Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

A new Wisconsin Policy Forum report finds Wisconsin’s population growth in rural areas is more robust than most of the Midwest.

The group found Wisconsin’s 5.1% population growth between 2000 and 2022 outstripped 10 other Midwestern states. Only North Dakota’s rural areas grew more during that time. On average, the 12 Midwestern states lost 1.1% of their rural population since 2000, the group found.

It said four rural Wisconsin counties — Sawyer, Vilas, Bayfield and Burnett — are among the top 10 fastest growing in the state since 2010, with population gains of 10% or more. Door County came in at 9.9%. 

“It’s notable that the fast-growing rural counties listed above are dominated by many of rural Wisconsin’s top destinations for tourism and recreation, especially during warm-weather months,” according to the report. “They may be particularly attractive migration destinations for retirees, particularly those who already own vacation properties there. These places also may appeal to remote workers, a group whose numbers increased sharply during the pandemic.”

Report: Wisconsin near top in Midwest rural population growth is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

More than a century ago, Wisconsin was among the U.S. leaders in making public health a priority, helping Wisconsin minimize deaths during the Spanish flu pandemic — at least compared to most other states. 

But as the COVID-19 pandemic ebbs, data show Wisconsin — roiled by repeated high-level fights over school closings, mask mandates and other control measures — performed below the national average in primary series vaccination rate; 61.6% compared to the national average of 69.5%. Wisconsin’s weekly COVID-19 hospitalization rate per 100,000 as of June 10 was 1.94 — highest in the Midwest.

While public health budgets have shriveled across the country, Wisconsin’s seems to stand out. By one measure, Wisconsin in 2022 ranked 49th among the states in per-capita public health funding — $72 per person per year compared to a national average of $116. 

Department of Health Services spokesperson Jennifer Miller acknowledged that “compared to the rest of the nation, Wisconsin has been significantly underfunding its public health efforts for years.”

She said city and county health departments rarely spend much beyond the $72 in state and federal funding cited by America’s Health Rankings on programs to prevent disease and injuries and change unhealthy behaviors. 

Gov. Tony Evers has proposed an unprecedented level of public health funding, Miller said. But Republicans who run the Legislature have rejected many of Evers’ spending proposals.

Joan Theurer of the advocacy group Wisconsin Public Health Forward told a recent gathering of public health officials that more than half of Wisconsin’s 85 top city or county health officials left between 2020 and 2022. The former Marathon County health officer said one of the organization’s goals is to create support for public health officials as they perform the “delicate balance” of protecting the public and individual rights while managing communicable disease outbreaks.

When it comes to overall health, America’s Health Rankings puts Wisconsin about in the middle of the pack of states, ranking 21st. 

Wisconsin scores well on some measures of well-being, including voter participation, dental care and high-school graduation rates.

But it falls far behind in others, ranking in the bottom five in metrics including excessive drinking and the disparity between white residents and the residents of color with low-birthweight babies. 

Wisconsin, like many states, also faces a fentanyl epidemic. More than 1,300 people in Wisconsin died of fentanyl overdoses in 2022. 

Our new series, Unhealthy Wisconsin, will examine some areas where Wisconsin falls short in well-being. Student-journalists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison under the direction of Wisconsin Watch Managing Editor Dee J. Hall explored some of the most pressing health problems in the state and possible solutions. 

The problem is bigger than individuals choosing a healthier lifestyle. State officials increasingly look to improve so-called social determinants of health to boost Wisconsin’s overall health. They include economic security, better child and dependent care, affordable housing, access to transportation, physical safety, accessible and affordable health care, social connectedness and mental and emotional health. 

In announcing the state’s five-year health plan in February, State Health Officer Paula Tran said there is “growing and consistent evidence that health outcomes are shaped by the conditions around us such as our economic well-being, our sources of healthy food (and) healthy housing.”

Maggie Northrop, state health plan coordinator for the Wisconsin Department of Health Services, said the plan is based largely on listening sessions with local, county and tribal health officials and members of the public.

“We expected that we’d hear more about particular heart conditions or other chronic or mental health conditions,” Northop said. “What Wisconsinites told us was that the environment around them was actually what was driving their health outcomes.”

State officials found health disparities aligned with economic and social disparities. 

“The same populations (were) experiencing the burden of all of the social and economic struggles as well as a lot of different health conditions,” Northrop said. 

In its five-year plan, Wisconsin has sketched out a new approach to public health that calls for systemic changes and broad prevention strategies — along with changes in individual behavior. 

“If we continue to think about each one of the health outcomes in isolation, we just keep moving the problem,” Northrop said. “People are just constantly chasing after the latest substance, the latest toxin, the latest chemical, or the latest pathogen, but we’re not really in the moment for saving lives … we need to figure out what is at the bottom of the suffering.”

In Unhealthy Wisconsin, Wisconsin Watch explores some of those problems, including: 

• The causes and possible strategies to reduce infant mortality, which befalls Black babies three times as often as white infants;

• The toll of alcohol in one of America’s drunkest states — and some strategies that can curb excessive drinking;

• Efforts to reduce and erase state residents’ hundreds of millions in medical debt;

• How 300,000 Wisconsinites could soon lose access to publicly-subsidized health care and what lawmakers could do to change that; 

• The promise of telemedicine, which boomed during the pandemic — providing access to health care in rural parts of Wisconsin — but which may face renewed restrictions; 

• Wisconsin’s high and growing suicide rate among young people and efforts to boost funding to provide needed mental health care;

• The risks of vaping, which has exploded in popularity despite concerns over its health effects and lack of regulation; 

• Wisconsin’s mixed record on managing the COVID-19 pandemic and what could have been done better;

• The Menominee Tribe’s push to prevent rampant diabetes by addressing the economic and social challenges linked to obesity; and 

• The growing number of Wisconsin lives lost to fentanyl — and the white boxes mounted in public spaces that could save them.

The stories were reported by students in the spring 2023 investigative reporting class. They are Robert Beyer-Bowden, Maggie Degnan, Sarah Eichstadt, Allyson Fergot, Ethan Ferrell, Grace Friedman, Emily Hirsch, Jane Houseal, Tyler Katzenberger, Kelly Holm, Ryan Mares, Erin McGroarty, Anupras Mohapatra, Max Stapleton, Hina Suzuki, Ken Wang, Drake White-Bergey and Katrina Williams. 

Can Wisconsin heal itself? New series provides insights into state’s most vexing health problems is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch partners with Gigafact to produce fact briefs — bite-sized fact checks of trending claims. Read more about our partnership.

Fact briefs address widely circulating claims about current events and policies that can be answered yes or no. We avoid outdated or obscure topics or claims with low engagement. We strive to write in a neutral, educational voice, avoiding buzzwords and politically charged language. 

Our objective is to verify facts, not debate political opinions. We strive to separate the claim (the fact) from the claimant (the individual or organization that is using it). We occasionally do spot-checks to ensure that we are achieving as much partisan/political balance as possible.

Related: How Wisconsin Watch fact checks our stories

We include the leaning or affiliation when citing groups as sources, such as in this brief. As a nonprofit organization, Wisconsin Watch has no commercial interests that conflict with our fact-checking. 

We are members of both the Trust Project and the Institute for Nonprofit News, which require transparency in funding and even-handedness in reporting, including no membership in any party, or work aimed at boosting any politician or political campaign. Here is our list of funders.

All of our fact briefs have at least two sources linked below the fact brief. We occasionally add original reporting in the form of data analysis or email exchanges.

We strive to always use primary sources but will occasionally use secondary sources, if primary sources are not available. 

We use at least two sources for each fact brief. Each brief is fact-checked by two editors, one at Wisconsin Watch and one at Gigafact.

We disclose political leanings of sources and any qualifiers on the information they provide. In this brief, for example, we make it clear the group making the ranking is conservative and that rankings are based on bills handpicked by the group.

Our yes/no format means we avoid certain questions that fall into the category of sometimes or maybe. When important context is needed, we add that. In this fact brief, for example, we said while some businesses would see a tax increase, the overwhelming majority would not, undercutting the claim that 95% of businesses would see an “automatic” tax increase.

In addition to claims that are partially true or false, we are unable to check claims for which there are no credible, available sources to verify or dispute them. Fact briefs are limited to 150 words, so some claims are simply too complicated to be explained with such brevity.

Usually, the sources for the claims are readily available online. But when they are not, we contact the claimant to ask for the source. If we are unable to obtain either online sources or sources from the claimant, we skip them.

And sometimes we just want to have fun. So occasionally you’ll see a fact check like this one: Did Tony Evers say ‘holy mackerel’ in announcing his win early Wednesday morning?

How Wisconsin Watch checks claims for its Gigafact fact briefs is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

Here are shortened biographies of the justices from the Wisconsin Supreme Court website.

Conservative justices

Chief Justice Annette Kingsland Ziegler was elected to the Supreme Court in 2007 and re-elected in 2017. In 2021, she was chosen by members of the court to serve as chief justice. Before joining the high court, Kingsland Ziegler was a Washington County Circuit Court judge, appointed in 1997, elected in 1998 and re-elected in 2004. Prior to that, Kingsland Ziegler was in private practice, where she engaged in civil litigation. She also served as a pro bono special assistant district attorney in Milwaukee County in 1992 and 1996. Immediately prior to serving as a circuit court judge, she was an assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Kingsland Ziegler’s current term expires in 2027.

Justice Patience Drake Roggensack was elected to the Supreme Court in 2003 and re-elected in 2013. In 2015, she was chosen by members of the court to serve as chief justice. She was re-elected to serve as chief justice in 2017 and 2019. Before joining the Supreme Court, Roggensack was elected to the Court of Appeals in 1996 and re-elected in 2002. Prior to becoming a judge, Roggensack practiced law for 16 years in state and federal courts. Her current term expires July 31, 2023. She is retiring, to be replaced by Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Janet Protasiewicz, who won a 10-year term on Tuesday.

Justice Brian Hagedorn was elected to the Supreme Court in 2019. Prior to that, he was a judge on the Court of Appeals, having been appointed in 2015 and elected in 2017. Prior to his judicial service, Hagedorn served for almost five years as chief legal counsel to Gov. Scott Walker, as an assistant attorney general at the Wisconsin Department of Justice, as a law clerk for Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman, and as an attorney in private practice at one of Milwaukee’s largest law firms. His current term ends in 2029.

Justice Rebecca Grassl Bradley was elected to the Supreme Court in 2016 after being appointed by Gov. Scott Walker in 2015. Before joining the Supreme Court, Bradley served as a District I Court of Appeals judge (appointed 2015), a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge (appointed 2012, elected 2013) and worked as an attorney in private practice (1996-2012), including serving as vice president of legal operations for a global software company. Grassl Bradley’s current term expires in 2026.

Liberal justices

Justice Jill J. Karofsky was elected to the Supreme Court in 2020. Before her election to the high court, Karofsky served as a judge on the Dane County Circuit Court to which she was elected in 2017. Prior to becoming a judge, Karofsky was the executive director of the Office of Crime Victim Services for the state Department of Justice. She previously served as an assistant state attorney general, an adjunct professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School, general counsel for the National Conference of Bar Examiners, and as an assistant district attorney and deputy district attorney for Dane County. Her current term expires in 2030.

Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, was elected to the Supreme Court in 1995 and re-elected in 2005 and 2015. A native of Richland Center, Wisconsin, Walsh Bradley was a high school teacher before entering the University of Wisconsin Law School, where she earned her law degree. Bradley was in private practice until becoming a circuit court judge in Marathon County in 1985. Her current term expires in 2025.

Justice Rebecca Frank Dallet was elected to the Supreme Court in 2018. Before joining the high court, Frank Dallet was elected to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court in 2008 and re-elected in 2014. Prior to that, Dallet was an assistant district attorney in Milwaukee County from 1996 to1999 and again from 2002 to 2007. She was the presiding court commissioner for Milwaukee County in 2007 and 2008. Frank Dallet was a special assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Wisconsin from 1999 to 2002 and taught as an adjunct law professor at Marquette University Law School from 2005 to 2008. Her current term expires in 2028.

Who are the liberal and conservative members of the Wisconsin Supreme Court? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Recently, Wisconsin Watch revealed how members of the Wisconsin Legislature’s powerful budget committee secretly hold up projects or programs they don’t like. 

They often do so, reporter Jacob Resneck found, without following a state law that requires the committee to schedule a hearing within 14 working days of such an objection. The hearings are designed to let the public, stakeholders and other lawmakers debate the merits of the expenditure. 

And even in cases where a hearing is held, agencies and interested parties may not be allowed to speak.

The effect is a secretive “pocket veto” over projects and programs, ranging in recent years from $15.5 million for recreational access along the Pelican River, to a historic fraternity house remodel in Madison, to a $17.5 million program to encourage low-income Wisconsinites on Medicaid to become vaccinated — all without a public hearing or explanation.

Backers of some of these projects say they are left in the dark about who is objecting or why, with no opportunity to address concerns. 

“There’s no transparency to the process, obviously. We don’t even know where to go,” said Bart Kocha, director of a nonprofit whose grant to restore an historic mansion near Madison’s Lake Mendota was secretly blocked without a hearing. 

Republicans who run the Legislature have used the maneuver more frequently in recent years, Resneck found, especially to halt recreational or conservation projects. But these anonymous vetoes have been around for years, used by both Republican and Democratic lawmakers. 

That doesn’t make it right. 

This stealth maneuver also opens the door to corruption. Imagine the power a lawmaker wields by single-handedly and secretly blocking a project that a person or group has worked months or years to bring to fruition. What would that lawmaker want in return for lifting the objection?

This is not a theoretical threat. 

In 2002, then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Chvala, D-Madison, was charged with extortion for pressuring backers and opponents of an historic preservation project to donate to state Senate candidates of Chvala’s choosing. Both sides coughed up money to win Chvala’s approval, according to the criminal complaint. The extortion charge was later dismissed as part of a plea deal, but Chvala still ended up being sentenced to nine months in jail for other offenses.

In his 2023-25 budget, Gov. Tony Evers is proposing to do away with this secretive process when it comes to conservation and recreational projects paid for by stewardship funds. But GOP lawmakers have already vowed to rip up the document and start over, leaving little chance the Legislature will adopt Evers’ idea.

This is not the only stealth move lawmakers use. They also can add anonymously authored amendments to the state budget, which carries its own opportunity for mischief. 

The Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council’s “Legislative Wish List” includes a call to lawmakers to “prohibit any rule, motion, bill or amendment from being introduced without a clearly identified sponsor and cosponsors.”

Lawmakers have the chance to do the right thing — and finally let some sunlight into their  murky budget process. 

Your Right to Know is a monthly column distributed by the Wisconsin Freedom of Information Council (wisfoic.org), a group dedicated to open government. Dee J. Hall, the Council’s secretary, is the managing editor of Wisconsin Watch.

Your Right to Know: End Wisconsin’s secretive ‘pocket veto’  is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

As I reflect on the roughly 60 stories we published in 2022, I am awed by what we accomplished. Wisconsin Watch is a small but growing nonprofit newsroom whose guiding values drive everything we do: Protect the vulnerable. Expose wrongdoing. Explore solutions. 

Central to each deep, fact-checked story is real people — Wisconsin residents often caught up in broken, failing or corrupt systems.

We identify what is going wrong, and often, how things could be made better. Sometimes it’s a simple fix. In other cases, the solution is expensive, politically difficult or unpopular. 

In no particular order, here are some of the best things we published in 2022:

Our seven-part Open and Shut podcast, which focused on the nearly unchecked power of prosecutors. The project took nearly three years to report, write and produce. We worked with our long-time partner WPR to examine the impact of two northeastern Wisconsin district attorneys who bent the rules, creating lasting negative consequences to the justice system.

The Flawed Forensics series explored the legacy of former University of Wisconsin Dr. Barbara Knox. Wisconsin Watch found that at least a dozen times, Knox labeled illness or accidental injury as intentional child abuse. Knox’s diagnoses of child abuse were repeatedly rejected by prosecutors, police, child-protection officials, judges — even other doctors. Nevertheless, authorities continued to rely on her opinion over 13 years in more than 200 court cases. Knox has left Wisconsin, but the impact of these cases lingers for parents and caregivers wrongly accused. 

In a two-part series, we explored the roots of a culture war that gripped Kiel, Wisconsin, earlier this year. The turmoil began when the school district investigated students’ reports of being bullied over their race or gender identity. After the stories were published, throngs of parents showed up at the Kiel School District’s annual meeting, beating back attempts to curb efforts to make the schools more welcoming.

In our Democracy on the Ballot series, we examined the state of democracy in Wisconsin as the 2022 midterm election loomed. We revealed how a candidate for attorney general filed felony charges against voters who made innocent mistakes when registering to vote. We investigated overblown claims by activists that “incompetent” voters were being manipulated into voting. We showed that many eligible voters in Wisconsin jails are unable to vote — and how officials could change that. Wisconsin Watch explored the ways embattled municipal clerks were preparing for a contentious election. We showed how some GOP candidates continued to push the lie — a few loudly, others quietly —  that the 2020 election was “stolen.” We showed how anti-LGBTQ rhetoric was being used for political advantage — and how candidates differed sharply on reproductive rights. And we found that the legislative maps drawn by Republicans were even more skewed in their favor in 2022 — maps that already were among the most gerrymandered in the nation.

In our two-part series Policing Pregnancy, we explored Wisconsin’s particularly punitive law that allows officials to force pregnant people into drug or alcohol treatment — even jail. In a separate story, we tapped into the wisdom of Wisconsin’s top experts who outlined how a more compassionate approach would help even more babies and parents stay healthy.

Beyond Hunger, a 10-part series reported by University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism students, examined all aspects of food insecurity in Wisconsin, where 1 in 12 people are not sure where their next meal will come from. The stories showed how changes by government, nonprofit groups and individuals could improve access to fresh, healthy food for Wisconsinites. 

As part of a new collaborative exploring key issues in the Mississippi River basin, we profiled French Island, a community near La Crosse, Wisconsin grappling with drinking water contaminated by PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals. We also offered advice on how people whose well water is tainted by PFAS can stay safe.

Wisconsin Watch revealed how Wisconsin’s “honor” system for removing guns from abusers failed Jesi Ewers, a mother of five murdered by her estranged boyfriend with a gun a judge had ordered him to relinquish. We showed how other jurisdictions take a more proactive approach to removing weapons from the hands of abusers. 

We examined the problem of reckless driving in Milwaukee and Madison, showing how urban highways were making it easier for drivers to speed — with deadly consequences. 

Wisconsin Watch also revealed how patients suffering from so-called chronic Lyme disease fight debilitating symptoms — while also facing widespread skepticism from the medical community.
Finally, our best-read story of 2022 was a look back at a massive project built to protect a long stretch of shoreline from wildly fluctuating water levels in Lake Michigan. We found the structure was exacerbating erosion elsewhere on the shore, threatening to topple nearby homes.

Wisconsin Watch’s top 2022 stories shine spotlight, offer solutions, on complex issues facing Wisconsinites is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

As part of its “Democracy on the Ballot” series, Wisconsin Watch is highlighting barriers to voting as part of its commitment to strengthening democracy through stories about policies and laws that keep people from participating in our system of self-governance.

Among those who face barriers to voting are people who are incarcerated.

In Wisconsin, people convicted of a felony cannot vote until all aspects of their sentences are completed. The voting ban begins with their conviction. It continues through any time spent in the Wisconsin state prison system. And it doesn’t end until their full terms of parole, probation or extended supervision are completed.

But this prohibition does not apply to thousands of people in Wisconsin’s county jails, Wisconsin Watch found. 

Many of those individuals are behind bars because they are awaiting trial on felony charges — meaning they are not yet and may never be convicted. Or they are serving a sentence of less than one year in the local jail on a misdemeanor conviction. Again, those people may not have been convicted of a felony and would retain full voting rights.

Although many people in jail are eligible to vote, the fact that they are incarcerated means their constitutional right to cast a ballot may be seriously constrained. They can’t stroll outside to mail their absentee ballot. They can’t drop it off at the local clerk’s office. They can’t go to the polls on Election Day.

And in some jails, which are run by county sheriff’s offices, there are no mechanisms to help them vote.

We sent inquiries to sheriff’s departments that run Wisconsin’s county jails, asking for any policies around voting while incarcerated. We found that just over half of them have a policy to assist people in voting. 

We also delayed publication for several weeks in anticipation of the latest report by the ACLU of Wisconsin that covered similar ground to make sure we had the most complete and up-to-date information.

In our search for solutions, Wisconsin Watch found examples in Wisconsin, Chicago and Houston in which local sheriffs are working hard to ensure residents of their jails can vote. 

And we discovered ways in which policy and law changes can help make that happen for people in Wisconsin who are incarcerated. 

For example, changes to Wisconsin’s voter ID law could allow jailers to provide the identification people held in their facilities need to allow them to meet the requirements to vote. Another option is extending to jail inmates a state law that allows people who are hospitalized before or on Election Day to enlist someone to retrieve and deliver their absentee ballots.

Just as people who are incarcerated have the constitutional right to avoid cruel or unusual punishment, thousands of them also retain the constitutional right to vote. Wisconsin Watch is dedicated to exploring whether the rights of all eligible voters are protected.

How and why Wisconsin Watch examined ways to improve jail voting is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup.

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin takes a look at disinformation in the news in this webinar. Managing editor Dee J. Hall of Wisconsin Watch discusses the media landscape, ways to identify trustworthy news sources, how to practice good judgment, fact-checking your friends and family, and more. Q&A is at the end.

Disinformation in Democracy: Identifying and Fighting It is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This is the seventh installment of Open and Shut, a seven-part podcast and online series investigating the virtually unchecked power of prosecutors. See the entire project at wpr.org

In 2002, Vince Biskupic was a Republican candidate for attorney general, the top prosecutor job in Wisconsin, running on his nearly eight years as Outagamie County’s district attorney.

On his now-defunct campaign website, Biskupic listed several people he had successfully prosecuted. Among them: Ken Hudson for the murder of Shanna Van Dyn Hoven; Mark Price and Richard Pease for the murder of Michael Fitzgibbon; James Thompson and Jonathan Liebzeit for the murder of Alex Schaffer; “serial rapist” Joseph Frey; and Kelly Coon for the murder of 2-year-old Amy Breyer.  

His Democratic challenger was Peg Lautenschlager, former U.S. attorney for the Western District of Wisconsin. Scot Ross, who was the communications and research director for Lautenschlager’s campaign, recalls that Biskupic ran as a “law and order” candidate.

But shortly before the election, something would happen to undermine that tough-on-crime image.

The Lautenschlager campaign had received a seven-page single-spaced memo from an apparent whistleblower who detailed troubling allegations against Biskupic — including deals that gave “the impression that justice is for sale in Outagamie County.” 

The memo included this line: “Far too often, defendants with money are treated differently than defendants who are poor and indigent.”

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin filed an open records request with Biskupic’s office seeking records of the alleged deals, which allowed some suspects to avoid charges by paying money. The “donations” went to a “crime prevention fund” in Biskupic’s office or directly to survivors groups and law enforcement associations. Biskupic refused to release the records, so the Democrats sued. And the Wisconsin State Journal filed a similar request for records.

In 1997, five years before Biskupic ran for state attorney general, a panel appointed by the Wisconsin Supreme Court urged judges to reject plea deals that included these kinds of payments. And in 2000, a new law went into effect, making it illegal for prosecutors to dismiss or amend charges in exchange for donations to crime prevention organizations.

But Biskupic’s deals had a twist: : He threatened to charge people but agreed to withhold charges in exchange for “donations.” 

The deals also lacked transparency. These “deferred prosecution agreements” looked like official Outagamie County Circuit Court documents, but they were not filed with the court.

Judge: Release the records 

The judge who heard the open-records lawsuit filed by the Democrats, Waupaca County Circuit Judge Philip Kirk, was very familiar with such deals, having served on that Supreme Court-appointed panel.

“He (Kirk) started by saying, ‘I don’t know if you know this or not, but I was on a panel that discussed whether or not these crime prevention funds were appropriate or not appropriate — and I think that they are not,’ ” Ross recounts.

In an interview, Kirk said allowing such deals had the potential to turn into a “goat rodeo.” Allowing people to buy their way out of trouble would create a chaotic and unequal system, he said, an “unmitigated disaster for the state court system.”

Biskupic agreed to turn over the heavily redacted records to the State Journal, and Kirk ordered him to give the  documents to the Democrats as well. The release generated a flurry of negative news coverage including a front page story in the State Journal on November 1 — four days before the 2002 election.

Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman explains why such deals would be so controversial.

“It’s one person who’s wealthy can buy his freedom and somebody who’s poor can’t,” says Gershman, a former New York state prosecutor specializing in official corruption. “It’s just mind-boggling that, that a prosecutor would have something like that, that kind of operation going.”

Whistleblower unveiled

The unnamed whistleblower who wrote the memo exposing the deals was one of Biskupic’s employees, Assistant District Attorney Mike Balskus. In 2002, he wanted to remain anonymous, but he signed a sworn affidavit for the Wisconsin State Journal that his memo was, to his knowledge, true and correct. 

“I knew that if Vince Biskupic became the attorney general, that there’d be a lot of problems because I didn’t trust him,” Balskus says. “And I thought he was, I don’t know if you’d say corrupt, because I think he did things for his political gain.”

Balskus was concerned that the legal system — which requires attorneys and judges to report certain types of malfeasance — was not rooting out bad behavior.

“People are silent,” he says. “That’s one of the big problems I see with our criminal justice system.” 

Balskus’ memo included at least one deal that Biskupic had not disclosed in his records release — a 2000 agreement with John Mortensen, the president of Jones Sign Co. A car wash had hired Mortensen’s company to make a sign, but after it was installed, the two companies argued over the cost. Mortensen had the sign removed — cutting some wires in the process. 

Mortensen said he was puzzled by Biskupic’s threat to prosecute him, as the dispute with the car wash had been resolved two years earlier. And there was another curious aspect to the case: Biskupic’s investigator, Steve Malchow, was a friend of the car wash owner.

Biskupic wanted $10,000 to make criminal charges go away, Mortensen told the Wisconsin State Journal. He agreed to pay $8,000. He told the newspaper he felt “shaken down” by the encounter.

Four days after the records’ release and initial news stories, Lautenschlager won the 2002 election, and Biskupic went into private practice. That next summer, in 2003, the State Journal published a followup series on Biskupic’s deals called Justice for Sale — a line taken from Balskus’ whistleblower memo.

The Wisconsin Ethics Board investigated Biskupic, but found he had not personally profited from the fund. And largely because of that, and because the board only had the power to enforce the state’s Ethics Code, it ultimately did not find that Biskupic violated the law.

But the board condemned the practice, urging “prompt and deliberate action” to close the loophole in the law and sent a letter to district attorneys across Wisconsin, warning them against having crime prevention funds to which people facing potential criminal charges paid money.

Five years after the Justice for Sale stories, then-Sen. Dave Hansen, D-Green Bay, argued in favor of the bill he authored to prohibit such deals.

“This legislation will help restore the integrity of our judicial system by making it clear that justice is not for sale and that people accused of crimes whether they are rich, whether they are poor, or middle class will be treated fairly,” Hansen said in a speech on the Senate floor, never mentioning Biskupic’s name.

The bill passed and was signed into law. 

Years later, in 2014, then-Gov. Scott Walker appointed Biskupic — the brother of his campaign attorney, Steve Biskupic — to fill a vacancy on the Outagamie County Circuit Court. A year after that, Biskupic was elected to a full six-year term. He was re-elected in 2021 and remains on the bench.

Biskupic’s ‘gray area’ deals  

As a judge, Biskupic also has stretched boundaries, Wisconsin Watch and WPR found. For several years, Biskupic held “review hearings”  to monitor defendants’ behavior or to prompt them to pay fines or restitution. The effect was to keep defendants under his control for months or even years after their sentences would have ended. 

About two dozen legal experts consulted by Wisconsin Watch and WPR had a wide range of views about Biskupic’s use of review hearings. Some said the practice is legal, some called it a “gray area” and some said it has no basis in state law. Others had never heard of it before.

An analysis of Wisconsin’s electronic court database found 52 cases involving such review hearings; Biskupic was among a very few judges employing this technique — and by far the largest user. 

Defense attorneys said they believed Biskupic was trying to help defendants. Former public defender Brandt Swardenski describes it as a way to “chastise them when they screw up and praise them when they do well.”

Some of Swardenski’s clients agreed to undergo review hearings to avoid jail, which Swardenski acknowledges was “a gray area of the law.” He warned defendants who took the deals they might be “subjecting yourselves to further consequences down the line.”

That’s exactly what happened to Beau Jammes.

Jammes had been on probation with the Wisconsin Department of Corrections but was revoked for an alleged violation, which normally would have landed him in jail. Biskupic offered a different path — one with no clear ending.

He let Jammes out of jail and ordered him to get a full-time job, attend counseling or addiction meetings, stay sober, take his medications and work towards a GED. Every few months, Jammes had to return to court to share his progress. 

In theory, if Jammes did what Biskupic told him, he might be able to avoid more jail time. At first, Jammes says, he was happy about it. And so was his attorney, Gary Schmidt.

“I thought maybe the judge was just going to run it for a couple of months to make sure that Beau stayed out of trouble for awhile, and then that would end it,” Schmidt recalls, “but he kept extending it and extending it. …There was always something more that the judge wanted.”

Had Jammes just served his jail time at the start, he could’ve been out in about a year. Instead, it turned into a 19-month-long legal purgatory. 

Towards the end of this period of uncertainty, Jammes was convicted of disorderly conduct, and the judge in that case sent Jammes to jail. Biskupic then reinstated his original sentence. And although he ordered the sentence to run concurrent with the one Jammes was already serving, it extended the time Jammes spent behind bars.

Biskupic did not answer detailed questions about the practice. Biskupic’s attorney defended the judge’s actions in an email, insisting that earlier court rulings permit them. 

In a statement, Biskupic said he considers all sentencing options, and also implied he doesn’t do this anymore. He said the cases mostly were resolved between 2015 and 2018. That’s the same year Jammes filed a federal lawsuit against Biskupic, unsuccessfully challenging his authority to create such a “de facto probation.” 

Commenting on that whole practice, Swardenski says, “It was, yeah, I think, pushing the bounds of the statute to say the least.”

Prosecutor’s conduct called ‘alarming’

Gershman, the Pace University law professor, literally wrote the book on prosecutorial misconduct. It’s titled, “Prosecutorial Misconduct.”

“I focus on prosecutors specifically because the prosecutor has the power of life and death,” Gershman says. “The prosecutor has the power to put innocent people in jail for the rest of their lives. The prosecutor has more power than anybody else in America when you think about it. And many, many prosecutors use their prodigious powers responsibly professionally, ethically. Some don’t.”

At the request of Wisconsin Watch and WPR, Gershman reviewed a nine-page summary of issues in seven felony cases prosecuted by Biskupic, most of which were examined in Open and Shut. 

“What I saw was alarming,” Gershman says. “What I saw was conduct that was not isolated, inadvertent, marginal — conduct that one could say was simply mistakes in the heat of battle.”

Gershman says Biskupic did the same things over and over again — including withholding evidence.

“This is the kind of conduct you might see in 20 prosecutors,” he says. “And I’m looking at one prosecutor. … And the conduct in each of these cases is very, very serious.”

As Gershman and other legal scholars have pointed out, prosecutors in this country face very few consequences for their actions. The system has never publicly accused Biskupic — let alone found him responsible — for committing even a single act of misconduct. 

And that upsets Gershman. 

“It’s a disgrace that the courts and the disciplinary bodies in your state of Wisconsin took no action against this prosecutor, there were no consequences visited upon this prosecutor,” he says.

Gershman was asked why the public should care if a prosecutor does not play fair — especially in cases where the defendant clearly appears to be guilty.

“My guess is that many people in the public won’t care — you know, the end justifies the means, whatever it takes to put these people away, to prevent these people from committing any more crimes is what we want to see,” he says. 

“I think,” Gershman says, “that’s why it’s so difficult for the criminal justice system to root out bad prosecutors.”

To hear the related podcast, go to Open and Shut (wpr.org/openandshut) or wherever you get your podcasts. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch collaborates with WPR and other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates. This story is a collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and WPR as part of the NEW News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin.

Deals Vince Biskupic made as a prosecutor and judge raise questions of fairness in Wisconsin’s justice system is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This is the sixth installment of Open and Shut, a seven-part podcast and online series investigating the virtually unchecked power of prosecutors. See the entire project at wpr.org/openandshut

When Outagamie County District Attorney Vince Biskupic was running for office back in 2002, he listed some of his biggest cases on his campaign website.

“Vince Biskupic has successfully prosecuted more than 30 homicide or attempted homicide cases in Wisconsin,” the now-dormant website declared. 

Biskupic said he had gone after murderers, predators, drug dealers — even “deadbeat parents.” And yet, a Wisconsin Watch and WPR investigation found, two of the defendants on Biskupic’s campaign website later had their convictions overturned. In two other cases, questions linger about whether Biskupic acted properly in prosecuting them.

And there was one notable case Biskupic left off the list: The prosecution of Greg Kortz, convicted in the death of a police officer’s son in a road rage incident. 

Mike Balskus was working for Biskupic as an assistant district attorney in Outagamie County in December 1995 when the office filed charges against Kortz, a 17-year-old high school senior.

According to the criminal complaint, the day before Thanksgiving, Kortz and his friends were driving on the highway, and someone in Kortz’s car flashed the middle finger at another group of young men in a pickup truck.

The pickup truck followed Kortz and his friends off the highway for about five miles, all the way to Kortz’s house. Some of the boys in the pickup truck got out and confronted the boys in Kortz’s car. A fight broke out.

“And this Kortz guy hits a guy over the head with a baseball bat,” Balskus recalls. 

The victim was Kevin Nechodom, 20, the son of a local police officer. Nechodom was taken to the hospital. Sheriff’s deputies took statements from witnesses. Balskus said it seemed like a battery case. But three days later, Nechodom died of head trauma, and the Outagamie County’s Sheriff’s Office went out again to investigate.

‘Serious’ matter emerges

About two months after Nechodom’s death, during Kortz’s arraignment, his attorney, Mary Lou Robinson, brought up something she called “serious.” Robinson said she had “strong reason to believe” that Biskupic directed police officers to rewrite reports. She said Biskupic had told her there may have been some “typos.”

Robinson asked for the original police reports, but she never got them. They had been destroyed.

The incident began when the sheriff’s office went back to re-interview the witnesses, and one of them denied saying something attributed to him in the original report. 

So, recalls Balskus, a group of deputies got together.

“They go to Vince, and they say, Oh, usually what we do is we do a supplement. You know, officer so-and-so went out, talked to this guy. He denies making this statement. He says this is what happened, blah blah blah.’ That’s normal procedure,” Balskus says. “Vince says ‘No. What I want you to do is collect all of the police reports (and) destroy them.’ ”

The reason for the standard procedure is so police, judges and juries can see if a witness’s story changes over time, which could raise questions about credibility.

One of the deputies in that meeting, retired Outagamie County Sheriff’s Sgt. Michael Heisler, says in an interview with Wisconsin Watch that he couldn’t remember all of the details. But he remembers some important ones. 

Heisler says destroying the report was ultimately his decision. But he says it was Biskupic — who was leading the prosecution — who first suggested it. 

Biskupic pulled from case

Three months after Kortz’s attorney first raised this issue, Outagamie County Circuit Judge John Des Jardins held a hearing to get to the bottom of it. Biskupic didn’t appear at this hearing himself. He sent Balskus.

Heisler told the judge he’d never done something like this in his 21 years in law enforcement. Kortz’s attorney asked him whose idea it was. Whenever she tried to pin it on Biskupic, Balskus objected.

At the time, Balskus says, he didn’t believe it was relevant. And, he says, he didn’t exactly care for Robinson.

About a month later, Des Jardins held another hearing. This time, Biskupic appeared.

Heisler never told the court that Biskupic was the one who first suggested destroying the original report. But the judge noted that as the prosecutor, Biskupic had the “responsibility … to preserve the report so that it would not be changed and destroyed.”

Des Jardins “reluctantly” took Biskupic’s office off the case, saying he did not want the prosecutor to be called as a witness in a trial he was handling. A prosecutor from another county was appointed to handle it, and in October 1996, a jury found Kortz guilty of second-degree reckless homicide. He was sentenced to 13 years in prison. 

Kortz declined an interview. 

Agency polices prosecutors 

Prosecutors like Biskupic have absolute immunity for their actions in the courtroom and while preparing a case for trial, so it’s nearly impossible to sue them. But there is a place for parties to raise concerns about prosecutors: the Office of Lawyer Regulation, an arm of the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

The agency is charged with investigating complaints to determine whether an attorney has committed an ethical violation and, if so, it merits a disciplinary proceeding or  just a cautionary letter. 

Even if a lawyer has engaged in misconduct, the matter may be handled by a private or public reprimand or “diversion” — such as reducing the fees owed by a client or continuing legal education.

But if the lawyer doesn’t agree with OLR’s recommendations — or if there’s enough cause to suspend or revoke a lawyer’s license — OLR can conduct a formal investigation. Only the most serious or disputed cases become public when they are filed with the Supreme Court. 

For the most part, attorney Gregg Herman, who sometimes works as retained counsel for OLR, believes this system works. But there are exceptions, Herman said. One case he handled a few years ago remains a “sore spot.”

Planted evidence prompts complaint 

In 2014, Robert Zapf was the district attorney of Kenosha County, in southeast Wisconsin, when the Kenosha police department investigated a fatal robbery.  

“One of the defendants is arrested, and while he’s being booked, a police officer takes his ID card and pockets it rather than processing it as evidence,” Herman recounts. “Subsequently, I don’t know if it’s the the next day or so, there was a search warrant executed on … the other defendant’s home. And in the process of the search warrant, the police officer plants the ID and plants a bullet.”

The bullet and the ID didn’t improve the strength of the state’s case. Police had already identified the defendants — and the bullet wasn’t even the right caliber. Kenosha Police officer Kyle Baars resigned and eventually was convicted of misconduct in office.

Zapf turned over discovery information to the defense, including a one-page police report that alluded to the planted evidence.

“But it’s one piece among other discovery. It’s sort of hidden in there,” Herman recalls. “You really have to know what it meant.”

During the trial, a police officer testified about the planted evidence.

“And all of a sudden, the defense attorney goes, ‘Oh my, wha — what?’ The judge halts the proceedings … sends the jury out. There’s this, essentially like emergency hearing, and the judge decides it’s not Brady evidence (and) we can continue with the trial,” Herman says. 

The ‘Brady rule,’ from the U.S. Supreme Court case, Brady v. Maryland, requires prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence — that which supports a person’s innocence. The circuit court judge in the trial said this evidence wasn’t exculpatory.

“But,” says Herman, “was it relevant in terms of proving police misconduct? Which could then lead to other discoverable evidence, and maybe there was other police misconduct?”

Prosecutor faced suspension — then cleared

In Wisconsin, prosecutors are not required to turn over all relevant evidence. But while the trial judge didn’t find that Zapf committed a Brady violation, OLR believed he did.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court appointed a referee, who agreed Zapf had committed misconduct. He recommended that he be suspended from the practice of law and prohibited from ever serving as a prosecutor again in Wisconsin.

Zapf appealed the decision, arguing he was being held to a higher standard than required under Wisconsin’s discovery statute. The state Supreme Court agreed. 

Even today, Herman has trouble talking about it without getting angry.

“I think prosecutors should provide all information that is in the least bit relevant to the defense,” Herman says. “And it’s not a matter of the defense asking for it. And I don’t think it’s a job of a prosecutor to determine how relevant it is. But, as I said, apparently the Wisconsin Supreme Court didn’t see it that way.” 

OLR has never publicly reprimanded Biskupic. But because so much of the system is confidential, it’s unknown whether OLR ever gave him a private reprimand or a warning or put him through diversion.

Lack of discovery ‘pernicious’

Arizona State University law professor Valeena Beety calls withholding evidence “one of the most pernicious problems leading to wrongful convictions and really undermining the integrity of our criminal justice system overall.”

Some states have recognized the problem and adopted stricter standards requiring prosecutors to share more evidence. 

Texas beefed up its discovery laws after Michael Morton was wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife in their bed. Prosecutor Ken Anderson claimed Morton had beaten his wife to death because she wouldn’t have sex with him on his birthday. Morton was convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

But Anderson didn’t tell the whole story. 

“(Morton’s) young son made exculpatory statements. There was evidence of another man being there and in the neighborhood,” Beety says. “But the prosecutor suppressed that evidence — didn’t disclose it, intentionally.” 

Twenty-five years later, DNA evidence exonerated Morton and identified another man — one who had been convicted of beating another woman to death in her bed. After his exoneration, Morton lobbied the Texas Legislature to change the law.

Wrongful conviction sparks reform

In 2013, Texas lawmakers passed the Michael Morton Act, which Beety says generally requires prosecutors to share their files with the defense — even before they offer a deal to admit guilt in exchange for a lighter sentence. That means defense attorneys have access to all the evidence — not just what the prosecutor chooses to give them.

Beety wonders whether the fact that Morton is white played a factor in lawmakers’ decision to overhaul Texas’ discovery law. 

“I think it mattered for the legislators to see a straight white man who had, you know, a loving, long-term relationship with his wife, had kids. And then he went through this situation of being wrongfully convicted,” Beety says.

Morton’s exoneration — and Anderson’s role in his wrongful conviction — got a lot of attention.

The Texas Supreme Court ordered a court of inquiry to determine whether Anderson had committed any crimes. In 2013, he pleaded guilty to criminal contempt of court. According to the Innocence Project, Anderson was the first prosecutor ever jailed for misconduct leading to a wrongful conviction.

Michael Morton had spent 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. But when it came time to sentence the man who put him there, “He got 10 days,” Beety says.

That was later knocked down to five days — for “good behavior.”

A rape in Oshkosh 

Among the convictions Biskupic listed on his campaign website was one that illustrates the worst-case scenario of what can happen when prosecutors get it wrong. In February 1991, a University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh student woke up to find a man with a knife in her apartment. He assaulted her multiple times then fled.

Joseph Frey, one of the men police investigated, was a suspect in two sexual assaults in Green Bay — about an hour north of Oshkosh. The timeline seemed to fit — the assaults all happened within the same few weeks. And some of the circumstantial details matched.

The survivor looked at multiple photo arrays and live police lineups. In one photo array, she said Frey’s profile “looked similar” to her attacker’s. But in the final police lineup, court documents say, she could not identify Frey as her attacker.

Still, investigators believed Frey was their man.

Frey says prosecutors pressured him to take a plea deal. They offered 20 years — or go to trial and face a possible life sentence.

“But they also made the mistake of telling me there was DNA involved,” Frey recalls. “I says, ‘If you’ve got DNA, we’re going to court.’ And that’s the bottom line. I knew I didn’t do it.”

Frey was convicted by a jury in one of the Green Bay assaults and pleaded no contest to the other. In October 1991, he was sentenced to 42 years in prison.

His trial for the Oshkosh rape didn’t start until 1993. By that time, Frey’s conviction in one of the Green Bay assaults had been overturned on a technicality, and his sentence had been reduced by 20 years.

Frey convicted despite DNA evidence 

Biskupic, then Winnebago County deputy district attorney, handled the case. He noted how the Oshkosh assault was similar to the other attacks for which Frey had been convicted. The victims all said the attacker had a “distinct, raspy voice.” 

The defense told the jury Frey’s DNA was not found in a semen sample from the survivor’s bedsheet. Biskupic argued those findings were “not inconsistent” with the state’s case.

Frey says the message to the jury was, “Regardless of what the evidence says, we know that you did it. We know you did it.”

The jury ultimately agreed with Biskupic, finding Frey guilty of six counts of first-degree sexual assault, false imprisonment and armed burglary. He was sentenced to 102 years in prison.

Biskupic told the local newspaper he was relieved by the verdict, calling Frey “a very dangerous person that needs to be kept out of society.” 

But Joseph Frey kept trying to prove his innocence, and “I did that for the next 19 years until the Innocence Project got a hold of the case.”

The Wisconsin Innocence Project’s Tricia Rojo Bushnell and a group of law students handled the appeal. As strange as it sounds, Bushnell says, “Joe’s case is not the only case I’ve ever seen where someone was convicted in spite of DNA evidence that excluded them.”

The defense team considered an appeal based on faulty eyewitness identification, which is the leading cause of wrongful convictions. Sometimes, when witnesses see a person’s face in a line-up, photo array or police sketch, they can start to believe that’s the person who committed the crime — even if it’s not true. Or they get it wrong. Some of that is related to trauma. 

The tenuous identification in the Oshkosh assault wasn’t enough to get Frey exonerated. So the defense took another look at the DNA, Bushnell says.

“What we needed was a result that was different than an exclusion, which would mean an identification of someone else, who was not known to the victim and should have not been in her home,” Bushnell says.

In the early 1990s, investigators could only compare DNA to samples they had on hand. By the 2010s — when the Wisconsin Innocence Project took on Frey’s case — there were databases of DNA samples from all over the country. 

Evidence destroyed before trial

But there was a big problem with this plan.

“Before Joe’s trial even happened — before he even had the opportunity to present his defense to a jury — that evidence was inappropriately destroyed,” Bushnell says. 

The Oshkosh Police Department had thrown away a box of evidence, including the sexual assault kit, after it was returned from the state Crime Lab. Detective Phillip Charley was the evidence technician who destroyed the evidence. Charley testified he couldn’t remember being told to do it. But he said he would have done it at the request of a high-ranking officer in the case or “the prosecutor.” 

“The destruction of evidence prior to trial,” Bushnell says, “is, I mean, not normal and quite frankly alarming.” 

The legal team came up with a Hail Mary.

“The sheet that was used to convict Joe that they used at trial was introduced as an exhibit at trial,” Bushnell recalls. “So that meant it wasn’t being held at the police department or at a crime lab or somewhere else. It should be with the court clerk.”

One of the law students called the clerk, who looked closer — and she found it.

“It was in a, you know, like, manila envelope, and it was sort of way back in the shelf and was sort of falling behind the bookcase,” Bushnell says. “It’s one of the things that we’ve seen in many DNA cases … we’re told the evidence doesn’t exist. And what we have to do is persuade someone to actually check, right? Because you don’t know what you’re going to find until you look.”

Conviction overturned

A judge ordered the sheet sent to a lab to be retested. It matched a man named James Crawford.

“Mr. Crawford had passed away by the time we got these results; he’d actually died in a nursing home. And at the end of his life, he was also struggling with dementia,” Bushnell recounts. “And he started talking to his mother and confessing, and he told his mother that he had committed a rape. He tried to type up a letter even, but she didn’t know if it ever got sent or what happened to it from the nursing home. “

A jury found that Crawford had repeatedly sexually abused a 12-year-old girl, and he was also accused of sexually abusing her 11-year-old sister. Those assaults began in 1991 — after the Oshkosh rape.

“If the right person had been convicted the first time around,” Bushnell asks, “would he have gone on to sexually assault other people?“

In 2013, a Winnebago County judge overturned Frey’s conviction “in the interest of justice.”

A year later, the state Claims Board gave Frey $25,000 for serving eight years in prison for a crime he did not commit — the maximum payout available for a wrongful conviction in Wisconsin

Even at this point, the Winnebago District Attorney’s Office argued that Frey still could have somehow been involved in the Oshkosh assault. Bushnell says the reason Crawford’s DNA was found on the sheets is obvious: “Because he (Crawford) was the one who raped her.”

“Why can’t we own that? Why can’t we just say that that’s what happened and recognize the truth of it?”

Frey has been out of prison for nine years and now lives in Madison. He got a job and has taken up a new hobby — photography — which he describes as therapy. But it hasn’t been easy. Frey says he would sometimes sit on the street corner, “just waiting for the police to swoop down on me any second.” 

Bushnell notes that many wrongfully convicted people do have criminal records. But when they are charged with crimes they did not commit, Bushnell says, “We don’t get justice for that victim and we don’t keep the public safe because the real perpetrator is free to go do other things.”

Bushnell does not know whether the state knew Frey was innocent or if what happened to Frey was prosecutorial misconduct. But she blames “tunnel vision” for the singular pursuit of Frey as the perpetrator. Bushnell says the justice system fails when it ignores, or destroys, real evidence. And that’s true — even when the accused has been convicted of similar crimes before.

“What the state wanted was for Joe to die in prison,” she says, “and they used a crime he didn’t commit to try to do it.”

On the final episode of Open and Shut, Vince Biskupic runs for the top prosecutor job in Wisconsin — attorney general — but his campaign hits a snag.

To hear the related podcast, go to Open and Shut (wpr.org/openandshut) or wherever you get your podcasts. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch collaborates with WPR and other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates. This story is a collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and WPR as part of the NEW News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin

Wisconsin prosecutor campaigned on his record — but some high-profile cases had hidden flaws is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

This is the fifth installment of Open and Shut, a seven-part podcast and online series investigating the virtually unchecked power of prosecutors. See the entire project at wpr.org

*Editor’s note: Some images in this story may be disturbing to viewers.

In the summer of 2000, 19-year-old Shanna Van Dyn Hoven had just finished her first year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

She was back home in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. And one Sunday afternoon, she went for a jog on a route she often followed. Van Dyn Hoven reached the last leg, a stretch of hill between woods and a quarry.

That’s when a neighbor, David Carnot, the son of a recently retired police officer, heard her screaming. He stopped his yard work and ran through the copse of trees between his house and the road. He later told his story to local news reporters.

“You could hear the fear in her voice, that she feared dying,” Carnot said. “You could tell that something was drastically bad. … I started hollering, ‘Somebody dial 9-1-1.’ But nobody was here — nobody heard me.”

Carnot says he found Van Dyn Hoven lying on the ground, bleeding. Above her stood a man who seemed to have gotten out of a pickup truck. 

“The minute I said something, he just looks at me, and then (got) into the truck and drive right for me.”

Carnot says he ran towards a fence at the quarry’s entrance. As he started to climb over it, the truck rammed the fence and struck him in the leg. The driver then fled the scene. A fishing boat on a trailer bounced behind the truck.

Soon after, police were flying down the road in another part of Kaukauna in hot pursuit of that Chevy pickup. Police had seen it driving erratically through the city on three tires. When the truck finally went into the ditch, officers approached it, guns drawn. 

The driver, shirtless, was wearing jean shorts and sandals. Police said he appeared to have dried blood on his arms, chest, stomach, legs and feet.

On his upper arm, he had a tattoo that read “KEN.” Police identified him as Ken Hudson.

Investigators say they found a bloody knife on the driver’s side floor and Van Dyn Hoven’s blood on the passenger seat. And the case against Ken Hudson seemed open and shut.

But a Wisconsin Watch and WPR investigation found a litany of holes in this apparently rock-solid case that suggest the prosecution by Outagamie County District Attorney Vince Biskupic was anything but open and shut. 

Certified letters asking detailed questions about the Hudson case, emails and phone calls to Biskupic and his attorney were not returned.

Girlfriend targeted

One curious aspect of the case involves Biskupic’s prosecution of Hudson’s then-girlfriend Danita Scharenbroch, who has since married and uses the last name of Metko. 

At the time of the murder, Metko and Hudson had been dating for about a year. They lived together with her two boys at a mobile home park in a village near Kaukauna. The morning of the murder, they’d all been up north together, camping and fishing. 

Metko received the news of Hudson’s arrest with disbelief, shock. 

“I didn’t think Ken was capable of that. I mean, he was a bumbling, stumbling fool half the time,” Metko says. “I always said he was an accident waiting to happen, but not a murderer.”

But as Kaukauna’s assistant police chief would later tell her — everybody’s capable of murder.

Says Metko: “I’m believing everything they’re telling me. He did it, they found the knife … I mean, I have no reason ever not to believe the police!”

But as the investigation continued, Metko had a number of unsettling experiences. She says the police told her that she might be a suspect — even though at the time of the murder, she was at home waiting for a pizza delivery. 

And early on, officers asked Metko to drive back north to figure out where Hudson had bought the knife — which seemed odd because police had already found the receipt for the knife from a nearby Kmart in Hudson’s pocket.

Metko eventually felt so rattled that she hired a lawyer for herself. And her faith in the police faded.

“I started to believe maybe Ken really wasn’t guilty of this,” she recalls. “Maybe it wasn’t like they were saying.”

Metko receives a divine message

Metko prayed for guidance. The answer, she says, came to her while she was doing the laundry.

“And all of a sudden it was like, I could hear this voice. I know. It sounds funny. You got to have faith to believe it. It was just like, it was like ‘Stick by him and help him.’ ” 

Metko walked to the mailbox and found a letter from Hudson. It said: “Nobody’s ever stuck by me and helped me” — the same message she believed she got from God. 

And so she did. Metko started visiting Hudson in the Outagamie County Jail. 

After several months, Kaukauna Assistant Police Chief John Manion and another officer visited Metko at the Subway sandwich shop she managed. They told her not to visit Hudson anymore. There was a no-contact order involving any potential witnesses, they said. 

Metko called her attorney.

“He goes, ‘Danita, just stay away from anything to do with Biskupic. He will pull you into this. You have nothing to do with it. He doesn’t care about you or your kids,’ ” Metko recalls. “So I listened to him.”

So for a while, she stopped visiting Hudson. But eventually, she consulted Hudson’s attorney, who told her it was okay to visit Hudson, and she resumed her trips. 

And then, in February 2001, police paid her another visit.

This time, they asked Metko to come in for a talk. She says she was “stupid” for not calling her lawyer. 

When Metko and the officers arrived at the Outagamie County Justice Center, officers arrested Metko. Her supposed crime: talking to Hudson on the phone and allegedly violating that no-contact order the police had warned her about. As a condition of release, Metko had to agree not to talk to Hudson or “I’d be thrown into jail until my court date in May.”

And so, about two weeks before Hudson’s trial, Metko suddenly stopped accepting his calls. And that, Hudson says, had a real impact on his case.

Hudson’s version of events 

For 21 years, Hudson has worked tirelessly in his prison cell, poring over police reports and photographs, scrutinizing their contents for any contradictions. 

In Hudson’s telling, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

“I see the victim standing on the side of the road waving her arms and screaming,” Hudson recounts. “So I seen that she was covered in blood. And so I get out of my truck and I run around to where she was standing. And I’m like, ‘What happened? What’s going on? What’s going on?’ And she couldn’t say nothing at that point. … So I’d open up the passenger side door and I told her to sit on the seat, which she did. Right at that time, I hear screaming in the woods, a male screaming.”

That was Carnot, the neighbor who told of running to Van Dyn Hoven’s aid. Hudson says at that point, Van Dyn Hoven fled the truck and crumpled to the ground.

Hudson says he thought Carnot was the killer — and he was scared. So he jumped into his truck and hit the accelerator. He smashed into the fence, then reversed, and took off.

A couple blocks away, Hudson noticed the fishing boat he was towing falling off the trailer. So he stopped, released it and left it lying on the side of the road. Soon, a patrol officer spotted the odd vehicle with a missing tire and empty boat trailer.

“And then he started chasing me and I panicked because I had marijuana on me and I was drinking and my driver’s license was revoked,” Hudson says.

Hudson had also taken some Valium. As for what police found when they pulled Hudson over — the knife in the truck and the blood on his body — they became the focus of multiple motions and appeals. 

String of lawyers — and then none

A U.S. Supreme Court decision guarantees everyone facing felony criminal charges an attorney, even if they can’t pay. Hudson had a number of court-appointed lawyers. His first set withdrew because of a conflict. 

Before doing so, however, they entered an insanity plea on Hudson’s behalf — which claimed he did not have the capacity to understand his actions.

But other attorneys left or were fired by Hudson. They wanted him to strike a plea deal; he wanted to prove his innocence.

As the trial approached, Outagamie County Circuit Judge Harold Froehlich agreed to appoint one last lawyer, telling Hudson, “You better learn to cooperate with your new attorney because there won’t be another one.”

But Hudson sought to fire him too. Froehlich gave Hudson 11 days to hire his own lawyer. And that’s why Danita Metko’s arrest became so important.

The weekend after Froehlich issued this deadline, Hudson called Metko numerous times as they worked to line up money from his uncle in New York for a private attorney.

That Monday morning — with seven days left until Hudson needed to hire a new lawyer — Metko headed to her shift at Subway. 

“And my sister, she called me at work in the morning and said ‘Look it, Ken called me. He couldn’t call you; the number was blocked from the jail. He couldn’t call our Mom; the number was blocked. He couldn’t call anyone in New York; the number was blocked.’ ” 

That’s the same day that officers arrested Metko — and she says a judge banned her from contacting Hudson. She could no longer help him get a lawyer.

So, just two weeks before trial was set to begin, Hudson returned to court without a new attorney. Froehlich said Hudson needed to represent himself. Representing oneself in court is a constitutional right. But it’s one that a legal scholar once called “the right to shoot oneself in the foot.”

Hudson’s trial a ‘circus’

Hudson’s trial took place in March 2001, about eight months after Van Dyn Hoven’s murder. Hudson wasn’t totally alone at the defense table. Froehlich had ordered Ed Carns — the last attorney Hudson had fired — to remain as standby counsel, basically coaching Hudson through court procedure.

Biskupic opened the state’s case, telling jurors, “The defendant’s actions relate to his anger, to rage and ultimately evil.” 

Biskupic argued Hudson was mad at Metko and his mother — whom he’d fought with the weekend that Van Dyn Hoven died.

“You’ll learn from the evidence and testimony that peace met anger,” the district attorney said, “that innocence met evil, that flesh was met with a blade, and ultimately life met death.” 

At the start of the trial, Hudson asked the judge to suppress a key piece of testimony. On the night of the murder, the police took Hudson to the hospital to be checked for injuries. While he was there, he was swabbed for evidence and read his Miranda rights. Hudson says he asked for a lawyer. 

But police never called one. And hours later, police say, Hudson confessed on videotape to killing Shanna Van Dyn Hoven.

When Hudson’s trial began, he sought to keep that confession from being entered into evidence. Biskupic told the judge that Hudson had not made an “unambiguous request” for a lawyer and therefore had not invoked his right to counsel. 

Courts have ruled that police only have to give you a lawyer if you clearly, specifically ask for one. The judge believed Biskupic and ruled that testimony about the confession was in. 

However, police had recorded audio of Hudson at the hospital. It captured Hudson being read his Miranda rights: The right to remain silent, the right to consult with an attorney. As prosecutor, Biskupic would have had access to that tape. 

The state says it gave the tape to Hudson’s investigator. But for reasons that are still not clear — partly because the investigator has since died — Hudson never received the tape.

And, speaking of tapes, there was another problem with that alleged confession from the night of the murder. The videotape of that confession does not exist.

At trial, the police testified the videotape had accidentally erased itself. Hudson brought this up, but it just became part of the bizarre spectacle of a man representing himself at his own murder trial — what retired Green Bay TV reporter Jerry Burke described as “a circus.”

Biskupic: “You told Officer Shephardson and Manion you forced the girl in the truck.”

Hudson: “I never told them that. Where’s the audio and video? That they did the recording, but it’s, it’s erased. Where is that video, Vince Biskupic?”

For those keeping score, that’s two tapes — the video tape of Hudson’s alleged confession that had somehow erased itself, and the audio tape that Hudson says he never received — the one where he said he clearly asked for a lawyer. 

Hudson’s claim: I was framed

On the third day of trial, Hudson submitted a motion to withdraw his insanity plea, insisting he hadn’t committed the crime at all. 

And Hudson didn’t just argue that he was innocent. He claimed he was framed. 

Hudson testified that police tore open the package of a hunting knife he’d bought earlier that afternoon, smeared it with blood and planted it on the driver’s side floor of his truck. He showed the jury photos of the inside of his truck, saying the knife appeared to move between frames.

As for the blood on Hudson’s legs? He said Kaukauna police officer Robert Patschke poured it on him. 

“When I was in the back of the squad car, the officer threw that blood on me,” Hudson testified. “I said, ‘What are you doing? Stop doing that. What are youse doing to me?’ ”

Biskupic outlined Hudson’s incredible claims in a question: “And you’re saying the police walked up to your car with a bucket of blood, a bloody knife and some other — probably her hand with her fingerprint and put it on your car, is that what you’re saying?” 

In an interview, Hudson insists he is innocent.

“I just get really passionate because listen, this is the God’s honest truth, that they did plant that knife in my truck and Patschke poured that blood on me,” Hudson says. “I’ll take a lie detector right now and pass that with flying colors. I’m telling the truth!”

Hudson didn’t call any witnesses other than himself. Toward the end of trial, he threatened Carns and asked to be taken out of the courtroom. That’s when Carns delivered his closing argument — which completely undercut Hudson’s case. 

Carns argued essentially that the state hadn’t proved that Hudson intended to kill Van Dyn Hoven. He said nothing about Hudson’s claim that he was framed.

“The evidence was so overwhelming,” recalls Burke, the former WBAY TV reporter who covered the trial. “When the evidence is the way it is, you go, ‘This is a slam dunk.’ And it pretty much was. I don’t even remember how long the jury was out. It wasn’t that long.” 

Wisconsin does not have the death penalty. Hudson was given the maximum sentence — life in prison with no chance for parole.

Case against Metko tossed — twice

Burke wonders how things would have been different — perhaps less chaotic — if Hudson had “let the attorney do his or her job.” What Burke didn’t realize is Hudson was trying to hire a private attorney. Danita Metko was helping him. But when Metko was arrested and charged, those efforts ended. 

And it turns out, Metko’s arrest should never have happened. Biskupic assigned his deputy to handle the charges against Metko.

“Fast forward to my court date in May, after — long after Ken got already convicted, and they threw it out,” Metko says. “The judge said, ‘She didn’t commit a crime. There was no crime committed.’ ” 

The circuit court and the state Court of Appeals both found that Metko didn’t break any law. There wasn’t even a law for her to break. That no-contact order was enforceable only against Hudson — not her.

So why was she arrested? Metko has a theory: “I was really the only person to help Ken. I was really his only liaison to maybe, possibly, getting him some money to help with an attorney.”

Evidence raises more questions

Even today, Metko is convinced of Hudson’s innocence. She still visits him in prison, and she’s put up a lot of her own money to help him with his appeals and DNA testing. 

Among the many anomalies in the case is that Shanna Van Dyn Hoven’s blood wasn’t where one might expect it to be.

Investigators found Van Dyn Hoven’s DNA on Hudson’s right hand, but Hudson didn’t leave any traces of blood on the surfaces he probably touched over the course of the 16-mile car chase. Investigators did not find it on the steering wheel, the gear shifter, the driver’s side floor where the knife was found — and not on the boat or the trailer. 

And some of the places that looked like blood on Hudson’s body were tested — and they had no DNA in them at all. DNA experts interviewed by Wisconsin Watch and WPR could not fully explain what caused the confusing DNA results. 

But one thing is clear: There were definitely problems in Biskupic’s prosecution. 

Remember the two tape recordings — one that supposedly erased itself and one that didn’t make it Hudson? Several years after the trial, Hudson uncovered important new information about that evidence. 

A forensic tape examiner looked into the Kaukauna Police Department’s video equipment. He concluded it was physically impossible for the videotaped confession to just accidentally “erase itself.”

And in 2007, Hudson finally received a copy of that other tape — the audio tape from the hospital that Hudson claimed had recorded him asking for a lawyer.

Says Hudson: “And those tapes prove beyond any doubt whatsoever that I was telling the God’s honest truth that I wanted to talk to a lawyer … And that is something serious — for a defendant to be able to prove that these police were lying.”

The audio tape and transcript back up Hudson’s claims. In the tape, he said, “I want to talk to a lawyer.” An unambiguous request.

In 2011, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals found the tape proved Hudson had clearly asked for an attorney. Hudson argued that by continuing to question him, the police had committed a so-called Miranda violation.

Normally, the remedy for a Miranda violation is to exclude any incriminating statements made after the defendant asked for a lawyer. In this case, it would mean that Hudson’s alleged confession would be thrown out. He might even get a new trial. 

‘Harmless error’

But, the judges decided they didn’t need to rectify the Miranda violation because of a legal principle called “harmless error.” 

Bennett Gershman, a law professor at Pace University, explains how harmless error works: “If the prosecutor did something wrong and then engaged in an error, what an appellate court will typically do, because they don’t want to have to try cases over or over again, (is determine) how much did this violation matter?”

Harmless error acknowledges that an attorney made a mistake or broke a rule. But it doesn’t fix the error, or sanction the person who made it.

Courts find harmless error when they determine “that the other evidence was strong enough so that this evidence didn’t really matter. … (and) the jury would have convicted anyway,” Gershman says.

Harmless error is a pretty common finding. The Innocence Network studied 660 confirmed cases of prosecutorial misconduct that occurred from 2004 to 2008. And in about 80% of the cases, the misconduct was considered “harmless.” 

And of cases in that study where the courts determined the misconduct affected the verdict? Only one prosecutor was disciplined. 

“And a rational prosecutor would probably say ‘I’ve got the evidence. It’s very, very strong. I’m going to convict,’ ” Gershman says. “And … ‘If I make errors, they’re not going to be seen as that consequential.’ So the rational prosecutor might have an incentive to engage in rule violations.”

But what if some day the courts decide that all of this — the Miranda violation, the lack of blood on the steering wheel, the questionable DNA evidence, even the arrest of Danita Metko — that all of this amounts to error that is considered “harmful?” 

Kate O’Brien, a minor witness in the Hudson trial, has some thoughts on that. She told the jury she saw Hudson driving erratically on the day of the murder. O’Brien remembers sitting on the witness stand as she testified against Hudson feeling chills, like she was in the presence of evil. 

And nearly 20 years later, O’Brien’s confidence in Hudson’s guilt hasn’t wavered.

“There is no question in my mind that, yeah, the police may have screwed up, but this guy did it,” O’Brien says. “Because those two possibilities can happen at the same time. They can mess it up with him still being really guilty.”

She is “scared to death” that Hudson could be released because of errors by Biskupic.

“This guy was trusted by us,” she says of Biskupic. “I probably voted for the guy, and he just put so many people in jeopardy. And I’’m furious.”

O’Brien adds: “All the people who … were witnesses in his cases are now potentially in danger, and that’s unforgivable. Especially because this was just so open and shut. It should have been open and shut. “

On the next episode of Open and Shut: A case of confirmed innocence. And exoneration.

To hear the related podcast, go to Open and Shut (wpr.org/openandshut) or wherever you get your podcasts. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch collaborates with WPR and other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates. This story is a collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and WPR as part of the NEW News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin

Two decades after high-profile murder trial, questions remain in the prosecution of Ken Hudson is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Sarah Liebzeit’s son started using marijuana when he was about 12. And as a young teenager growing up in Wisconsin’s Fox Valley, he got into alcohol and other drugs.

“He turned to sniffing gas,” Liebzeit recalls. “I tried to have Outagamie County commit him for sniffing gas, and was basically told it’s not an illegal substance. There was no help for him.”

When Jonathan was around 15, he and a friend were huffing gas in his dad’s garage. They were messing around with a gun owned by Jonathan’s dad, Ed.

“I don’t know if they were playing Russian Roulette or what, and his friend actually shot himself in the head, but the bullet traveled along his skull and came out the top,” Liebzeit says. 

The friend survived. But that episode of mindless risk-taking was a prelude for something much, much worse. In 1996 — when he had just turned 19 — Jonathan Liebzeit took part in a homicide.

Liebzeit and two other young men used a bat to beat another young man, Alex Schaffer, at a park in Kaukauna, Wisconsin. Then the other two men drowned Schaffer in a drainage ditch. Jonathan Liebzeit was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“It just was so horrible and unbelievable,” Sarah Liebzeit recalls. “And I knew that there was never any intention to kill Alex. They went to beat him up over silliness. I knew he (Jonathan) deserved to be punished, but not to die in prison.”

In 2019, Wisconsin Watch received a tip about Liebzeit’s case. It alleged that the prosecutor, Outagamie County District Attorney Vince Biskupic, had withheld information about a key witness — a young woman who got some help, monetary and otherwise, from the police.

That assistance was never disclosed to the defense. It’s part of a pattern seen in some other high-profile cases prosecuted by Biskupic, according to an investigation by Wisconsin Watch and WPR. 

Wisconsin Watch and WPR sent registered letters with lists of questions and left phone messages and emails for Biskupic, who is now an Outagamie County Circuit judge, and his attorney. They did not respond. 

The case raises thorny questions about whether the rules of fairness in the justice system always apply — even when the crime is horrific and the defendant far from innocent.

Night of drinking ends in death

On the evening of Oct. 26, 1996, Jonathan Liebzeit and his friend, Dan Mischler went to Liebzeit’s father’s house where they met up with a third man, James Thompson, who was renting a room there. 

Liebzeit says he told Mischler that Schaffer was going to come over. According to Liebzeit, Mischler told him he “hated” Schaffer because he owed him money. Liebzeit, Thompson and Mischler are all white. Some records identify Schaffer as Native American.

According to statements given to police, Liebzeit and Thompson were drinking and talking about beating up Schaffer. Liebzeit insists the idea was always to scare him — not kill him.

Liebzeit describes Schaffer as a “friend” but says his friends would sometimes “beat each other up” when one of them was “screwing up.” He describes it as “some weird ‘Lord of the Flies’ thing” that today he knows “clearly, it was wrong.”

Ed Liebzeit, Jonathan’s father, had several renters living at his place, including a young woman, Jayme Bowman, who was hanging out with the guys and heard some of what they were saying. Schaffer showed up around midnight. They had more to drink. Liebzeit says he probably drank more than 12 beers. “I mean, I was pretty drunk.”

And then Thompson, Mischler, Liebzeit and Schaffer all headed to the woods in Horseshoe Park, just across the street. They told Schaffer they were going to smoke some weed. It was, Liebzeit admits, an “ambush.”

The men went into a drainage tunnel and began attacking Schaffer, taking turns beating him with a bat. Liebzeit admits he hit Schaffer multiple times, including one blow to the head that was “pretty hard.” 

Schaffer stumbled out of the tunnel where the beating continued, then, police reports say, Thompson and Mischler held Schaffer’s head under the water for a couple of minutes. They put his body back in the tunnel and left. 

At trial, two experts testified that the multiple blows to the head likely would have killed Schaffer — but the immediate cause of death was drowning. 

Different stories emerge

A day later, Bowman — the young woman living at Ed Liebzeit’s house — turned them in.

Police heard different versions of what happened from Liebzeit, Thompson and Mischler. Mischler provided valuable information to investigators and testified against Liebzeit and Thompson. In exchange, Biskupic, the prosecutor, offered him “use immunity,” meaning Mischler’s own testimony couldn’t be used against him in court. 

Liebzeit and Thompson were found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse. They were sentenced to life without parole. Mischler — one of the two men who held Schaffer’s head underwater — ultimately pleaded no contest to second-degree intentional homicide. He was sentenced to 20 years and was released in 2009.

The tip Wisconsin Watch received had to do with Bowman. During the investigation, Bowman gave several statements to the police. Wisconsin Watch was not able to obtain all of them, but in those reviewed, Bowman never claimed she overheard Thompson and Liebzeit discussing “killing” Schaffer. Instead, she said Liebzeit and Thompson had talked about “beating up” Schaffer. 

Adds Liebzeit: “And then when she came to testify at trial, she said we talked about killing Alex.”

That is a huge difference under the law. Bowman’s trial testimony showed evidence of intent to kill — that’s the standard for proving intentional homicide. Her earlier statements did not. 

The difference between her statement to police and trial testimony, Liebzeit says, is that rather than intentional homicide, which carries a life sentence, he might have been charged with reckless homicide, with a shorter sentence and a chance for parole — instead of dying in prison.

Liebzeit’s trial attorney asked Bowman why she hadn’t mentioned the word “kill” in her first statement to police. She gave a few reasons: She was nervous, and she only remembered some of the details later.

But there’s something the jury didn’t know. In 2019 — over two decades after she testified — Bowman signed an affidavit saying the police had helped her out during the investigation. 

After giving a statement to Kaukauna Police, Bowman wrote, members of the department got her a hotel room, where she stayed for about two weeks, likely paid a security deposit on a new apartment and helped her get rehired after losing her job due to involvement in the investigation.

Liebzeit believes that had this information been known at the time of trial, his attorney could have more effectively cross-examined Bowman on her inconsistent statements. 

Discovery rule ‘absolutely’ violated

But Liebzeit’s defense attorney didn’t know that police had helped Bowman during the investigation, because Biskupic didn’t disclose that information, says Kevin Musolf, who represented Liebzeit at trial.

“That would have made a big difference because it would have attacked her credibility,” Musolf says. 

“If I knew this back then,” Musolf says, he would have argued to the jury “that either the police told her, ‘Look, we need you to say that they said they wanted to kill him, okay?’ And if the police didn’t tell her to say that, she certainly got that impression because they’re giving her all this stuff.”

Musolf was asked whether that action was a violation of the Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to turn over evidence that raises doubt about a defendant’s guilt before trial. His opinion: “Yes, absolutely.”

Bowman declined to be interviewed but sent a statement insisting that her testimony did not change and that she told the truth under oath. 

“The murder has caused over 25 years of emotions, disappointment, depression, anxiety, fear, torture, challenges, counseling, successes, failures, tears, Post Traumatic Stress, forgiveness, and shame,” she wrote.

Bowman wrote that said she overheard Liebzeit and Thompson make several comments about beating up and killing Schaffer. But she wrote, when people say, “I’m gonna kill him,” they don’t always mean that literally. So she didn’t take that threat seriously at the time.

Bowman said Liebziet tried several times to get her to come with them to Horseshoe Park, telling her she could look away or close her eyes when they did the actual killing. She said Liebzeit and Thompson were laughing and joking when they returned to the house. She wrote, “One of them said ‘the little f— wouldn’t die.’ ” 

Bowman said she told the truth when she testified in court. And she wanted to be clear — she does not feel she got any “favors” from the police. 

“If Jonathan, James, and Daniel didn’t murder Alex, then I would have continued to have a safe place to stay,” she wrote. “Instead, the home became a crime scene.”

In an email accompanying her note, Bowman added, “Jonathan is guilty of murder and the district attorney and/or Kaukauna police did nothing wrong. If you use any or all of my statement, know that I agree with the decision the jury made.”

‘Classic motive and bias evidence’

Legal scholars contacted by Wisconsin Watch and WPR agree Kaukauna police did not break the law by helping Bowman find a safe place to live after she turned in Liebzeit and his friends for murder. But while police didn’t do anything wrong, legal scholars also agree — the prosecutor, Outagamie County District Attorney Vince Biskupic, did.

One of them is Georgetown University law professor Abbe Smith. She calls the lack of disclosure about the assistance to Bowman an “outrage.”

“They need to disclose — period,” Smith says. “You’ve got a witness who apparently, according to your account, changed her testimony along the way during a time when she’s receiving benefits from the police — a defense lawyer gets to cross-examine on that.”

Smith says the defense had the right to know that police had paid for a hotel during the investigation, helped her pay a security deposit on a new apartment and talked to her employer to get her job back — and the fact that after Bowman received this help, her statements changed. 

Smith calls it “classic motive and bias evidence.”

In 2017, Jonathan Liebzeit filed a motion asking for a new trial based, among other things, on his lawyer’s failure to investigate the “financial incentives” Bowman received. The motion was denied. Liebzeit appealed, but the appeal was rejected. And Liebzeit’s sentence of life without the possibility of parole stood.

Fairness — but for whom? 

Jonathan Liebzeit is now 44. His mom, Sarah, says he has spent the past 25 years educating himself. He’s taken up painting and pottery. 

But other things can happen when you grow up in prison without the possibility of getting out. Liebzeit has become a follower of Odinism — a type of pagan religion associated with white supremacists. The man who killed 77 people in Norway back in 2011 was an Odinist.

Liebzeit says the religion “just really spoke to me and I was kind of drawn to the, I guess, codes of conduct.”

The National Gang Crime Research Center reported in 2004 that Odinists were among the most common “white racist extremist” groups proselytizing in American prisons. But Liebzeit insists he is no white supremacist. “I’m not a bad person,” he says. “I don’t hate anybody.”

Liebzeit adds, “Does it matter if people are good or bad, whether or not the United States government, the state government, trampled people’s rights? Does that matter if they’re good or bad people? The Constitution and all that, like, it protects everybody, regardless of what you do. The government is supposed to follow those rules.” 

Smith agrees. She argues protections in the legal system need to be tested on the hard cases, the brutal cases — like Jonathan Liebzeit’s.

“It can’t just be for our kids when they get arrested shoplifting in CVS,” she says. “It can’t be that those are the only cases in which we care about fairness. We have to test ourselves with the worst cases.”

“And if we don’t do it in those cases, well then we’re not really doing it at all. We need to all feel secure that when somebody is convicted for a really terrible crime, they’re rightly and fairly convicted.”

There’s a coda to Liebzeit’s case. In 2020, a judge agreed to reopen his case and re-sentence him. The decision came not from any problems with Biskupic’s prosecution but a new factor based on advances in neuroscience. 

The judge said had he known then how long it takes for adolescent brains to develop — especially if they’re affected by drug abuse like Liebzeit’s — he would’ve sentenced him differently. The judge made Liebzeit eligible for parole. The state is appealing that decision.

In the next episode of Open and Shut, we examine a murder case prosecuted by Biskupic in which a taped “confession” mysteriously was erased, blood-red stains found on the defendant had no DNA in them — and the defendant’s girlfriend was wrongfully prosecuted for something that’s not even a crime.

To hear the related podcast, go to Open and Shut (wpr.org/openandshut) or wherever you get your podcasts. The nonprofit Wisconsin Watch collaborates with WPR and other news media and the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication. All works created, published, posted or disseminated by Wisconsin Watch do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of UW-Madison or any of its affiliates. This story is a collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and WPR as part of the NEW News Lab, a consortium of six news outlets covering northeastern Wisconsin. 

A horrific murder. Police helped a key witness. The prosecutor kept it secret. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.