Jerome F. Buting

Jerome F. Buting defended Steven Avery at his 2007 trial, using cross-examination to test the State's account of Teresa Halbach's movements and the searches at Avery Salvage Yard. He established limits in Auto Trader's ability to track privately arranged photo jobs, questioned a search organizer and volunteers about phone records and the RAV4 discovery, and challenged investigators on early vehicle security, repeated searches and their focus on Avery. After testimony about a separate phone discovery, he requested reports he said the defense had not received; the court ordered a check for them.

Buting pressed witnesses on what the physical searches could establish. His questions covered negative garage blood screening, burn-pit collection, the bedroom key, shell-casing counts and the limits of using a March garage search to describe November conditions. He also asked why usable RAV4 fingerprints had not been compared with two officers' standards. In examining DNA analyst Sherry Culhane, he distinguished a profile comparison from how DNA reached an item and challenged the bullet-fragment result through its contaminated control, protocol deviation and reporting. Culhane maintained that her DNA contaminated the control, not the evidence extract. Buting sought to suppress or strike the bullet result, arguing that consumed material could not be independently retested and that contamination information had not been disclosed earlier. The court reserved a substantive ruling on those renewed requests.

Other examinations tested the precision of the State's evidence. Buting obtained a correction to a prosecutor-prepared call summary's duration for a 4:35 p.m. call and questioned witnesses about what call and voicemail records could show. He probed the limits of bullet-to-rifle identification and whether lead traces on bone could be linked to an untested bullet; an examiner also reported finding no rope fibers on a headboard. On the RAV4 bloodstains, Buting challenged the FBI's case-specific EDTA testing and questioned access controls for Avery's stored blood-vial file. The court allowed the FBI analyst's opinions and denied requests for reconsideration and sequential independent testing. Buting then questioned defense expert Janine Arvizu, who said EDTA nondetection could not exclude the blood tube as a possible source of the tested stains.

In the defense case, Buting questioned a witness who recalled a green SUV appearing to leave the salvage-yard area but could not identify it as Halbach's, and a witness who described earlier shooting near the garage. In closing, Buting argued that uncertainty about the burn site, the key, RAV4 blood, bullet DNA and investigative choices left reasonable doubt; he presented planting as a possible inference, not an established event. When the State objected to a third-party-liability argument, the court distinguished its evidence order from closing argument and gave the defense an opportunity to clarify its investigative-bias point.