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Almost 200,000 People Have Signed Petitions Asking Obama to Pardon the 'Making a Murderer' Subject

The Netflix documentary 'Making a Murderer' has thousands of people upset about the fact that Stephen Avery is in prison for a homicide they say he did not commit.

Last month, Netflix released their new true crime miniseries Making a Murderer, just in time for the world to rage against America's broken criminal justice over the holidays. Now righteously enraged viewers have launched campaigns on Change.org and WhiteHouse.gov to beg President Obama to pardon the subject of Making, Steven Avery. (Minor spoilers from Making a Murderer ahead, if you care about that sort of thing.)

The ten-part documentary picks apart the allegations that Avery and his 16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey were responsible for the murder of Teresa Halbach, a crime for which they were found guilty in 2007. Avery is currently serving a life sentence; his supporters believe that the evidence against him was manufactured by law enforcement officers out to put him in prison after an earlier conviction against him for rape was overturned.

One of the prosecutors who put Avery away, Ken Kratz, has spoken out against the Netflix filmmakers, claiming that they cherry-picked evidence from the case to make Avery appear innocent. The documentarians have shrugged off his accusations, and the 200,000 angry true crime fans who signed the two petitions aren't swayed by Kratz's argument either.

Unfortunately for the online petitioners, Obama can't pardon Avery, since his was not a federal conviction.