Attorney Kathleen Zellner has filed her petition with Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. She’s seeking an evidentiary hearing and a new trial.
MADISON, WIS —Attorney Kathleen Zellner has filed her 35-page petition with the Wisconsin Supreme Court, asking justices to overturn a recent Wisconsin Court of Appeals ruling that rejected her attempt to have an evidentiary hearing for her client Steven Avery.
Zellner maintains the Wisconsin Court of Appeals repeatedly got many of the murder trial facts wrong in its July 28 ruling denying Avery’s attempt to get his murder conviction overturned in the Oct. 31, 2005 death of Auto Trader free-lance photographer Teresa Halbach, 25.
Zellner, the suburban Chicago lawyer featured in the second Netflix docu-series of “Making A Murderer II” that aired in October 2018, issued a statement Thursday morning contending that Wisconsin’s appellate court is putting an impossible burden on Avery compared to other state prisoners.
“We call it the Avery Rule because the court is holding him to a much higher standard than other inmates,” Zellner remarked Thursday. “Apparently, we are feeling the push back from all the public scrutiny of his verdict. Amazingly, the court said, ‘We express no opinion on who committed this crime.’ That statement was disconcerting because my client is serving a life sentence for the murder of Ms. Halbach.”
Zellner went on to say, “We were very shocked that the court got the most basic trial facts wrong. The court believed that the bullet with Ms. Halbach’s DNA on it never went through her head, but the prosecutor did claim the bullet went through Ms. Halbach’s head.”
“The court thought Ms. Halbach’s bones were in Avery’s burn barrel, they were not and he was acquitted on the mutilation charge. The court did not think Bobby (Dassey) was home alone on the day Ms. Halbach disappeared, but Bobby himself testified he was home alone.”
Zellner’s statement she issued Thursday, in conjunction with the filing of her petition at the Wisconsin Supreme Court ended by stating, “It is very disappointing that the quality of the review was undermined by the huge errors. Hopefully, we will get a better quality of review by the Wisconsin Supreme Court.”
According to the Avery petition filed by Zellner, she asks the state supreme court “to correct the lower courts’ misinterpretation of the pleading standard to obtain an evidentiary hearing on Mr. Avery’s claims.
“Second, Mr. Avery presents this court with an opportunity to decide whether Mr. Avery has sufficiently alleged Brady claims warranting an evidentiary hearing or, in the alternative, a new trial. Third, Mr. Avery presents this court with the opportunity to fashion a remedy for a state actor’s destruction of evidence … violation … and decide whether the violation of the statute is sufficient evidence of ‘bad faith’ to warrant an evidentiary hearing on a Youngblood claim, or in the alternative, grant Mr. Avery a new trial in the interest of justice.”
Zellner contends in her petition that if the bones were planted in Avery’s burn pit, “this is potentially exculpatory to him. If Mr. Avery were able to test the gravel pit bone fragments, and that testing yielded the DNA of another person, Mr. Avery would be able to provide a suspect for the mutilation of Halbach, and in turn, a Denny suspect for the murder of Halbach.”
Also, Zellner reminded the Wisconsin Supreme Court that “a previously undisclosed police report documents that these bones (from the gravel pit) were held out to the victim’s family as being the victim’s bones. The Court of Appeals erroneously focused only on the testimony of the state’s forensic anthropologist, confining its analysis to the ‘suspected human bone fragment’ labeled #8675, the only bones from the gravel pit introduced at trial. The court ignored entirely Dr. Eisenberg’s reports, which described numerous other human bones found in the gravel pit. Therefore, it erroneously concluded that the bones given to the Halbach family were simply of indeterminate origin.”
Zellner’s petition goes on to conclude that, “Mr. Avery has alleged sufficient facts to show a violation of the statute in a second way: that the state’s effective destruction of the gravel pit bones was a destruction of evidence that ‘may reasonably be used to confine the murder to the Avery property and to one person because it made its case against Mr. Avery much easier.”
To read Zellner’s petition in its entirety to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, go here.
This petition from KZ must have them all pretty shock up! Not only is it accurate it shows the wrongs they did to set Steven & Brendan up.
I pray this next petition gives Stevens the evidently hearing he deserves. The truth always wins and this state can’t hide forever.
Its so disheartening how a state could be so cruel to a man who has never committed a crime yet left to rot for 30 years. No matter what the state thought of the Avery Family to do this is pure evil.
I for one will always have Steven & Brendans backs. I won’t stop until they are both freed.