Steven Avery’s case chronicled in “Making a Murderer” keeps getting more interesting.
Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos, the filmmakers behind the Netflix docuseries, told NBC’s “Today” on Tuesday that an unidentified juror from Avery’s 2005 murder trial has come forward to admit they believe the convict, who is currently serving life in prison, is innocent.
“(The juror) told us that they believe Steven Avery was not proven guilty,” Ricciardi said. “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.”
In a more startling revelation, Demos added that the juror was “fearful for their own safety” at the time if they stood up for their belief that Avery was not responsible for the death of Teresa Halbach.
“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 said.
The juror also described the decision-making process that decided Avery’s fate as “a compromise.”
“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,’” Ricciardi said.
Although Avery was found not guilty on the charge of mutilating a corpse, the jury still decided the man who previously spent 18 years behind bars for a rape he didn’t commit was guilty of murdering Halbach, as well as illegally possessing a firearm.
The “Making a Murderer” creators said they have not been able to verify the claims from the juror they spoke to, because they have not spoken with any other members of the same jury.
“Our through line in the entire series really was a question of how is the American criminal justice system functioning?” Ricciardi said. “Is it delivering on its promises of truth and justice? And we thought Steven Avery would be an amazing window through which to look at the system.”
Watch the video below.