Dassey asks U.S. Supreme Court to hear appeal in case

Brendan Dassey’s attorneys asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to hear his appeal in the Teresa Halbach murder.

The petition for a writ of certiorari — a legal brief asking the high court to hear his case — raises “crucial issues” with relevance far beyond Dassey’s case, the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth said in a statement Tuesday.

“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,” Steven Drizin, one of Dassey’s attorneys from CWCY, said in the statement. “Meanwhile, DNA evidence has uncovered dozens of cases involving false confessions from children. The time is now for the Court to reaffirm this country’s commitment to protecting kids in the interrogation room.”

Dassey and his uncle, Steven Avery, were convicted in the 2005 homicide of the 25-year-old photographer in Manitowoc County. Their cases were featured in the Netflix docu-series “Making a Murderer.” Both men are serving life terms in the Wisconsin prison system and are challenging their convictions.