How Making a Murderer’s Steven Avery Could Be Freed Without a Trial
Defense attorney Kathleen Zellner, who took on Steven Avery’s case in late-January, has said that her goal is not to secure her client a new trial — she wants to see him exonerated and his conviction vacated. “I told [Avery], ‘I’m a sprinter. I’m not a long-distance runner,'” Zellner recently told Newsweek. She took on Avery’s case shortly after he filed his appeal in January. There’s no guarantee that a judge will agree to hear it, but introducing evidence that clearly absolves Avery of the murder of 25-year-old photographer Teresa Halbach would make a retrial unnecessary. Zellner has been involved in the exoneration and release of 17 falsely convicted men, and has recently been making confident suggestions on Twitter that she can prove Avery was falsely convicted.
Fifth trip to Steven Avery. Collected samples for new tests. The inevitable is coming–he was smiling so were we. #MakingAMurderer #Science+
— Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) February 20, 2016
But what evidence can she and her team uncover to exonerate him outright? Zellner’s strategy hinges on proving at least one of the following three claims:
Phone records show Teresa Halbach left Avery property alive
Halbach’s cellphone records, in particular the brief conversation she had with AutoTrader saying she was on her way to the Avery property, were used by the prosecution to corroborate their timeline for the murder. However, Zellner alleges that cellphone tower pings tell a different story about Halbach’s last location before her phone was shut off. According to Zellner, the last call Halbach’s phone received pinged a cell tower located 12 miles from the Avery Salvage Yard. “It’s absolutely shocking to see cellphone records that were part of the discovery that were turned over to the defense … document her route leaving the property,” Zellner told Newsweek. “It’s really hard to figure out how in the world did the defense not seize on this. It would have created reasonable doubt.”
Cellphone tower evidence is not an exact science — call records vary from carrier to carrier, and from year to year, so Zellner’s claim will depend on expert testimony. Digital forensics investigator Jerry R. Grant — who is not consulting on the Avery case, but recently testified about the reliability of cell tower evidence at a hearing for Adnan Syed of Serial fame — told me that corroborating Zellner’s claim requires more documentation than is currently available in the evidence file. “I would need to plot all of the cell towers in the area at the time to even attempt to determine what could and could not have happened,” Grant explains. “Zellner will also need to put the phone in Halbach’s hand and that typically is accomplished with corroborated outbound calls.” Even if Zellner is correct that the last tower pinged was 12 miles from the Salvage Yard, Grant continues, “Remember the cell tower itself may be 12 miles away but the phone doesn’t necessarily have to be right under the cell tower to access it.”