In the April of 2007, Brendan Dassey of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin was tried for the assistance and/or direct involvement in the rape and murder of Teresa Halbach, a 25 year-old photographer. However, he was only sixteen years of age, whereas he was tried as an adult, as eighteen or older. Is it moral to put a minor’s liberty on the line as if they were a full-grown, mature adult? This essay will elaborate why Dassey was not at the level of maturity to face the consequences of an adult criminal. First and foremost, Dassey was, as mentioned above, a sixteen year-old, meaning that he is still a child, a minor by U.S. law. He was tried as an adult. Minors have been tried as if they were eighteen or older several times before, but with a child like this, a historically innocent, somewhat …show more content…
It reveals the investigators’ methods of reaching through to him. Many times during the tape, he is called a liar, told to tell the truth, and are trying to emotionally push him to tell a fake story. This ties back into his age too. In Nancy Grace: ‘Nothing Wrong’ With How Police Interrogated Brendan Dassey In ‘Making A Murderer’, the author uses statistics to challenge Grace’s statement. “A 2003 study found that teenagers were far more likely than young adults to falsely confess. And in an analysis of hundreds of cases going back to 1989, false confessions were found to be one of the leading causes of wrongful conviction, according to the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic. Overall, about 31 percent of wrongful conviction cases examined by the Innocence Project included a false confession. Among homicide cases, that number ballooned to 63 percent.” According to the study, Dassey would have more likely than not falsely confessed to the homicide. This is why an accurate interrogation of Dassey is hardly the truth, and because of that it can’t and shouldn’t be used as