Defense: Avery appeal costs exceed $600,000

Alison Dirr | USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin

Show Caption Hide Caption Steven Avery's Evidence Suburban Chicago attorney Kathleen Zellner has vowed to use advances in scientific technology to prove that Steven Avery was wrongfully convicted of the Oct. 31, 2005 slaying of photographer Teresa Halbach.

APPLETON - Costs associated with Steven Avery's latest appeal — including experts and attorney fees — have exceeded $600,000, court records show.

A footnote toward the end of the motion filed last week by attorney Kathleen Zellner laid out what it's taken so far to mount the appeal for post-conviction relief. Avery, who is serving a life term for the murder of Teresa Halbach, is seeking a new trial.

$232,542 on experts, paid for as follows: $14,000 from the Avery family, $21,191 from public donations, $22,000 from the Midwest Innocence Project and $175,351 from the law firm’s funds.

$428,000 in legal fees.

In the course of fighting Avery's murder conviction, Zellner and her law clerks visited him in prison more than two dozen times, the defense stated in its motion filed last week in Manitowoc County court.

"The current motion is the product of over a thousand hours of attorney time, hundreds of hours expended by private investigators, numerous consultations with experts, the expenditure of funds to retain those experts, and more," Zellner said.

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It’s extremely difficult to do the kind of leg work that leads to an exoneration, particularly if the case hinges on more than DNA, said Brandon L. Garrett, a law professor at the University of Virginia School of Law.

Costs vary widely from case to case, experts said. But as scientific evidence becomes more integral to cases, so too, does it play a larger role in appeals — at no small price.

Keith A. Findley, co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, described the use of science as a double-edged sword.

"It opens an avenue and it provides an opportunity where if you get the right testing and the right experts, it means that the defense has a chance to prove that somebody was innocent and wrongfully convicted with the weight of science behind them, which it often takes to overturn a conviction," said Findley, who didn't comment specifically on Avery's case. "So it can be a very powerful tool for finding the truth and serving justice. That's the good side.

"The bad side is it comes with a cost, so that most people can't afford to do that. So again, what we're talking about is very uneven justice."

Limitations, financial and otherwise, to hiring experts pose challenges for attorneys and defendants at the appellate level. But it's also a problem well before an appeal, when cases are making their way through the system for the first time, Findley and Garret said.

A case with considerable scientific and expert evidence costs more because attorneys hire experts to do various kinds of testing — none of which is cheap, he said.

Those experts typically charge by the hour at a significant rate, he said. If a client is far away, travel costs also add up.

In her motion, Zellner cites 10 experts, whose areas of expertise include forensics, DNA analysis and molecular biology, and the conduct of prosecutors.

In cases where forensic testing played a large role, it's often necessary to get more and different types of testing to counter that, Findley said.

"Increasingly, the criminal justice system is depending on science, on scientific evidence and that means that in responding to a case like that, you’ve got to come up with other scientific evidence," he said. "It's also the fact that probably most of the witnesses to the incidents have already made their statements, said what they are going to say."

That means, he said, that an attorney searching for new evidence will likely depend more on science than witnesses.

Alison Dirr: 920-996-7266 or adirr@gannett.com; on Twitter @AlisonDirr