Last week, the defense attorney for Steven Avery, Kathleen Zellner, submitted a 599-page filing to the Wisconsin Circuit Court which included a request for them to consider fresh evidence in her client’s latest appeal.
As anyone that saw the documentary will know, Avery and his then-16-year-old nephew Brendan Dassey were convicted of Teresa Halbach’s murder. Brendan had his conviction overturned in 2016, but it was later upheld by a higher court in December 2017.
As for Avery’s defense, they’ve frequently maintained that he’s innocent of all charges relating to Halbach’s death.
Regarding the new evidence that has been submitted, Zellner claims that a CD-rom with data from the Dassey family computer supports the argument that Bobby Dassey, older brother to Brendan, lied in court.
On the morning of Halbach’s murder, Bobby Dassey said that he slept until the afternoon. Zellner claims that Dassey accessed the internet several times on that particular day and that he saw Halbach on the morning that she died.
As for the contents of this CD-rom, it contains violent pornographic material which shows women being tortured. Zellner claims that this data was mainly accessed when Bobby Dassey was the sole person at home.
“Many of the images bear a striking resemblance to Ms. [Teresa] Halbach and to the nature of the crime committed against her,” Zellner wrote.
Regarding the other contents on Dassey’s laptop, there’s a folder labelled ‘DNA’ and ‘Halbach’, accessed at times the defense claims only Bobby would have been at home.
Aside from this, another witness claims that they saw Halbach’s car parked near the property of Scott Tadych -Steven Avery’s sister’s husband while a medical expert has claimed that the scratch marks that were found on Bobby Dassey’s back days after Halbach’s disappearance – which he said were from his dog – were more like those belonging to a human hand.
At the time of the trial, Bobby Dassey was never mentioned as a third-party suspect due to lack of evidence and an absence of motive.
“The State had no real interest in outing Bobby’s perversions and obsession with dead female bodies – after all, they didn’t want the jury to see their star witness was a developing sexual psychopath,” Zellner said in a statement.
Regarding Steven Avery’s future, a request for a retrial was denied back in 2017. This occurred before Zellner could submit the aforementioned new findings as evidence.
The Court of Appeals has ruled that these new findings must now be considered and the Wisconsin Circuit Court judge has 60 days to rule on whether or not a retrial will take place.
