We look at the parallels between the Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey cases from Making a Murderer and those of other high-profile defendants such as Adnan Syed, Amanda Knox and the West Memphis Three, and at some of the defendant characteristics and police and prosecution tactics that heighten the likelihood of wrongful conviction, especially when minors and the mentally compromised are involved.

We examine why defendants succumb to false confessions, the unreliability of polygraph tests, media misrepresentation, and the tendency towards blind faith in the prosecution’s narrative by victims’ families, even in the face of absurd prosecution forensics, and in some cases, eventual exoneration.