Brendan Dassey v. Michael Dittmann

Brendan Dassey confessed on videotape that he raped Teresa Halbach, helped his uncle murder her, and then burned her body in a fire pit at his uncle’s junkyard. A jury convicted Dassey of those crimes, and the Wisconsin state courts have upheld the convictions. On federal habeas corpus review, however, Dassey has persuaded the district court and now my colleagues that his confession was involuntary and his convictions invalid. I respectfully dissent. We should reverse.

To decide whether Dassey’s confession was voluntary, the state courts applied the correct but general and even indeterminate…