Quote Originally Posted by a500lbgorilla View Post
Spoiler:
Since the investigation was so ballsed up, I think the deciding factor in whether or not you think Avery is likely guilt comes down to whether you believe his time in jail made him evil or how easily you believe the cops were corrupt enough to frame him for a murder.

Spoiler:
I don't see why his time in jail is anywhere near the deciding factor. There's probably more data in the time before he went away for 18 years that suggests his evil. The stuff he did, like burning a cat alive and assaulting his cousin. The absurdly fucked up family he came from, including his sex offender brothers. None of this is really admissable in court except to suggest his character.

"Believing his time in jail made him evil" is an absurd belief without some corroborating events during his incarceration that would back that up. Like, for example, if he was frequently raped in prison or joined the aryan brotherhood or something. His correspondance with his ex wife was certainly quite fucked up and strongly correlates with the type of person who would rape and murder a woman, though.

Were the cops corrupt enough to frame him for a murder? It's an incomplete question. There is a broad spectrum of what the cops could have done to hurt Avery. They could merely have swiped the key from a less-incriminating location on Avery's property and placed it in a more-incriminating one. They could merely have planted some blood to put a nice bow on the case. Cops do shit like this all the time for people that they believe to be guilty. Is it wrong? Of course. Does it completely undermine the state's case against Avery? Of course. But it doesn't make him much less likely to be guilty in reality.

It's a huge jump to go from that kind of corruption to full on dumping a body/car on Avery's property, and a colossal jump to go from fabricating an entire crime scene to committing a murder. There really is scant evidence or logic to back up the latter two theories, IMO.