After a judge ordered Brendan Dassey’s release from prison last week, a Federal Appeals Court blocked the release Thursday. After almost a decade in prison, Dassey was set to be released under parole supervision before Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel filed an appeal to keep Dassey in custody.
Dassey has been imprisoned since his confession to the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005, when Dassey was just 16. The story of the case was chronicled on Netflix’s wildly popular docu-series Making a Murderer.
Dassey’s 2007 conviction for the murder was overturned in August, but he still has yet to be released. In discussing the August ruling, Schimel said, “We believe the magistrate judge’s decision that Brendan Dassey’s confession was coerced by investigators, and that no reasonable court could have concluded otherwise, is wrong on the facts and wrong on the law.”
Dassey has maintained his innocence throughout his sentence, and the judge who overturned his case cited Dassey’s youth as well as his low IQ in arguing that his confession had been coerced. Dassey will remain in prison pending the outcome of this latest appeal.