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April 28, 2007

Teresa Halbach: Dassey Guilty on All Counts

A jury found 17-year-old Brendan Dassey guilty of all three crimes he was charged with for the rape and murder of Teresa Halbach.

Halbach disappeared in October 31, 2005. Prosecutors say Dassey and his uncle Steven Avery murdered Halbach and burned her remains in a burn pit behind Dassey's trailer home in Manitowoc County.

A jury of nine women and three men chosen from Dane County deliberated for about four-and-a-half hours before announcing it had a verdict shortly after 9 o'clock Wednesday night. The verdict was read at ten minutes after 10 in Manitowoc County court:

Party to the crime of first-degree intentional homicide
Party to the crime of second-degree sexual assault
Party to the crime of mutilation of a corpse
The jury had the option to consider a first-degree reckless homicide charge.

Finding Dassey guilty of the more serious charge means a mandatory life sentence. At his sentencing August 6th he'll find out if he'll spend all of that in prison or if he'll eventually be eligible for parole.

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A Manitowoc County jury convicted Avery of murder last month. "He who helps the guilty shares the crime," special prosecutor Tom Fallon quoted to begin his closing argument, then he tried to prove it during the hour and 15 minutes he addressed the jury.

Fallon told the jury he was going to show them "the big picture." He walked them through the last day of Halbach's life, pausing to point out times when, he says, Dassey had the chance to walk away or "do the right thing."

"The defendant was not someone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time; he was in the right place at the right time. He was the only person who could have saved her -- and he chose not to."

Fallon pointed out that Dassey instead, at the urging of his uncle, raped Halbach before cutting her throat, then helped carry her to the garage.

"At that moment, the defendant becomes the silent sentinel for the last moments of Teresa Halbach's life. Steven Avery returns to that garage and shoots her ten or eleven times on the floor of that garage, and in the blink of an eye the killers become pallbearers, carrying her out on the blackjack creeper to the fire that's already been started, the fire that's all ready to go."

That fire, Fallon reminded the jury, as Dassey told the investigators during his confession, contained tires and brush and other things from the family salvage yard -- items Fallon said Dassey helped to collect.

"He gets the cart. He gathers the fuel, as we've just said, and they burn her -- they incinerate her in an effort to destroy the evidence. The mutilation was made and done for the purpose of concealing these brutal, heinous acts."

Fallon says while Avery and Dassey may have tried to destroy all the evidence, they couldn't destroy the memories. He says those memories were eating away at Dassey when he confessed to investigators.

"The richness of the detail provided by the defendant in that confession tells us that it's true. You can't have that rich of detail unless you were there, unless you experienced it, unless you lived it."

"He could have called 911 at that point. He probably wasn't going to call 911, but he could have said, 'No, I don't want to do it.' He could have left. He could have gone back to his trailer but he didn't."

Fallon said the "heinous acts" were clearly Avery's ideas but reiterated to the jury that Dassey agreed to participate.

"This case is about the acceptance of that invitation -- and the acceptance of that invite speaks to the defendant Brendan Dassey."

http://www.wbay.com/Global/story.asp?S=6425441&nav=menu24_1_2

Posted by Nealus at April 28, 2007 07:57 AM

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