Doug Schneider

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Steven Avery's former lawyers revealed a great deal in an interview published by Newsweek this week, but perhaps nothing in the interview is as significant as an item near the end of the story.

Avery "just never had a motive" to commit murder, according to attorney Jerry Buting.

"Things were going well for him," Buting told the magazine. "He was about to receive a $400,000 check from the state (for his previous wrongful imprisonment), over and above the $36 million lawsuit against (Manitowoc) County, which was going well, and he had a girlfriend who was about to be released from jail in a couple of weeks. He just never had a motive to do something like this. That should give people pause."

The detailed piece leads with the willingness of Buting and co-counsel Dean Strang to have their vigorous defense of Avery ruled ineffective if it helps Avery win his appeal.

It also discusses their multinational "Conversation on Justice" tour, and why Strang, at least, is a tad skeptical of Avery's new attorney's claim that information collected from a cell tower will help clear him of the murder. Kathleen Zellner has said she believes records related to Halbach's cellphone will show that the photographer left Avery's Manitowoc County auto-salvage yard after the time she is believed to have been killed.

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But that wasn't the only news this week involving the people whose lives are detailed in the "Making a Murderer" documentary.

Our Andy Thompson also got time with Strang, despite the fact that the lawyer is out of the country. In an email interview, Strang opens up to Thompson about his frustration with aspects of Wisconsin's justice system, particularly about how poorly it pays attorneys who represent low-income defendants.

Said Strang: "In Wisconsin, which has the lowest hourly rate of compensation for court-appointed private lawyers in the nation (although some states use flat fees, which on an hourly basis probably translate to an even lower rate in some cases), neither the legislature nor the state supreme court has increased that hourly rate in 22 years. In fact, it has gone up only $5 an hour since 1978."

He continued:

"That reflects a failure of basic decency and respect for the adversarial process itself, at least as to the 80 percent-plus of people charged with a crime who must rely on either a public defender or a court-appointed lawyer. Our legislature and court systematically hobble the adversarial system by starving it — and even the prosecution side is under-funded, just not quite as badly. So until we see some stirrings of basic decency and respect for our judicial process by addressing some of the most obvious wrongs that we do to the poor, defendants, victims, and witnesses alike, in our courts, we cannot consider meaningfully any comprehensive change."

On Thursday, meanwhile, Zellner won the release of another convicted killer, Bernard Mims.

Mims spent 12 years in prison for the killing of an off-duty Cook County Jail officer, though Zellner said the killing occurred at a time when Mims was recovering from his own gunshot wound and could barely leave his bed, the Chicago Tribune reported.

"It's obviously an extraordinarily flawed case looking at the medical records," she told the newspaper. "It's as flawed as it can be."

She has said her goal in the Avery case is to have him cleared of Halbach's killing, not just granted a new trial, and has previously said he "has an airtight alibi" in the Halbach killing.

Her tweet after the Mims ruling included the hashtag "#GoCubs."

RELATED: Avery's lawyers talk justice, Zellner's strategy

Meanwhile, another of Avery's former fiancees has expanded her talk-show horizons to include Inside Edition.

Much of the story is a rehash of what Lynn Hartman said on the Dr. Phil show earlier this year, but there is one new head-desk moment: Hartman says she broke off her engagement over "concerns about his character."

"I had to end the relationship because I saw signs that concerned me," she said.

No word on why that took so long.

RELATED: Can 'Making a Murder' improve U.S. justice?

Across the pond, the Buting/Strang tour continued to attract significant media attention. To wit:

►Scotland's Evening Times had a gushy piece from the guy who hosted their appearance in Glasgow. Jay Jay Robertson called the conversation, which took place in front of an audience of 2,000, "one of the most prestigious events of my career."

►The tour's schedule has expanded to include Holland, according to the Netherlands Times. The attorneys will be in Amsterdam on March 20.

dschneid@greenbaypressgazette.com and follow him on Twitter @PGDougSchneider