Steven Avery's Latest Pain: Prisoner Learns Beloved Mother Dies

WISCONSIN — On Thursday, millions of people across the globe were saddened to learn that Dolores Avery had died at 83 after several years of declining health. People everywhere came to know Dolores Avery through the December 2015 Netflix docu-series "Making A Murderer" about the plight of her son, Steven Avery.

Back in 1985, Dolores Avery had lost her son to an injustice that lasted 18 years. At that time, Steven Avery was wrongfully convicted and put into the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for a brutal rape along Manitowoc County's Lake Michigan shoreline, a crime that was actually committed by a violent predator named Gregory Allen.

After regaining his freedom in September 2003, Steven Avery's life was starting to turn the corner. Two years later, the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department made Avery their prime suspect in the Oct. 31, 2005 disappearance of freelance photographer Teresa Halbach.

On the eighth full day of the investigation at the Avery Salvage Yard, several strange clues began to appear: a spare key for Halbach's RAV-4 turned up on the carpet in Avery's bedroom, charred bones near Avery's backyard burn pile pit and a folded up license plate for Halbach's vehicle inside one of the broken down station wagons on the property.

Steven Avery was taken into police custody during that second week of November 2005, and he has remained in the custody of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections ever since.

One of the most difficult aspects of the wrongful conviction movement is that most states do not allow inmates convicted of murder to get a temporary release from prison to attend a loved one's visitation and funeral service.

Wisconsin, like many surrounding Midwest states, is no exception.

That means Steven Avery, who turned 59 on Friday, will have to mourn his mother's passing all alone, inside his prison cell at Wisconsin's Waupun Correctional Center.

He won't be able to give a long tight hug or cry on the shoulders of his three siblings, his grown sons or his elderly father at the upcoming funeral services for Dolores Avery.

That's just the way the rules are set. And it's not just a Wisconsin thing. That particular policy and procedure, although it may seem unfair and cold-hearted, has been around for decades in many states from the East Coast to the West Coast.

One of attorney Kathleen Zellner's most noted wrongful conviction cases is that of Mario Casciaro, who became a free man in 2013 after being sentenced to 26 years in prison in 2013 for the death of a missing Illinois teen.

After being exonerated, Casciaro has gone on to become a lawyer in Chicago. He now works for the Cook County Public Defender's Office.

During a phone interview Friday, Casciaro told me that while he remained in his Illinois prison cell, wrongfully convicted of murder, "the death of my parents, it was my single greatest fear, because I was the youngest child of older parents."

Casciaro said that Wisconsin, and all states, should make exceptions at time of an immediate family loss to allow inmates such as Steven Avery to go free for 24 to 48 hours to attend their loved one's funeral.

After all, the purpose of incarceration at a state penal institution is rehabilitation, not "cruel and unusual punishment." Casciaro said that preventing prisoners to attend a parent's funeral amounts to cruel and unusual punishment.

"It's undue punishment," he said. "It would be like ripping your spine out. Elected officials forget the purpose is not to punish people (more). They should be allowing for a 24-hour or 48-hour (opportunity) to say goodbyes and attend the funeral."

Dolores Avery was regarded as her son Steven Avery's biggest crusader in terms of proclaiming to the world, and to the local residents of Manitowoc County, that her son was innocent and the victim of not one, but two wrongful convictions perpetuated by the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Department. She participated in several on-camera interviews that were shown during the "Making A Murderer" series on Netflix.

In January 2016, Dolores Avery granted an interview with the Daily Mail, telling the European publication: "I think Steven will get a new trial. I don't know what it will take, but I hope it comes out with the truth instead of a bunch of lies."

Dolores Avery's insistence of her son's innocence gave Steven Avery the will and the motivation to continue to fight for his innocence from behind his prison cell block in Waupun.

And now she's gone.

If the world was a fair place, Steven Avery would be afforded an opportunity to return to his hometown to grieve his mother's death, but that is not going to happen.

Perhaps someday in the future, Wisconsin and other states, will revisit their rigid rules regarding funeral visitations in cases such as Steven Avery's, where there are legitimate questions about the guilt and innocence of the person serving time in prison.