If there was ever a way to spend the coldest days of January, it's camped on your couch binge-watching Making a Murderer on Netflix. If you've tuned in already, then you know why. If you haven't... prepare yourself for a terrifying look at the American justice system gone wrong.
The good news for the man at the center of the series, Steven Avery? It seems as though the 10-episode documentary is giving new life to his case. More than 300,000 people have signed two petitions requesting that President Obama pardon the convicted murderer; and on Tuesday the series creators told TODAY viewers that a juror from Avery's 2005 trial has reached out and said they firmly believed Avery was framed for the crime.
"(The juror) told us that they believe Steven Avery was not proven guilty,'' filmmaker Laura Ricciardi shared. "They believe Steven was framed by law enforcement and that he deserves a new trial, and if he receives a new trial, in their opinion it should take place far away from Wisconsin."
The unnamed juror also alerted Ricciardi and her co-creator Moira Demos about a central issue within the jury's decision. "The juror contacted us directly and told us that the verdicts in Steven's trial were a compromise,'' she went on. "That was the actual word the juror used and went on to describe the jurors ultimately trading votes in the jury room and explicitly discussing, 'If you vote guilty on this count, I will vote not guilty on this count,' so that was a significant revelation."
"They told us really that they were afraid that if they held out for a mistrial that it would be easy to identify which juror had done that and that they were fearful for their own safety,'' Demos added. Learn more from the filmmakers in the full segment on TODAY.com.
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