Following his release, Avery filed a $36 million lawsuit against Manitowoc County, its former sheriff, and its former district attorney for wrongful conviction and imprisonment.
In November 2005, with his civil suit still pending, he was arrested for the murder of Wisconsin photographer Teresa Halbach, and in 2007 was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
[10] On February 20, 2018, Dassey's legal team, including former United States Solicitor General Seth Waxman, filed a petition for a writ of certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court.
After serving 10 months of a two-year sentence in the Manitowoc County Jail, he was released on probation and ordered to pay restitution.
Avery maintained that the gun was not loaded and that he was trying to stop her from spreading what he alleges are false rumors about him by threatening to kill her and was not actually prepared to commit murder.
[17] Although Avery was forty miles away in Green Bay shortly after the attack – an alibi supported by a time-stamped store receipt and sixteen eyewitnesses[18] – he was charged and ultimately convicted of rape and attempted murder, then sentenced to thirty-two years in prison.
In 2002, after serving eighteen years (the first six concurrently on the prior endangerment and weapons convictions), the Wisconsin Innocence Project used DNA testing – not available at the time of Avery's original trial – to exonerate him and to demonstrate that a different suspect, Gregory Allen, had in fact committed the crime.
Rep. Mark Gundrum, the Republican chairman of the Wisconsin Assembly Judiciary Committee, impaneled a bipartisan task force to recommend improvements to the state's criminal justice system aimed at decreasing the likelihood of future wrongful convictions.
Recommendations included a revamped eyewitness identification protocol[5] and new guidelines for interrogations of suspects and witnesses, and the collection and storage of material evidence.
[23] Avery filed a civil lawsuit against Manitowoc County; its former sheriff, Thomas Kocourek; and its former district attorney, Denis Vogel, seeking to recover $36 million in damages stemming from his wrongful conviction.
[25] Halbach's vehicle was found partially concealed in the salvage yard, and bloodstains recovered from its interior matched Avery's DNA.
[28] They speculated that the blood found in Halbach's car could have been drawn from the stored vial and planted in the vehicle to incriminate Avery.
On March 18, Avery was found guilty of first-degree murder and illegal possession of a firearm, and was acquitted on the corpse-mutilation charge.
[32] He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole on the murder conviction, plus five years on the weapons charge, to run concurrently.
[36] Another juror allegedly told the Making a Murderer filmmakers of feeling intimidated into returning a guilty verdict, fearing for personal safety.
[41] In January 2016, Chicago attorney Kathleen Zellner, in collaboration with the Midwest Innocence Project, filed a new appeal, citing violations of Avery's due process rights and accusing officials of gathering evidence from properties beyond the scope of their search warrant.
[42][43][44] In December 2015, Dassey's attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal district court for release or retrial, citing constitutional rights violations resulting from ineffective assistance of counsel and the coerced confession.
In June 2017, the Seventh Circuit upheld the magistrate's decision to overturn Dassey's conviction, leaving the state with the options of appealing Duffin's ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, dismissing the charges, or retrying him.
The state's petition was granted and the appellate court reversed the magistrate's ruling, finding that Dassey's confession did not violate the Constitution.
[57] New technology used to identify victims in the California wildfires would allow Zellner, if she had won the appeal, to test the bones for Teresa Halbach's DNA.
"[57]Zellner went on to file another motion, saying that the return of the bones to the Halbach family constituted an Arizona v. Youngblood violation, which meant that this potentially crucial exculpatory evidence could not be tested.
In the motion, Zellner claims to have "new witnesses" that would "provide new and undisputed evidence that directly links Bobby Dassey to the murder of Teresa Halbach.
[68] On December 18, 2015, Netflix released Making a Murderer, a ten-episode original documentary series that explores Avery's and Dassey's investigations and trials.
"[7] The series was widely reviewed and discussed in the media, and generated numerous follow-up interviews and articles with parties shown in the documentary, including family members and some reporters who covered the trials.
[72] In December 2018, Netflix and series producers were sued for defamation by Andrew Colborn, a former Manitowoc County police officer who had testified at Avery's murder trial.
[73] The suit alleges that the series omitted and distorted material in order to portray Colborn as a corrupt officer who had planted evidence.
[75] In 2023, The Daily Wire released Convicting a Murderer, produced and hosted by Candace Owens criticizing how the Netflix documentary handled the case.