The state of Wisconsin has said the latest appeal made by Steven Avery, the man at the center of Netflix’s wildly popular “Making a Murderer” docuseries, should be denied.
Avery and his 31-year-old nephew, Brendan Dassey, are currently serving life sentences for the murder of Theresa Halbach. The young photographer vanished Oct. 31, 2005 shortly after a visit to Avery’s home, where she snapped images of a car he intended to sell. Authorities later discovered 25-year-old Halbach’s Toyota RAV4 hidden among the junked vehicles in a salvage yard not far from Avery’s home.
Her charred remains were later discovered in a fire pit on the property and Avery’s DNA was found inside the Toyota.
Avery and Dassey have long maintained their innocence in the case, which was thrust back into the spotlight with the premiere of “Making a Murderer” in 2015. The hit Netflix series explored theories that authorities’ key suspect and his nephew were set up for Halbach’s murder.
Avery in August filed a petition with the state’s Supreme Court, requesting the panel review three key issues that should warrant a new trial in the high-profile case, his lawyers have said. It argues that Avery received ineffective counsel at his 2007 trial, that prosecutors destroyed evidence in “bad faith,” in addition to withholding a police report allegedly containing forensic evidence favorable to him, which is called a Brady violation.
In their response, filed on Wednesday, Attorney General Josh Kaul and Assistant Attorney General Lisa Kumfer, requested the state Supreme Court reject the appeal.
“As he has done throughout this proceeding, in his petition, Steven Avery has egregiously misrepresented the record (as the court of the appeals has repeatedly noted), the law, the lower courts’ opinions, and even his own arguments,” it reads.
The fact that Avery “misrepresented the facts is immaterial to deciding his Brady and ineffectiveness claims. We point them out because of the high-profile nature of this case . . . and the resulting need, where misrepresentations are particularly egregious, to note where Avery’s arguments wholly stray from the facts.”
