First, allow me to say that I understand that everyone will (and should) be skeptical about some claims I'll make here. It is the internet after all. I'm doing this because my community has been under attack nationally and when I listened to Bill Simmons and Cousin Sal bring it up yesterday on a Sports Podcast, I couldn't take it anymore. I am a civil defense attorney. I worked on the defense of the federal civil suit brought by Mr. Avery in 2004 (which was settled in 2005 after he killed Ms. Halbach). While I cannot discuss anything protected by attorney-client privilege, I can discuss anything that was made part of the record.
In order to (maybe) convince someone I am who I say I am, I would note that the depositions you see in episodes 1 and 2 were taken in the basement of the old Nash, Spindler, Grimstad, & McCracken building along the lake in Manitowoc (Which burned down in December 2010). I know because I was in that room for those depositions. I even asked questions (though the viewer wouldn't know it as you only hear from Avery's team - this is unsurprising). While you, the reader, may not be able to fact-check that, perhaps this detail will lend me some level of credibility.
OK. Mr. Avery killed Ms. Halbach. Thankfully, there are some journalists doing some work to show that the "point of view" of the television show is one-sided (and, understandably so - no one watches this if it is obvious Mr. Avery killed Ms. Halbach). I would point the reader to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel coverage, where a journalist has recently demonstrated that Mr. Dassey's confession was not coerced, but selectively edited for the TV show, as well as adding a number of other key facts left off the program.
But my main function here should be sticking to what I know. And what I know is that the entire TV show falls apart if you pick apart the basic premise - that the Sheriff's Department railroaded Mr. Avery in 1985 and, therefore, had motive to railroad him again. This is simply false.
Mr. Avery (and his family) had many run-ins with the law prior to his 1985 wrongful conviction. It's odd to type a sentence that contains the phrase "Mr. Avery doused his cat in gasoline and threw it on a bonfire, but that wasn't the most awful thing he did prior to 1985." And yet, I just did. No, the most awful thing he did was stick a shotgun in his cousin's face after he ran her off the road. Lucky for her, he saw a baby in the backseat and decided not to kill her. That was after she complained to the Sheriff's Department about him masterbating in the road when she drove by in the mornings (and he was visited by said Sheriffs). True true, she later said this never happened, but (1) if you know anything about domestic violence, you know that victims often change the story and (2) if the doc is clear about anything, it's that the Avery family takes care of their own.
So, when the owner (at the time) of our quant little candy store reported to the Sheriff's Department that she had been raped on the beach at 3pm for 15 minutes on a clear day, had a good look at the suspect, and described someone almost identical to Mr. Avery (the eye color was different), it wasn't "railroading" to presume that he was a suspect. It was reasonable. Then she picked Mr. Avery out of a lineup, and then ID'd him at trial. A forensic expert testified that the hair that was found was consistent with Mr. Avery's hair. Sure, we now know that witnesses have a difficult time recalling what their assaulters actually look like, but that wasn't the case in 1985. This all seemed straightforward.
Except one thing. And this is the reason that the Manitowoc Police Department told the Sheriff's Department that "they had the wrong guy", as the TV show so succinctly put it (without explanation). Mr. Avery had an alibi. But the alibi was not airtight. He was seen (with his family) at a store in Green Bay approximately (I don't recall the specifics, so don't get mad if my numbers are off) 90 minutes after the assault. The police timed everything out (Avery would have had to run from the beach to the nearest place to park, which was over a mile away, then gone home, picked up his family, and driven the 40 minutes to Green Bay). It was close. They believed it wasn't probable. But it WAS POSSIBLE. In hindsight, the Sheriff's Department should have continued to investigate the possibility that it was someone else given that evidence. They did not. But, again, the premise of this show requires you to believe that the Sheriff's Department railroaded Mr. Avery here. They did not. This was not unreasonable.
The civil suit was really about one thing. Mr. Avery was always going to get his loss of past wages claim (which is, in essence, what he got - 20k/year for 18 yrs, and he got 400k). The difficulty for the defense lay in the phone call from Brown County 8 years prior to Mr. Avery's release. I can't tell you what the defense's experts would have said, but I can tell you that we had sheriffs from 5 surrounding counties and the instructor at Fox Valley Technical Institute (police training) all set to testify on behalf of the defense. I can also tell you that the defense asserted in court documents that it was not required to take the information from Brown County any further than it was taken. You can put two and two together.
Now, is this a good thing? No. No it isn't. Law enforcement, if they receive a tip like that from another agency, should be required to investigate or, at the very least, let the inmate know about it. Anything except sit on it. But it wasn't REQUIRED, and that's where the law creeps in. In essence, we felt we had a pretty good defense for that and the plaintiff had the emotional, human side that they would have appealed to.
I will also comment, briefly, on insurance. There are some very smart things written by other attorneys here on reddit regarding whether and to what extent insurance was available to the three parties in the civil suit. I will note this, my firm billed itself as an insurance defense firm. The $400,000 (settlement to Mr. Avery) was paid for by insurance. And after more than a year of litigation, the insurance companies did not file a motion to bifurcate and stay the proceedings (to determine coverage). Honestly, that should tell you all you need to know. And, frankly, should be an excellent reminder that you shouldn't believe everything you see on TV.
Anyway, I hope that gets you started on, at the very least, questioning whether there was any motive by A COUNTY ENTITY THAT WAS NO LONGER RUN BY THE SHERIFF (and named party in the civil suit) to frame Mr. Avery for murder. I will write that there was none. None at all. But don't take my word for it. Just think it through.