"From
the moment Teresa Halbach's disappearance made the news in 2005, a
teary-eyed Steven Avery insisted that the Manitowoc County Sheriff's
Office was again trying to railroad him. Avery had already lost 18 years
of freedom because of a botched rape investigation. But Avery's
claims of innocence in Halbach's murder were brushed aside by police.
Authorities swiftly arrested him after a pile of human bones were found
in a burn pit on his property. By February 2007, Avery's defense
attorneys, Jerry Buting and Dean Strang, made allegations of planted
blood and fabricated evidence the central theme of the trial. The
strategy didn't work. Avery was convicted of first-degree intentional
homicide and was sent to prison for life. But that didn't end
speculation that evidence was planted in Avery's case. The release in
December of 'Making a Murderer" sparked worldwide interest in the case —
and prompted questions about other cases involving allegations of
planted evidence. There
is no national statistical data on cases involving police who plant
evidence, said Jim McNamara, who retired in 2012 as supervisory special
agent at the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit in Quantico, Virginia. "It's
a very rare occurrence but it only takes one or two bad ones to make
everyone suspect," McNamara told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. "When it
happens, it's magnified in the public arena including the media, the
community and the public." Some cops justify planting evidence
because they believe the suspect is evil and needs to be locked away
from society, said McNamara, a consultant at Behavioral Criminology
International. Other crooked cops hold grudges against suspects for a
variety of reasons, and still others rationalize that if a suspect
didn't do this crime, they're bound to commit other ones. "Doing
the wrong thing for what you believe is the right thing is totally
unnecessary," McNamara said. "There has got to be another way to make a
case without planting evidence." The USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin
identified an array of cases involving evidence planting
allegations that run the gamut. Some cases happened in major U.S.
cities. Others occurred in America's Heartland. One still-developing
case is in Kenosha. Some cases led to criminal charges against the
cops and, in some cases, prison time. One case led to the
eventual reinstatement of one of the accused officers. In the case
involving Avery, the two sheriff's investigators accused of planting
evidence remained on their force. They were not subjected to any
internal or external investigation surrounding their conduct." (Click on the link below to read USA Today's exploration of these cases):