Shamelessly copied from Reddit.
For everyone that thinks, "Who cares, he got what he had coming", please consider this.
It's easy and common for the police to bend the rules, for Judges to let rulings slide and for appellate courts to not make proper decisions when they think a horrible person did a heinous crime. After all, who wants to be the person to put a rapist and a murderer back on the streets? In Wisconsin these are mostly elected positions so your reputation and livelihood is at risk.
However, Here is just some of the damage that has already been done.
Many of the court's rulings either pushed the limits of the law or broke it completely. Many of the court errors made in Steven's case were classified as "Harmless Errors" by the appellate courts thereby making these "errors" now a precedent.
So now when these (illegal) errors happen again in the future a prosecutor can say that it wall allowed in the precedent setting case of State of Wisconsin vs. Steven A. Avery.
If you watch Making a Murderer, you saw numerous "Firsts" in this case. Well, now these "Firsts" are going to be allowed in other cases. maybe one you are involved in.
For instance..
(1) Contaminated DNA is now admissible in court. That's right, for the "first time" a knowingly contaminated piece of DNA evidence was allowed to convict a defendant, and it was upheld by the appellate courts.
(2) The right to claim "ineffective counsel" is now gone in Wisconsin. In order to claim ineffective counsel (basically malpractice caused you to lose), a defendant must "prove both deficient performance and prejudice". I don't know how an appellate court can rule that Len Kachinsky wasn't both deficient in his performance and prejudice. I mean the man went on TV and said his client was guilty even before talking to his client. It will be much harder to prove in future cases that a person had a bad lawyer that acted against him when the bar is now set so low.
(3) There was ex-parte communications between the Judge and a juror. The appellate courts ruled this a harmless error which now opens the door to all sorts of Jury tampering that can be called "harmless error".
(4) The police broke the "one warrant, one search" rule. This means the police are allowed to search one piece of property one time with one warrant. The police searched the Avery's property for 8 days and entered Steve Avery's trailer multiple times not to continue a search but to start a new search which was in violation of the law. The appellate courts again ruled that this was allowed thereby degrading unreasonable search and seizure laws.
(5) And (this one get's complex) the judge erroneously applied the Denny Standard to Avery's case. This meant that the only testimony and evidence allowed could not point to a third party, it could only point to Steven or Brendan, unless a pre-trial motion allowed it 30 days before the trial. The appellate court upheld this and it's basically unconstitutional because it puts the burden of proof onto the defendant. Don't be surprised if a case with the Wisconsin Denny Standard eventually goes to the US Supreme Court.
Here's where applying the Denny Standard really hurt Steven's case.
Bill Newhouse, an analyst with the State Crime Lab testified that the bullet found with Teresa's DNA came from a Marlin Model 60 .22 rifle. And Steven owned this exact rifle. Newhouse testified he could only identify the make and model of the rifle and could not specifically say it was Steven's rifle.
However, Brendan's Brother (Bobby) also owned a Marlin Model 60 .22 rifle. But because of the Denny Standard, the defense was not allowed to talk about Bobby's rifle because that would imply that Bobby could be involved in Teresa's murder and that would violate the Third Party Evidence Rule known as the Denny Standard.
Therefore the jury was lead to believe that the bullet had to have come Steven's gun because (as far as they were told) it was the only explanation.
There were many pieces of evidence and testimony that the defense could not explore. For instance they could not ask Teresa's Ex questions that might exonerate Steven because it may incriminate someone else. For instance, in Wisconsin 80% of all murders are done by current or former romantic partners (spouses, boyfriends, exes, etc.) yet they could not ask him "Where were you when she was last seen". Part of this was because the police never asked him.
The people of Wisconsin lost a lot of their legal rights all in an effort to put Steven Avery away at all costs. It's going to come back and hurt a lot of innocent people in the future.
