Making a Murderer Part 2 has reintroduced Steven Avery, the circumstances surrounding the murderer of Teresa Halbach and all of the bizarre occurrences of Manitowoc County, Wisconsin.
The first instalment of Netflix’s true crime hit documented the trial which followed her 2005 disappearance, ultimately leading to the convictions of Avery and his nephew Brendan Dassey.
Part 2 picked up where that left off; introducing the pair’s post-conviction legal teams and following each of them on their paths to appeal.
We’ve already addressed what’s happened to Brendan Dassey. But where is Steven Avery now, in his legal battle towards proving his innocence (something he has maintained ever since his ’05 arrest)?
Kathleen Zellner, the force of nature who’s now leading a post-conviction investigation of her own, is responsible for a whole heap of new Making a Murderer evidence.
Providing Denny suspects (including Brendan’s brother Bobby Dassey), uncovering evidence that was not turned over to Avery’s original defence team during his trial and also raising issues relating to “ineffective assistance of counsel”, Zellner has put together a strong case for Avery to have a new hearing.
In episode 10, however, it was revealed that Zellner’s request for a retrial was denied on October 3, 2017. Court Judge Angela Sutkiewicz of Sheboygan County, Wisconsin, denied the motion in a six-page response, claiming that the defendant had “failed to establish any grounds that would trigger the right to a new trial in the interests of justice.”
Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel said he was “pleased” with the judge’s decision, citing “justice” for Teresa Halbach’s family.
Of course, these details made headlines at the time. But, in Making a Murderer Part 2, we were shown exactly what happened in the immediate aftermath. In Zellner’s office, she was straight on the phone to Professor Sean O’Brien (post-conviction consultant) to discuss her next move.
Kathleen told him that she believed there to be “a bunch of things wrong with [the ruling]”, because the judge failed to address five of the issues that were raised in the motion. Within those issues, she explained, there were “specific allegations” totalling over 50 different items.
“I would like to be diplomatic about this opinion,” Zellner told the camera during episode ten. “But it’s hard to do that when I’ve got somebody’s life at stake and on the receiving end of it is someone who obviously… is making fundamental mistakes about the underlying facts in the case. And then is trying to go one on one with our scientist. It’s just not at all what a judge should be doing.”
“The message we’re getting is ‘we want you, and your team, and your experts to go away. And we want Steven Avery to die in prison. Quietly, please, quietly. Stop looking at it, stop talking about it’,” Zellner continued.
Avery didn’t seem phased by the decision though. “I’m used to that,” he told Kathleen on the phone, having been through it before.
The wrongful-convictions attorney also detailed the fact that, before the judge’s “abrupt” opinion was issued, she’d been in negotiations for a new evidentiary hearing.
Drafting a motion right away, Zellner and her team looked at ways to vacate the decision. Filing a motion for relief of the judgement, Zellner requested that it be vacated so that the agreed testing could happen. She also filed a follow-up motion to reconsider – which included all of the new evidence that she had found. Judge Angela Sutkiewicz dismissed these motions too.
Zellner called the decision “political”, but showed no sign of giving up.
Part 2 drew to a close with Avery still serving his life sentence, but Zellner seems adamant that we will, one day, see Avery walk free.
“Steven Avery is at the BEGINNING not end of the appeal process,” she tweeted one week after the release of Part 2, later adding: “We have multiple opportunities to overturn this wrongful conviction.”
Making a Murderer Part 1 and 2 are available on Netflix.
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