Nearly a year after Making a Murderer first aired on Netflix, the documentary's subject Steven Avery might get the biggest break in his controversial case. Avery was convicted of killing photographer Teresa Halbach in 2007 and is currently serving a life sentence in prison, but he has remained in the news as his new lawyer Kathleen Zellner continues to fight for his freedom.
In August, Zellner filed a motion claiming that investigators framed Avery and the defense is trying to prove this using sophisticated DNA testing that was not available at the time of the trial.
"We're going to take the mystery out of this case," Zellner told ABC News at the time. The defense requested carbon testing be done on the blood found in Halbach's vehicle, which Avery's attorneys argued had been taken from an old sample and placed in the car. "This new test has the ability to tell us how old the blood is. If the blood is from 1996, it was planted."
Now, Zellner says that an agreement to start independent scientific testing on this key evidence has been signed.
"It's encouraging that the Attorney General's Office was so cooperative and helpful in expediting these tests," Zellner told the Herald Times Reporter. "Our experience in our other exonerations is that's the best attitude in working toward trying to discover anything" that gets to the truth.
As the Herald Times Reporter notes:
Practically all of the evidence included in the scientific testing order is connected to Halbach's blue-green Toyota RAV4. These critical items of evidence will undergo testing as part of this week's court order: Blood flakes recovered from the floor near the center console of Halbach's RAV4. Bloodstain cutting from the driver's seat. Bloodstain cutting from passenger's seat. Swab of the RAV 4 ignition area where blood was found. Swab of bloodstain taken from the rear passenger's door. Swab of bloodstain taken from a CD case found in vehicle.
Particularly, Zellner points out that the defense wants to test the "swab from the hood latch of Halbach's RAV4 that later generated a DNA profile for Avery." This piece of evidence, Zellner said, "was fabricated from other known DNA samples that were in the possession of Calumet and Manitowoc County law enforcement."
