netflix series “Making a Murderer” lost another bid Wednesday to get out of prison while state attorneys fight a ruling overturning his conviction.
A three-judge panel from the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Brendan Dassey must stay behind bars for now. The panel’s brief order gave no explanation.
Dassey, now 27, was sentenced to life in prison in 2007 in the death of photographer Teresa Halbach two years earlier. He told detectives he helped his uncle, Steven Avery, rape and kill Halbach in the Avery family’s junk yard in Manitowoc County.
A federal magistrate judge overturned his conviction in August, ruling that detectives took advantage of Dassey’s age — then 16 — and cognitive disabilities to coerce the confession. Dassey’s attorneys asked that he immediately be released from prison, but state attorneys insisted he be kept behind bars while they appealed. The appeals court sided with prosecutors at the time.