During a segment on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last night, Making a Murderer creators Moira Demos and Laura Ricciardi told Stephen Colbert that their documentary subject, Steven Avery, should not be in prison, despite being convicted for murder.
“My personal opinion is that the state did not meet its burden in Steven Avery’s case or Brendan Dassey’s case,” Ricciardi said.
Sitting with Colbert, the two creators explained that the series, which unpacks the circumstances around Avery’s case in a way that suggests police may have framed him for his crimes, was not meant to dramatize the mystery of the crime, but the process of Avery’s conviction.
“We actually like to say it’s more a how-dunit. What we were documenting was the process, and that’s what justice is, it’s a process,” Demos said. “So, can we rely on these verdicts at the end?”
The appearance came just a day after Steven Avery filed a formal appeal of the murder conviction documented in the series. In the filing, Avery alleged that forces both in and out of the courtroom tilted the investigation and trial against him.
Colbert does not allow the creators to rest on their laurels. When Ricciardi’s response very diplomatically avoided the question of Avery’s innocence, Colbert asked the duo to distinguish between “‘guilty or not guilty,’ as opposed to ‘proven or not proven.'” Demos conceded that “there may be things he could be guilty [of].”
If you ask us, that doesn’t really matter much. And, Demos continued, “Is he guilty beyond a reasonable doubt? Nothing I’ve seen, and I’ve seen a lot of stuff, nothing I’ve seen has convinced me of that.”
Watch: