Angela Sutkiewicz mysteriously removed herself from Steven Avery’s case weeks after issuing a mistake-riddled ruling to prevent a new trial.
2024 is now shaping up to become the biggest year for Steven Avery, Wisconsin’s wrongfully convicted man who was later arrested for murdering Auto Trader photographer Teresa Halbach, just days before retired long-time Manitowoc County Sheriff Tom Kocourek was to testify in Avery’s $36 million civil lawsuit against the sheriff and Manitowoc.
On Friday, the most well-known and respected wrongful conviction lawyer in the United States, Kathleen Zellner, took to the offense, filing her 57-page post conviction appeal with the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.
Weird things happened in Avery’s case after long-time Sheboygan County Judge Angela Sutkiewicz issued her ruling in August, intending to make sure that Avery remained in the Wisconsin prison system for the rest of his life.
As many people in Wisconsin already know based on previous coverage from Gannett Wisconsin Media, Sutkiewicz has been long regarded as a mediocre to lousy judge, even for Wisconsin’s standards, but her performance from August may have been so dreadful that others in power urged her to step down and relinquish any handling of Avery’s case going forward.
The judge’s mistakes are so plainly obvious to anybody familiar with the Emmy-award-winning docu-series on Netflix, “Making a Murderer” that one has to wonder why Judge Sutkiewicz made the decision to insert so many incorrect facts into her August ruling that went against Avery?
Perhaps she did this because she knew she was under such intense and enormous pressure from long-time friends of hers, people like Ken Kratz, and Jerry Pagel of the Calumet County Sheriff’s Office and other state politicians who work in Madison.
Perhaps she made the August ruling mindful of Wisconsin’s elites, people affiliated with Wisconsin’s insurance companies that could be forced to shell out gobs of money in the event that someone else is exposed as being the true killer of Teresa Halbach.
Steven Avery has insisted since November 2005 that he is innocent and had nothing to do with Halbach’s disappearance after she visited his family’s salvage yard business for another routine photo assignment.
On the other hand, Avery’s nephew, Bobby Dassey, was gazing at her from the distance, watching her every move, from behind a window inside his mother Barb’s house, also along Avery Road.
After issuing her mistake-riddled ruling in August, Judge Sutkiewicz did something you never see a judge do: she resigned from the Avery case.
She informed the Wisconsin judicial system that she was through with the Avery case.
“When dealing with stakes as high as a defendant’s liberty, third-party perpetrator evidence walks a bit of a tightrope,” Zellner argued in Friday’s post-conviction appeal. “Without regard for Mr. Avery’s liberty, even after he has brought forth strong new evidence connecting a third party to Ms. Halbach’s murder, the circuit court has denied Mr. Avery the opportunity for an evidentiary hearing.
“Mr. Avery now appeals the circuit court’s denial of his amended third post-conviction motion because the circuit court’s opinion is so legally and factually flawed that it does not even consider whether Mr. Avery has alleged sufficient facts to warrant an evidentiary hearing; instead, the circuit court erroneously interprets State v. Denny as requiring conclusive proof of motive to satisfy the materiality requirement of State v. Edmunds and as requiring the alleged third party suspect to have the ‘necessary skills’ to manipulate evidence in a manner that would implicate the defendant to satisfy the opportunity prong of Denny.
“The circuit court’s decision, denying Mr. Avery an evidentiary hearing on his new evidence of Bobby Dassey’s possession of Ms. Halbach’s vehicle, is based on an irrational premise ‘that Bobby could have been in possession of the car that night … to help hide evidence to protect the two individuals directly linked by forensic evidence to this murder and convicted of the crime.'”
According to Zellner, here are the six major errors committed by Judge Sutkiewicz when it came to messing up the basic facts of the Halbach murder trial in her August post-conviction ruling:
No. 1: Judge Sutkiewicz used Brendan Dassey’s confession against Steven Avery even though the confession was inadmissible in Avery’s trial and Avery’s trial judge Patrick Willis of Manitowoc said it was unreliable and was contradicted by the evidence.
No. 2: Judge Sutkiewicz thought forensic evidence connected Brendan Dassey to the crime. It did not.
No. 3: Judge Sutkiewicz believed Halbach’s bones were in Avery’s burn barrel. They were in Bobby Dassey’s burn barrel.
No. 4: Judge Sutkiewicz believed Bobby Dassey pushed the RAV4 onto the Avery property to HELP Mr. Avery hide evidence even though it actually resulted in all the evidence being discovered.
“In the circuit court’s nonsensical conclusion, because these actions could be seen as an effort by Bobby to help Mr. Avery, he cannot be considered a valid third-party Denny suspect,” Zellner argued in Friday’s filing. “The circuit court failed to explain why if Bobby was simply lending a helping hand to his homicidal uncle, he would then become the State’s star witness against Mr. Avery.”
No. 5: Judge Sutkiewicz said we had to demonstrate with absolute certainty that Bobby made all of the porn searches. She wanted to know if we had performed psychological testing on Bobby Dassey, like we could force him to be examined.
No. 6: Judge Sutkiewicz says we had to demonstrate that Bobby Dassey had the scientific expertise to plant the evidence against Mr. Avery. Wisconsin has no such requirement, and it wouldn’t have taken any expertise to plant the evidence. Avery’s blood could have been removed with a wet rag from Avery’s sink and dripped in the vehicle, the electronic devices were burned in Dassey burn barrel and put in Avery’s burn barrel. The bullet could have been from the many bullets in Avery’s garage. The bullet could have been rubbed in Halbach’s blood or touched her skin before she was burned. We point out that Bobby was a skilled hunter and had been stalking hunting, burning and dismembering game for many years while Mr. Avery was locked up for a crime he did not commit.”
One mistake, two mistakes, three mistakes, four.
Five mistakes, six mistakes. Yikes.
Now that Judge Sutkiewicz’s colossal volume of errors on Avery’s appeal have slowed the legal process for Zellner and Steven Avery even more, someone else in the Wisconsin judicial system will be required to exterminate the foul smell of horse manure and cow dung — coming from the halls of the Sheboygan Courthouse where Judge Sutkiewicz’s chambers and courtroom are located.
It would have been one thing for Sutkiewicz to issue an eloquent and well-researched legal opinion justifying her reasons for preventing Avery from getting a second trial, but that’s not what happened in August. And on Friday, Zellner exposed the questionable judge to all the rest of America’s lawyers and judges to read for themselves.
And now that Judge Sutkiewicz has mysteriously taken herself off of handling Avery’s case, some other judge, a newbie to the Manitowoc bench named Anthony Lambrecht, is lined up for the task of trying to bring respect and dignity back to the Wisconsin’s judiciary surrounding the world-watched events of the Steven Avery case.
Meanwhile, the world waits to see what the Wisconsin court of appeals will do.
Zellner has just reminded that court of all the errors made by Sutkiewicz in her August ruling. Errors that, in essence, allowed Judge Sutkiewicz to avoid focusing on the real legal issue staring her in the face: the emergence of Thomas Sowinski, the Gannett Wisconsin Media newspaper carrier, who came forward to testify that he saw Bobby Dassey working with someone else who was not Steven Avery or Brendan Dassey, pushing the RAV4 belonging to Teresa Halbach.
The middle of the night sighting by the newspaper delivery carrier happened only six hours before Halbach’s vehicle was found on the back perimeter of the Avery Salvage Yard property, on Nov. 5, 2005. That single event launched Manitowoc County’s quest to target Steven Avery for Halbach’s disappearance and death. It helped obliterate Avery’s $36 million federal lawsuit against Sheriff Kocourek, just a few days before Kocouek was scheduled to give his videotaped lawsuit deposition for framing Avery in the August 1985 Lake Michigan shoreline rape of the prominent Manitowoc businesswoman, the crime the police knew was committed by predator Gregory Allen.
“The Sowinski evidence is additionally material because it completely calls into question the reliability of the State’s key witness, Bobby’s testimony, which allowed the State to argue that Mr. Avery had exclusive control of Ms. Halbach and her vehicle, which contained all of the forensic evidence, and that this evidence was not tainted by any third party,” Zellner argued in Friday’s apperal to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. “During its closing argument, the State emphasized the importance of Bobby’s testimony and vouched for his credibility.
“Clearly, by Bobby possessing the Halbach vehicle, there is a reasonable likelihood it would have affected the judgment of the jury in that Bobby would have emerged as a much more likely suspect in the murder of Ms. Halbach than his recently released, wrongfully convicted uncle. Contrary to the State’s representations to the jury, Bobby was biased and deserved no credit for his fabricated testimony,” Zellner emphasized to the Wisconsin appeals court in Friday’s filing.
(The opinion column is by John Ferak, editor of Joliet Patch, former Wisconsin journalist and author of Wrecking Crew: Demolishing The Case Against Steven Avery, which just published its updated fifth anniversary edition in late November.)