Alison Dirr, and John Ferak

Post Crescent

"Making A Murderer" raises questions about whether Steven Avery 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.

TIMELINE: History of the Steven Avery case

Avery and his nephew, Brendan Dassey, were found guilty in the 2005 slaying of 25-year-old Halbach. Both are serving life terms in prison`. A judge ruled that Dassey will be first eligible for parole on Oct. 31, 2048.

MISSING SOMETHING? "Making a Murderer" coverage, achieved stories and more

We'll add to this list each day.

Day 6: Pretrial publicity issues

Buting says that pretrial publicity poisoned the public and potential jury.

At press conferences with Calumet County Sheriff Jerry Pagel, then-Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz recounted gruesome, though unsubstantiated, details of Halbach’s killing. The press conferences happened around the time Dassey was arrested in early March 2006.

In a defense motion filed about a week later, defense attorneys pointed out that Avery had been the subject of at least seven televised press conferences or interviews involving Kratz.

“The public comments of Mr. Kratz and Sheriff Pagel to date have put in obvious and serious jeopardy Mr. Avery’s state constitutional right to a fair trial in the vicinage in which the charged crimes are alleged to have occurred,” Dean Strang said.

The attorneys argued that in press conferences on March 1 and 2:

Kratz warned children and those close to Halbach to not watch the second press conference “given its grisly content,” but never warned prospective jurors not to watch it.

Kratz said repeatedly that he and investigators “know” certain things, “giving the public an impression of factual certainty based on information purportedly in the hands of authorities.”

Kratz detailed criminal accusations that he had not yet filed in a criminal complaint and on which no judge had therefore made a probable cause finding.

Kratz repeatedly used statements Dassey had made in asserting facts or allegations against Avery. Kratz would have known those statements against Avery were inadmissible.

5: DNA contamination on the bullet

The defense wanted to prohibit any testimony about the bullet that investigators believed had been used to shoot Halbach.

The bullet was tested by Sherry Culhane, a DNA technical unit leader at the state crime lab, according to Culhane’s testimony.

She said she had washed the bullet in a test tube used to extract DNA, and she testified that Halbach was the source of the DNA on the bullet.

But Culhane also accidentally introduced her own DNA into a sample meant to catch any mistakes that are made. Her DNA was introduced, she said, when she was training two new analysts while setting up the test.

She said it didn’t impact her interpretation of sample results, but since Culhane used the whole sample, the defense couldn’t retest it.

Buting told reporters in the series that the defense was not allowed to have someone watch while the test was done because they were told additional people could contaminate the scene.

“That’s what they said — that our person being there would be more risk of contamination when she’s contaminated it herself — and she used it all up so that we can’t retest it,” Buting said.

4: Defense tried to restrict evidence from Avery's trailer

Steven Avery’s 2007 murder trial might have looked dramatically different if Avery’s lawyers had convinced Manitowoc County District Judge Patrick Willis to restrict the prosecution from presenting any of the evidence collected from Avery’s trailer home during a questionable sixth search of the residence.

Attorneys Jerry Buting and Dean Strang argued that any evidence gathered by the investigators — including the infamous key belonging to murder victim Teresa Halbach’s Toyota RAV4 vehicle — should have been deemed inadmissible evidence for special prosecutor Kenneth Kratz to introduce before the jury at Avery’s February 2007 trial in Chilton.

Police searched the sprawling Avery Auto Salvage property from Nov. 5 through Nov. 12, court records show.

On Nov. 15, Avery, 43, was charged with first-degree intentional homicide and mutilation of a corpse. At the time of Halbach’s disappearance on Oct. 31, 2005, it was believed that the 25-year-old freelance photographer was taking pictures of a van at the Avery Salvage Yard in rural Manitowoc County.

Avery’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to suppress evidence from the Nov. 8 search of his trailer.

The Nov. 8 search of Avery’s bedroom lasted one hour. Court documents contend that one of the officersb“tipped and twisted a bookcase, pulling it away from the wall." Another officer then noticed the RAV4 key on the bedroom floor.

Two of the officers in the trailer were Manitowoc County Sheriff’s Lt. James Lenk and Sgt. Andrew Colborn, the same deputies who were involved in Avery’s $36 million federal lawsuit against Manitowoc County over Avery’s 18-year wrongful imprisonment for a 1985 rape committed by sexual predator Gregory Allen.

On appeal, Avery argued the re-entry of his bedroom by the investigators violated his Constitutional guarantee against unreasonable searches and seizures by police. However, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals disagreed and rejected Avery’s legal argument in a ruling dated Aug. 24, 2011.

3: Defense couldn't delve into the professional background of the former private investigator

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.

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.

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.

Alison Dirr: 920-996-7266 or adirr@gannett.com; on Twitter @AlisonDirr; John Ferak is an investigative reporter for the USA Today Network. He can be reached at jferak@gannett.com on Twitter @johnferak