It’s bad news for Brendan Dassey. The now 28-year-old man was convicted, along with his uncle, Steven Avery, of the 2005 death of photographer Theresa Halbach. The case was covered in the 2015 Netflix documentary series Making A Murderer. On Friday, Brendan was on the receiving end of a ruling from a federal appeals court reversing a ruling made in August of last year which would have overturned his conviction. Back in August, a federal court found that Brendan, who was 16 at the time of the murder, was denied access to effective counsel and was coerced into making his confession.

On Friday, the US Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a federal judge’s ruling and decided, by a vote of 4-3, that Brendan’s confession should not be thrown out, keeping the man’s life sentence in effect. Judge David Hamilton wrote the majority opinion on the appeal:

“Dassey spoke with the interrogators freely, after receiving and understanding Miranda warnings, and with his mother’s consent. The interrogation took place in a comfortable setting, without any physical coercion or intimidation, without even raised voices, and over a relatively brief time. Dassey provided many of the most damning details himself in response to open-ended questions.”

[From CNN]

The three judges who dissented on the ruling called it “a profound miscarriage of justice.” One of those judges, Judge Ilana Rovner, stated “What occurred here was the interrogation of an intellectually impaired juvenile.” This interrogation, the judge went on to say was, “Psychological coercion, questions to which the police furnished the answers, and ghoulish games of ’20 Questions,’ in which Brendan Dassey guessed over and over again before he landed on the ‘correct’ story (i.e., the one the police wanted), led to the ‘confession’ that furnished the only serious evidence supporting his murder conviction in the Wisconsin courts.”

Anyone who saw Making A Murderer, regardless of what you may think about Brendan and Avery, could see how the investigators led Brendan to the confession they wanted. I even agree with Judge Rovner, who concluded that Brendan’s confession “was not voluntary and his conviction should not stand, and yet an impaired teenager has been sentenced to life in prison.”

Brendan’s lawyers, Laura Nirider and Steven Drizin, were disappointed by the ruling and plan to appeal to the US Supreme Court. Their statement read, in part: ”

Today’s ruling contravenes a fundamental and time-honored position of the United States Supreme Court: interrogation tactics that may not be coercive when applied to adults are coercive when applied to children and the mentally impaired. Indeed, when such tactics are applied to vulnerable populations, the risk of false confession grows intolerably.”

The attorneys added that they are “committed to continuing to fight on behalf of Brendan and others like him to prevent future miscarriages of justice.”

Avery’s former defense attorney, Jerry Buting, weighed in on the court’s decision and optimistically tweeted, “Two strong dissents in 4-3 Dassey decision strengthen chance for SCOTUS review.” And, back in October, Avery’s attorney, Kathleen Zellner, claimed that she uncovered new evidence implicating Brendan’s older brother Bobby in the killing (she also still suspects Theresa’s former boyfriend Ryan Hillegas may have been responsible for the murder).

This case doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. With another season of Making A Murderer in the works, how much of this is going to be covered? Are we going to get a season three? I still have my doubts about Brendan’s guilt. Steven’s? Not so much. I remain curious to see how this plays out.