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There's possible bad news for the Steven Avery appeal

New update in Making a Murderer case

There's possible bad news for the Steven Avery appeal

After binge-watching all ten episodes of Making a Murderer in an absolute maximum of a weekend, the wait for the next instalment of the story has been agonising at times - although, of course, probably not quite as agonising a wait as if you'd been falsely imprisoned for 18 years for a crime you didn't commit.

And, of course, since the documentary series went out, there have been a host of huge developments in the case - ten of which are detailed here - with the most significant being the involvement of legendary wrongful convictions specialist attorney Kathleen Zellner.

She has been compiling new evidence and reexamining all the aspects of the campaign since taking the case on in January earlier this year, and has been a regular on Twitter, updating followers with news of potential new leads and her faith that Steven Avery's conviction for the murder of Teresa Halbach in 2005.

Fans of the series have been eagerly awaiting 31 May, as this was due to be the filing date of the appeal, with her appellate brief - "a formal court document that lays out all of the arguments a petitioner or respondent plans to make on appeal" - expected to appear online as soon as she digitally submitted it to the Wisconsin Department of Justice.

However, Zellner has now requested a 90 day extension for filing, meaning a new date of 29 August before the wheels of justice can begin to creak into action.

The motion to extend explains that the reason for the delay is the volume of documents - 464 in total - saying that her team needs more time to go through them, adding, "Although counsel has worked diligently … it requires additional time to complete the brief in this case.”

So what could this mean for the case?

Avery himself filed his appeal on Monday 11 January in an appeals court in Madison, with the document not bearing Zellner's name, although she was announced as his new attorney the following day. So perhaps she simply went with the existing date, even though she suspected it may not give her enough time to work with it.

However, it could equally mean that she has failed to find enough new material to be confident of winning an appeal, so requires more time to find a rabbit to pull out of the hat.

Avery's case is not the only one that she is currently working on - she was recently in court in an attempt to overturn the conviction of Melissa Calusinski, a daycare worker convicted of first degree murder in the 2009 death of a one-year-old baby. The judgement on that appeal is expected on 13 June.

Stay tuned for further updates.

(Image: Getty)