Another day, another crop of Making A Murderer stories. On the heels of Steven Avery filing yet another appeal, armed with a new legal team, more controversy has developed to possibly help or hinder Avery’s case.
Rolling Stone magazine interviewed Avery’s attorney, Jerry Buting, who hasn’t spoken since the documentary aired, about his concerns over the jury in Avery’s murder trial. He told the magazine, “I’ve still got my suspicions about whether something improper occurred during the deliberations.”
When asked about his suspicions, Buting said, “I suspected that there might’ve been some undue pressure put — either from within the jury room or outside the jury room — that might’ve affected the fairness of each individual juror’s deliberation. And one of the jurors who actually sat through the verdict has since, apparently — I have not spoken to him or her — but they came forward and spoke to the filmmakers and felt like they were intimidated and pressured to vote guilty, and that they really didn’t think he was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and they really did think that the police had framed him.”
In the interview, Buting also discussed one of the jurors, who reportedly volunteered for the Manitowoc Sheriff’s Department. When asked why the juror was not dismissed, Buting recognized the issue and said, “Some of the observers or commentators have noted: ‘Well, why would you keep somebody like that on the jury’ What people don’t understand is that picking a jury is really — it’s not like you pick who you want. It’s a matter of eliminating who you don’t want.”
In Touch magazine spoke to some of the jurors on the case, who shared insider information about what happened in the jury room during deliberations. One juror told the magazine that they thought Teresa died from “Torture and rape. Then [Avery] shot her in the head. He cut her up and put her in a burn barrel.” This disclosure is important because there was no evidence of the rape and torture allowed in Avery’s trial – the information came from nephew Brendan Dassey’s confession and was part of prosecutor Ken Kratz’s pre-trial press conference.
According to New York criminal defense attorney Bruce Baron, this revelation could open the door to a new trial. He tells the magazine, “If a jury made its decision on incomplete, improper or withheld evidence then there are absolute grounds for a new trial. The jurors now may well be brought before an appellate review and ordered to describe whether they discussed certain inadmissible details they should not have brought into their deliberations.”
If tainted jury issues weren’t enough, on Wednesday night, Steven’s ex-girlfriend, Jodi Stachowski, was featured on an interview on HLN’s Nancy Grace show, where she called Avery “a monster” and said she believed he was guilty of the murder of Teresa Halbach. She continued to say that she lied to investigators in fear of her own safety and had received threatening letters from Steven after he was found guilty and incarcerated for the crime. Oh, and in the interest of equal time, here’s a short video detailing whom Avery suspects of the murder. And, for what it’s worth, Avery’s other ex-fiance, Sandra Greenman, believes he’s innocent.
The plot continues to thicken in this very complicated case. Since all of this new information is rising to the surface, could revisiting the events of that tragic night prove, without a reasonable doubt (this time) if Avery is truly guilty or innocent? Could Making A Murderer 2 be on the horizon?
Photo credit: Netflix
Source Cele Bitchy
