news

NEWS
Freed by DNA, Now charged for murder
NYT, 28 November, 2005

Freed by DNA, Now Charged in New Crime - New York Times By MONICA DAVEY November 23, 2005
MADISON, Wis., Nov. 17 - As three men sat nervously on a stage, preparing to recount their nightmarish journeys through a justice system that had sent them away for crimes they had not committed, the moderator had a plea for the crowd in an auditorium here.
Mr. Avery in court on a homicide charge on Nov. 15. Let us not talk about Steven Avery, another man now sitting in a county jail charged with killing a young woman. Not tonight. Not again.
"This event is not about that," the moderator, Lawrence C. Marshall, a law professor who has spent years trying to free wrongfully convicted prisoners, urged. "Tonight we are here to talk about the much bigger issue."
For days, however, the case of Steven Avery, who was once this state's living symbol of how a system could unfairly send someone away, has left all who championed his cause facing the uncomfortable consequences of their success. Around the country, lawyers in the informal network of some 30 organizations that have sprung up in the past dozen years to exonerate the falsely convicted said they were closely watching Mr. Avery's case to see what its broader fallout might be.
Two years ago, Mr. Avery emerged from prison after lawyers from one of those organizations, the Wisconsin Innocence Project at the University of Wisconsin Law School, proved that Mr. Avery had spent 18 years in prison for a sexual assault he did not commit.
In Mr. Avery's home county, Manitowoc, where he was convicted in 1985, his release prompted apologies, even from the sexual assault victim, and a welcoming home for Mr. Avery. Elsewhere, the case became Wisconsin's most noted exoneration, leading to an "Avery task force," which drew up a package of law enforcement changes known as the Avery Bill, adopted by state lawmakers just weeks ago.
Mr. Avery, meanwhile, became a spokesman for how a system could harm an innocent man, being asked to appear on panels about wrongful conviction, to testify before the State Legislature and to be toured around the Capitol by at least one lawmaker who described him as a hero.
But last week, back in rural Manitowoc County, back at his family's auto salvage yard, back at the trailer he had moved home to, Mr. Avery, 43, was accused once more. This time, he was charged in the death of Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old photographer who vanished on Oct. 31 after being assigned to take pictures for Auto Trader magazine at Avery's Auto Salvage.
After her family searched for Ms. Halbach for days, investigators said they found bones and teeth in the salvage yard, along with her car. In the car, they found blood from Mr. Avery and Ms. Halbach, they said. They also found her car key in the bedroom of his trailer, they said, and, using the very technology that led to Mr. Avery's release two years earlier, they said they identified Mr. Avery's DNA on the key.
"This case has blown us away," Stephen M. Glynn, a Milwaukee lawyer who has represented Mr. Avery in a $36 million civil lawsuit against the former prosecutor and former sheriff in the original sexual assault case, said of the new charges against Mr. Avery. "I haven't taken that hard a punch in a long, long time."
"This lets down so many people," Mr. Glynn went on. "This case became something that could have had an enormously positive effect on the criminal justice system in this state, but now that's up in the air."
Around the nation, DNA testing has led to the exonerations of 163 people since 1989, including Mr. Avery, said Maddy deLone, executive director of the Innocence Project in New York, where Barry C. Scheck and Peter J. Neufeld were pioneers in the movement. Only one of those exonerated is known to have been convicted of a serious crime since being freed, Ms. deLone said. Like leaders in similar groups, Ms. deLone said she had recently heard about Mr. Avery's case and had talked to colleagues about it. "While this is a horrible, horrible crime," she said, "we really don't think that it will have an effect on these efforts or on our responsibilities to vindicate innocent people."