10 key takeaways from Steven Avery's motion for a new trial

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.

MANITOWOC - There was no media hoopla on Wednesday when attorney Kathleen Zellner showed up at the Manitowoc County courthouse to file five binders of documents on behalf of convicted killer Steven Avery.

Zellner's much-anticipated post-conviction motion filing — more than 1,250 pages in length — lays out her arguments and theories surrounding the death of Teresa Halbach.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that Avery's motion for a new trial is without merit.

"We are confident that as with Mr. Avery's prior motions, this one also is without merit and will be rejected once it is considered by the court," said Rebecca Ballweg, senior communications specialist in the state Attorney General's office. "We continue to send our condolences to the Halbach family as they have to endure Avery's ridiculous attempts to re-litigate his guilty verdict and sentence."

The motion filed on behalf of Avery, who turns 55 next month, won't be resolved overnight. It will likely take a number of months before Sheboygan County Judge Angela Sutkiewicz issues a ruling.

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Here are some of the key revelations and accusations that Zellner laid out as part of her quest to prove that her client was wrongfully convicted of murder:

1. Criticizes the previous criminal defense work of Avery's original trial lawyers, Jerry Buting and Dean Strang.

Zellner's voluminous filing accuses the two prominent Wisconsin attorneys of shoddy work after Avery hired them for $220,000 after being charged with Halbach's murder in 2005. "Trial defense counsel failed to thoroughly investigate other suspects and instead chose a scattergun approach of simply naming individuals without meeting the requirements of State V. Denny (a third-party alternative defense). Trial defense counsel also failed to utilize available evidence which confirmed that the (victim's) vehicle was moved onto the Avery property after Ms. Halbach was killed elsewhere."

Strang and Buting addressed Zellner's post-conviction motion in an email Thursday to USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin.

“We have not read Kathleen Zellner’s June 7, 2017, filings for Steven Avery in their entirety, but have read the 202-page motion itself," the attorneys said. "We are glad that she has filed a motion with supporting documents. What really matters here, to us and we hope to everyone, is that we get closer to the truth in this case and to justice for everyone. We hope that Ms. Zellner, and Steven Avery’s entire current legal team, have taken an important step yesterday toward those two, related goals.”

2. Maintains that Avery's 1996 blood vial that became the focus of Strang and Buting's evidence-planting trial defense was irrelevant and had nothing to do with the case. "Mr. Avery's Wisconsin Innocence Project attorneys broke the seal of the 1996 blood vial package and resealed the enclosed box using only a strip of Scotch tape. There was no credible proof presented to the jury establishing that Lt. (James) Lenk and Sgt. (Andrew) Colborn accessed the Clerk of Court's file to obtain Mr. Avery's blood to plant it in the RAV-4."

3. Suggests Avery's blood was planted inside the RAV4, but stated that the blood came from inside Avery's bathroom in his red trailer. According to Zellner, Avery broke open a cut on the middle finger of his right hand on Nov. 3, 2005. "Mr. Avery dripped blood onto the rim and basin of the sink and the bathroom floor ... He did not clean the blood out of his sink prior to leaving the trailer at approximately 7:30 p.m. to go to Menards with his brother Chuck." Avery got home around 10 p.m. and went straight to bed. The next morning, he entered his bathroom to shower, noticing "that most of the blood in and around the sink had been removed. Mr. Avery consistently expressed his belief to his attorneys and the media that the blood of his found in Ms. Halbach's vehicle was planted and that it came from his trailer."

4. Disputes the prosecution's claim that Halbach suffered gunshot wounds to her head and that her dead body was thrown into the cargo area of her vehicle. "The erroneous blood spatter testimony of the State's expert (Nick) Stahlke resulted in the State presenting a false narrative to the jury about the sequence of events surrounding the attack on Ms. Halbach." Stuart James, a renowned blood-spatter expert from Florida, conducted several experiments concluding Halbach "was struck on the head after she opened the rear cargo door. She fell to the ground next to the rear bumper on the driver's side where she was struck repeatedly by an object similar to a mallet or hammer."

5. Conducted experiments and demonstrations to prove Colborn and Lenk's trial testimony about finding the spare key inside Avery's bedroom was false. "Neither side subpoenaed Mr. Avery's bookcase to the trial. Trial defense counsel's failure to have the bookcase at trial to demonstrate the impossibility of the State's story about the discovery of the key was a fatal error. A simple experiment with the bookcase and Toyota key would have conclusively demonstrated that the key was planted next to the bookcase by Sgt. Colborn and Lt. Lenk. Conclusive proof that this one piece of evidence was planted would have collapsed the State's house of fabricated evidence."

6. Points to Halbach's residence in rural Calumet County as the source of the spare key that is suspected to have been planted. At the time, she lived there with Scott Bloedorn, a longtime friend and former classmate. "On Nov. 4, 2005, news media crews filmed the interior of the house Ms. Halbach shared with Mr. Bloedorn. While interviewing Mr. Bloedorn in the kitchen, news media filmed what appeared to be the RAV-4 sub-key and blue lanyard, which was next to the kitchen sink. It is indisputable that the key that was found in Mr. Avery's bedroom was Ms. Halbach's sub-key with a blue lanyard attached."

7. Offers testimony from DNA expert Dr. Karl Reich, of Illinois, to assert that Avery's DNA was planted by law enforcement onto the spare key. "Dr. Reich conducted experiments that demonstrate that the DNA on the sub-key found in Mr. Avery's bedroom is of much greater quantity than the amount of DNA Mr. Avery deposited on an exemplar sub-key by holding it in his hand for 12 minutes as a part of Dr. Reich's experiment. Specifically, Dr. Reich found that Mr. Avery deposited 10 times less DNA on the exemplar sub-key than what the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory detected on the sub-key recovered from Mr. Avery's bedroom ... the only plausible explanation is that the DNA was planted on the key from another source of Mr. Avery's DNA."

8. Accuses Manitowoc County law enforcement of taking Avery's toothbrush from his bathroom and using that item to plant Avery's DNA onto the spare key for Halbach's vehicle. "Mr. Avery's toothbrush was taken by law enforcement and current post-conviction counsel's DNA experts' experiments have shown that rubbing a toothbrush on an exemplar sub-key would produce a comparable quantity of DNA ... The only plausible explanation for the missing toothbrush was that law enforcement removed the toothbrush but never logged it into evidence so that it could be rubbed on the sub-key of Ms. Halbach."

9. Casts a cloud of suspicion on lead investigators Mark Wiegert of Calumet County and Tom Fassbender of the Wisconsin Department of Justice Division of Criminal Investigation. The two are accused of violating Avery's Fourth Amendment rights by exceeding the scope of a search warrant to obtain illegal samples of Avery's DNA for evidence planting purposes. "Two groin swabs were taken from Mr. Avery at Aurora Medical Center by a nurse on Nov. 9, 2005 ... Nurse (Faye) Fritsch would never have taken the groin swabs without being specifically instructed to do so by Agent Fassbender and Inv. Wiegert. Agent Fassbender and Inv. Wiegert's explanation that they did not realize that the search warrant did not call for taking groin swabs is not credible ... It is a reasonable probability that they intended to plant DNA from the groin swabs and conceal, from the official medical report, that groin swabs were taken. Inv. Wiegert clearly fabricated the chain of custody form given to Wisconsin State Crime Laboratory. In light of the new scientific testing done on the hood latch, Inv. Wiegert substituted the groin swabs for the hood latch swabs collected (in April 2006) by Sgt. (Bill) Tyson."

10. Accuses Halbach's ex-boyfriend, Ryan Hillegas, formerly of Hilbert, of being the real killer. According to court filings, Zellner uncovered evidence that Hillegas had had an abusive relationship with Halbach. "Before Ms. Halbach's murder, the killer most likely became aware that she was sexually involved with a married man and a second male who was a very close friend of the killer's," Zellner stated on page 98 of her legal brief. "The killer, who knew the password to her voice mailbox, deleted several of Ms. Halbach's voice messages to buy himself time before Teresa's family and friends realized that she was missing and began searching for her ... The killer knew Ms. Halbach very well in order to know her password. Clearly, this person was not Mr. Avery ... The killer wanted to control the investigation and direct it towards the single goal of framing Mr. Avery for the murder."

John Ferak of USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin: 920-993-7115 or jferak@gannett.com; on Twitter @johnferak; Andy Thompson: 920-996-7270 or awthompson@postcrescent.com; on Twitter @Thompson_AW