Voting Station

Steven Avery

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Outlaw

The Resume

    (July 9, 1962- )
    Born in Manitowoc County, Wisconsin
    Convicted sex offender
    Convicted of rape and attempted murder in 1985
    Exonerated by DNA testing, after serving 18 years of a 32-year sentence
    Charged with the abduction and murder of Wisconsin photographer Teresa Halbach (2005)
    Convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment without possibility of parole (2007)
    Subject of the popular Netflix documentary series 'Making a Murderer' (2015-16 )

Why he might be annoying:

    He reportedly had an IQ of about 70.
    He conducted three separate relationships during his time behind bars.
    Prison inmates claimed to have seen him 'diagramming a torture chamber' in his cell.
    His relatives alleged he was an exhibitionist who liked to flash them when driving by their houses.
    He was accused of raping a young girl and threatening to kill her family if they spoke out.
    He was convicted of burglarizing a bar, and served ten months for it (1981).
    He was found guilty of animal cruelty after throwing a live cat into a bonfire with a friend (1982).
    He was found guilty of illegal firearm possession and threats, after pointing a gun at his cousin's head during a heated argument (1985).
    After winning a $36 million lawsuit against the county, he was implicated in the disappearance of a 25-year old photographer, resulting in his being sent back to prison.
    His 'starring' in a Netflix original movie sparked endless conspiracy theories about how the state police had collaborated to frame Avery on charges of rape and murder to cover their own asses.
    This despite the fact that 'Making a Murderer' deliberately left out several key facts about the Halbach case (that Avery had called her several times before she went missing, forensic evidence on both the car key and the gun, etc.)
    For someone 'falsely accused' of killing a woman, he was startlingly nonchalant about the brutal details of the victim's murder (mutilated/burned body, shot in the head). He also seemed pretty indifferent to his own nephew being sentenced to life in prison for (allegedly) being party to the crime.

Why he might not be annoying:

    Anonymous-4 insists he's innocent, and has committed himself to proving it.
    His mother indicated that he was developmentally challenged as a student.
    His family had been social outcasts in Manitoc County for years (they operated a salvage yard miles outside of a farming town).
    His 2003 exoneration prompted a statewide discussion of Wisconsin's criminal justice system.
    His case also yielded the passage of The Criminal Justice Reform Bill (originally titled The Avery Bill), which implemented reforms aimed at preventing future wrongful convictions.
    It is all but conclusively proven in 'Making a Murderer' that his nephew, Brendan Dassey, was coerced by police into confessing to having been an accessory to the Halbach murder. (And Dassey's conviction was later overturned by a federal judge on those grounds.)
    Although there is substantially more evidence supporting a guilty verdict for the Halbach murder, there were several inconsistencies with the prosecution's argument (between the Dassey and Avery trials they couldn't even seem to decide where the actual murders took place).
    Nor did it help the state against conspiracy theorists that two of the jurors had conflicts of interest, according to People Magazine (one married to a county clerk, another a father of the sheriff's deputy).
    The quasi-folk hero status he attained from the Netflix series prompted several internet petitions to obtain a presidential pardon on his behalf (with one Change.org petition garnering 100,000 signatures, and over 18,000 for one on WhiteHouse.gov).

Credit: BoyWiththeGreenHair


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    For 2024, as of last weekly ranking, Out of 6 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2023, Out of 8 Votes: 87.50% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 41 Votes: 43.90% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 16 Votes: 68.75% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 17 Votes: 35.29% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 9 Votes: 44.44% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 124 Votes: 62.90% Annoying