Steven Avery. Photo courtesy of Change.org.
Summary: Evidence in Steven Avery’s reopened case will be retested.
Defense attorney Kathleen Zellner has made an announcement that will have “Making a Murderer” fans rejoicing–Steven Avery’s legal team has won the right to get key evidence in the case retested. According to Business Insider, this aspect was a major legal hurdle on Avery’s journey to clearing his innocence.
Back in August, Zellner filed a motion to retest evidence in Avery’s case, and nearly three months later, the defense team and the county prosecutors have written an agreement order, outlining what evidence can be retested and how. Zellner made the announcement on Twitter, but so far, details of the Agreed Order have not been shared with the public.
Netflix’s “Making a Murderer” took the country by storm late last year. The 10-part documentary series delved into the conviction of Wisconsin’s Steven Avery in the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach.
In 2003, Avery was released from prison after nearly two decades. He was falsely accused of rape, and DNA evidence proved his innocence. He was in the midst of filing a lawsuit against law enforcement and the city when he and his nephew were arrested for the death of Halbach, who was a photographer who had been on his property taking pictures of his cars. Her body had been found charred on the Avery property in Manitowoc County.
In 2007, Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey were convicted, and they had been in prison ever since. While Avery is still serving time, it was announced on Monday that Dassey had been released.
The success of the series brought on new attention to the case, and in January, criminal appeal lawyer Kathleen T. Zellner and Wisconsin-based Tricia Bushnell, the legal director of the Midwest Innocence Project, announced that they would head Avery’s new defense team.
Now that testing has been approved, it will still take months to get the results back. The time will get even more delayed, according to Zellner, now that Dassey has been released. However, if the results are what she was expecting, she said that the process will then move quickly.
Zellner has stated that she fully believes in Avery’s innocence, a stance that the filmmakers and fans staunchly believe. However, there are still some like TV host Nancy Grace that feel Avery was rightly convicted. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Grace detailed why she felt Avery was guilty, and she stated that the filmmakers left out evidence in their documentary, which gave viewers the false impression that Avery had been framed.
“I understand where people are coming from — but they have made their decision based on this documentary. And that is not right,” Grace said.
Do you think Avery is guilty or innocent? Let us know in the comments below.
Source: UpRoxx