"Making A Murderer" raises questions about whether Steven Avery actually killed Teresa Halbach. What's more surprising is that there are other defenses that Avery's attorneys were banned from using at his trial.
"The film doesn't even touch on a lot of legal rulings, the ways in which legal hurdles were thrown at us to make it more difficult for us to present a defense or to make it impossible for us to present a defense," one of Avery's defense attorneys, Jerome Buting, told Post-Crescent Media soon after the series was released.
Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey,
were found guilty in the 2005 slaying of 25-year-old Halbach. Both are serving life terms in the state prison system. A judge ruled that Dassey will be first eligible for parole on Oct. 31, 2048.
We'll add to this list each day.
3: Defense couldn't delve into the professional background of the former private investigator who found Halbach's RAV4
Defense attorneys wanted to flesh out the background of Pamela Sturm, a 51-year-old De Pere woman and second cousin of Teresa Halbach.
Sturm and her daughter, Nikole, found Halbach's locked Toyota RAV4 on the Avery property during an organized search on the morning of Nov. 5.
Sturm testified that she had been a private investigator but had let her license expire, according to court documents. She said she had never done any work for Manitowoc or Calumet county sheriff's departments or been a police officer. She also said her license had never been revoked or suspended. The defense wanted the jury to know more about her background as a private investigator, but the judge wouldn't allow it.
Scott Tadych gives testimony in the Steven Avery trial at the Calumet County Courthouse Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2007, in Chilton,(Photo: AP)
2: Who did the defense want to identify as Halbach's real killer?
Attorneys Buting and Dean Strang wanted to be able to identify alternative suspects, and evidence pointing to these people, at trial.
His lawyers argued after he was convicted that they "would have settled on one or more people as to whom we thought we had the best case and that they committed the crime."
Their list, according to records from the Court of Appeals decision on Aug. 24, 2011, included the following people:
- Scott Tadych, the man dating Barb Janda, who lived on the Avery property: Janda is Dassey's mom and Avery's sister. Testimony would have shown his reaction to the news of Avery's arrest and his attempt to sell a .22-caliber rifle belonging to one of the Dassey boys. The attorneys wanted to explore whether a fingerprint found in the investigation that did not match Avery was ever compared to Tadych's fingerprints.
- Andres Martinez, a salvage yard customer who denied being present on the Avery property on Oct. 31, 2005.
- Charles Avery, Steven’s brother: Testimony would have pointed to his suspected jealousy of Steven Avery over money, Steven Avery's potential share of the family business and over Steven Avery's girlfriend.
- Earl Avery, Steven’s brother: Testimony would have pointed to his presence at the salvage yard after 3:30 p.m. or 4:30 p.m. on Oct. 31, 2005, and his reaction to being interviewed by investigators.
- Robert Fabian, a friend of Earl Avery.
- Bobby Dassey, nephew of Steven Avery and sibling of co-defendant Brendan Dassey: They wanted to introduce testimony questioning Bobby Dassey's statement that he saw Halbach on the Avery salvage yard property before leaving to go hunting and Dassey's allegedly conflicting statements about when he showered on Oct. 31, 2005.
- Blaine Dassey, nephew of Steven Avery and sibling of co-defendant Brendan Dassey.
- Bryan Dassey, nephew of Steven Avery and sibling of co-defendant Brendan Dassey.
1:
Defense couldn't say who else they thought might have killed Halbach
Avery's defense attorneys had "a number of other suspects" in Halbach's murder, Buting said. But the jury didn't get to hear those theories.
"I knew from, frankly, when that decision was made, that it was going to be very difficult to win this case because as much publicity as there was in this case, as heinous of a false description as was put out into the general public, it was going to be hard for them to find and to acquit on reasonable doubt if they couldn't also see that someone else might have done it," Buting said. "If not him, who?"
Judge Patrick L. Willis of Manitowoc County ruled against Avery's lawyers, concluding they hadn't shown that the other people on the Avery property had a motive to kill Teresa Halbach or to commit other crimes against her. The Court of Appeals upheld his ruling in an opinion published on Aug. 24, 2011.
