Making A Murderer's Steven Avery won't get a new trial
Milwaukee ABC affiliate WISN is reporting that Steven Avery’s request for a new trial has been denied. Avery is serving a life sentence for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach, which gained notoriety with the Netflix docuseries Making A Murderer in 2015. Avery’s lawyers have filed repeated motions in an attempt to exonerate him; most recently, attorney Kathleen Zellner filed a motion for reconsideration along with “a substantial amount of what [the defense] calls newly discovered evidence.” The document released today by the Wisconsin Circuit Court goes on to flatly say that “this characterization is false.”
The court also chides Avery’s lawyers for filing this motion at all:
Furthermore, a Motion to Reconsider is not the appropriate forum for
the court to consider new arguments based on a defendant’s additional arguments for a
new trial.
Read the court’s full memorandum decision and order.
Avery’s latest attempt at exoneration follows an early October ruling that denied Avery a new trial, saying that the evidence was not sufficient.