Wisconsin's Worst DA Chased from Office Is Still Defended by Wisconsin Democrat Attorney General

Depravity of Wisconsin disgraced DA Ken Kratz,
driven from office in 2010, is still defended
by Wisconsin Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D)
who works to keep innocents in prison.

Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz resigned in disgrace in 2010 following allegations that Kratz sexually harassed several women, including an assault claim alleging Kratz "had forcible sex with an emotionally vulnerable woman after previously prosecuting the woman," (Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation v. Kratz (In re Disciplinary Proceedings Against Kratz)).

But Kratz wasn't responsible for his conduct, Kratz pleaded.

Kratz' Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Sexually Compulsive Disorder and addictions to several drugs are the real culprits, Kratz said.

Such is the character of the man who perpetrated conflicting frauds upon two juries in the infamous frame-ups of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, featured in the Emmy-winning Making a Murderer.

Ken Kratz. This is whom Democrat Wisconsin Attorney General Joshua Kaul defends today, at all costs against decency and innocence.

Wisconsin DoJ Attorneys Thomas Fallon and Norman Gahn Are Under Cloud in Steven Avery Case

Madison, Wisconsin — Judge Angela W. Sutkiewicz affirmed a key fact in her August 8, 2019 decision and order in Manitowoc County Circuit Court in Steven Avery's post-conviction litigation.

Steven Avery is featured in the Emmy-winning Making a Murderer documentary series.

Judge Sutkiewicz writes, "The report of [Calumet County Sheriff Deputy Jeremy Hawkins] indicates that he, Sergeant Investigator Mark Wiegert, [DoJ] Attorney Thoman Fallon and [DoJ] Attorney Norman Gahn removed materials stored in evidence, and released them to the [murder victim Teresa] Halbach family," (p 2).

The state appellate case is State v. Steven A. Avery, 2017AP002288.

This is an important admission from Sutkiewicz because the Wisconsin Dept of Justice's Fallon and Gahn have been gas-lighting the Teresa Halbach family, Avery and his attorneys and indeed the entire state of Wisconsin.

Fallon, Gahn and Wisconsin Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D) claim they do not know if the biological remains that Fallon, Gahn and the Calumet County Sheriff Dept secretly and illegally released to the Teresa Halbach family in 2011 are in fact the remains of Teresa Halbach.

You read that right. It is the official position of the State of Wisconsin that the State misled a murder victim's family into believing the State had returned to this family the bodily remains of someone whom they now claim may not be Teresa Halbach.
 
Avery's attorney — Kathleen Zellner, Steven Richards and Douglas Johnson — are expected to file a brief with the presiding appellate court within weeks.

The Wisconsin statute 968.205 - Preservation of certain evidence is clear. Among other duties assumed by law enforcement when destroying evidence in its custody, the State must send "a notice of its intent to destroy the evidence to all persons who remain in custody as a result of the criminal conviction, delinquency adjudication, or commitment, and to either the attorney of record for each person in custody or the state public defender."

This statute is not a suggestion of best practices.

The State of course sent no such notice. See Avery legal filings.

The law was specifically changed in 2005 with the legislative intent to allow law enforcement to destroy evidence after meeting all the prescribed conditions necessary for the State to commit this act.

Reads the Analysis by the Legislative Reference Bureau of ASSEMBLY BILL 648, [LRB−3492/1RLR:wlj&lmk:rs   2005 − 2006 LEGISLATURE]; 

However, if a law enforcement agency, DA, court,or crime laboratory informs every person in custody in connection with a piece of evidence of its intent to destroy the evidence and none of the people either requests preservation of the evidence or files a motion for deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) testing of the biological material contained in or included on the evidence, the law enforcement agency, DA, court, or crime laboratory may destroy the evidence.

This bill provides that a law enforcement agency, DA, court, or crime laboratory must retain evidence that includes biological material and was collected in connection with a criminal investigation that resulted in a conviction, delinquency adjudication, or commitment order only if the biological material is either from the victim of the offense for which the conviction, adjudication, or commitment order was imposed or the biological material may reasonably be used to incriminate or exculpate any person for the offense. Also, a law enforcement agency, DA, court, or crime laboratory need retain the evidence only in an amount and manner sufficient to develop a DNA profile from the evidence. [Emphasis added]

The State now wants to substitute scientific certainty as the new definition that determines the incriminating or exculpatory value of DNA evidence and replace the "may reasonably be used" language that resides in the law and legislative intent.

Instead of "biological material [that] may reasonably be used to incriminate or exculpate," as is the legislative intent and plain language of the statute, Judge Sutkiewicz references the testimony of one scientist from trial to support the State's position.

Surly, it is reasonable to infer that giving a murder victim's family bodily remains purported to be a murder victim's may reasonably be determined to possess exculpatory value, in accordance with Wisconsin statute 968.205 - Preservation of certain evidence.

As attorney Zellner notes in her Feb. 1 legal filing:

The [State] ... conveys an attitude of impunity for its past actions of withholding exculpatory evidence and its current action of continuing the concealment of its destruction of potentially exculpatory or useful evidence. ...

The State wants this Court to overlook the undisputed fact that 2 weeks ago, on December 28, 2018, when it filed its response to Mr. Avery's request for new DNA testing of the bones from the Manitowoc Gravel Pit, it never once admitted or disclosed that it had given the bones back to the Halbach family in 2011 without notice to Mr. Avery or his counsel. (Plaintiff-Respondent's Response in Opposition to the Petition to Stay the Appeal and Remand this Case to the circuit court, December 28, 2018, pp. 1-8). Instead, the State carried on its charade of concealment by claiming that Mr. Avery could voluntarily dismiss his pending appeal (pp. 1,2)

What we in Wisconsin need to determine as well is the intent of Calumet County Sheriff Deputy Jeremy Hawkins, Sheriff Mark Wiegert, and DoJ attorneys Thoman Fallon and Norman Gahn through a criminal investigation.

You better believe this gang is culpable in the crimes of 946.65 Obstructing justice and 946.12 Misconduct in public office, for starters.

And a federal probe would certainly help.

These people broke multiple laws in their plot to frame an innocent man, and then destroy evidence to conceal their crimes.

Disgraced District Atty Ken Kratz Applauds Illegal Destruction of Evidence in Making a Murderer Case

Disgraced Calumet County District Attorney
Ken Kratz keeps in touch with the Wisconsin
Dept of Justice through the email of his
now-defunct law firm.

Updated - Madison, Wisconsin — Calumet County District Attorney Ken Kratz resigned in disgrace in 2010 following allegations that Kratz sexually harassed several women, including an assault claim alleging Kratz "had forcible sex with an emotionally vulnerable woman after previously prosecuting the woman," (Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation v. Kratz (In re Disciplinary Proceedings Against Kratz)).

Nice guy, right?

But Kratz wasn't responsible for his conduct, Kratz pleaded.

Kratz' Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Sexually Compulsive Disorder and addictions to several drugs are the real culprits, Kratz wrote.

Such is the character of the man who perpetrated conflicting frauds upon two juries in the infamous frame-ups of Steven Avery and Brendan Dassey, featured in the Emmy-winning Making a Murderer.

Now, Kratz — who today still falsely claims to be an attorney in good standing in Wisconsin — is offering justification for the State's illegal destruction of biological evidence in 2011, a focus of Steven Avery's post-conviction litigation seeking reversal of his conviction and a new trial, (McDonell-Parry, Rolling Stone Magazine), (p. one. March 11, 2019 Supplemental § 974.06 Motion for Post-Conviction Relief Pursuant to State's Violation of Wis. Stat § 968.205 and Youngblood v. Arizona).

Update: [Kratz has now changed some of his social media profiles used to publicize his book to reflect the fact that Kratz is no longer practicing law in Wisconsin, a status that dates back for years. Kratz' license to practice law in Wisconsin is suspended and it appears Kratz will never practice law again in Wisconsin.]

Replying to a Steven Avery advocate criticizing the unethical Mantitowoc County Sheriff's Office involvement in the 2005-06 criminal investigation into Avery because Mantitowoc County was conflicted out stemming from a $36-million civil rights suit for the past wrongful conviction of Avery, Kratz wrote on Twitter last weekend:

I can’t believe I’m engaging with you...but somebody has to be the voice of reason. So here’s the question AC: AFTER Avery lost ALL of his direct appeals (and he had none left), how long should the state have waited before it returned the bones to the family??? 1 year? 2? 8????? 

The voice of reason in Wisconsin is Ken Kratz?

I can’t believe I’m engaging with you...but somebody has to be the voice of reason. So here’s the question AC: AFTER Avery lost ALL of his direct appeals (and he had none left), how long should the state have waited before it returned the bones to the family??? 1 year? 2? 8?????

— Ken Kratz (@Ken723Ken) August 17, 2019

Kratz' question is hyperbolic and rhetorical. His question concerns the illegal destruction of biological evidence in 2011 by Sergeant [now Calumet County Sheirff] Investigator Mark Wiegert, and DoJ Attorneys Thoman Fallon and Norman Gahn.

Both Fallon and Gahn were on the trial prosecution team against Avery; both illegally and secretly destroyed evidence, and both Fallon and Gahn are defending their conduct in appellate post-conviction litigation.

Fallon and Gahn argue that key evidence they helped destroy was "inexplicably released" from the Calumet County Sheriff’s Department’s evidence control unit in their March 29, 2019 legal filing, (p 13).

"Inexplicably released." This is an interesting formulation describing an illegal act that Fallon and Gahn committed.

As for Ken Kratz, the darling of Wisconsin Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D), here is some legal analysis for this voice of "reason":

The plain language of Wisconsin's Evidence Preservation statute reads: "... the law enforcement agency shall preserve the physical evidence until every person in custody as a result of the conviction, adjudication, or commitment has reached his or her discharge date." 

So, not one year, two years or eight years.

Making a Murderer — Judge Angela Sutkiewicz Covered for Corrupt DoJ Attys, Thoman Fallon and Norman Gahn

Wisconsin's Evidence Preservation statute is a focus of
Steven Avery wrongful conviction litigation.

Updated - A judicial ruling last week is widely misreported as 'Avery loses right to appeal.' Wrong.

The circuit court stop was a necessary procedural step in which the case was heard in front of the corrupt Judge Angela Sutkiewicz. Now, the case will be appealed to state appellate court, as Steven Avery's legal team indicated last Spring, the same appellate court that granted Avery's request to remand the case to circuit court. The question facing Avery was how long Sutkiewicz was going to take to issue her corrupt decision and order.

Sutkiewicz works backwards. Judicial result first, then draft an order and opinion to support the position of corrupt Wisconsin law enforcement.

Wisconsin police did not frame Steveny Avery in a vacuum. Law enforcement did so in a terrain in which police misconduct and criminality are protected in the state judiciary.

See April 21, 2019, for example:

Waiting for the predictable adverse ruling from the lower court so that we can return to the higher court where hopefully justice is not on a permanent holiday. @lifeafterten @michellemalkin #MakingAMurderer2

— Kathleen Zellner (@ZellnerLaw) April 21, 2019

The prosecution led by Attorney General Joshua Kaul (D) is employing the legal services of corrupt state attorneys including Mark Williams, Asst Attorney General and Special Prosecutor Thomas J. Fallon, and Special Prosecutor Norman Gahn.

Madison, Wisconsin — A ruling handed down in early August in Manitowoc County Circuit Court is an adverse ruling for Steven Avery, the protagonist in Wisconsin's Making a Murderer post-conviction litigation.

The ruling was widely expected. The Aug 8 decision and order in online here.

This case will be decided in appellate court.

Judge Angela W. Sutkiewicz again failed to schedule any proceedings though Sutkiewicz was ordered in a Feb 25, 2019 state appellate court ruling to "conduct any proceedings necessary to address the claims raised in the supplemental postconviction motion ... ."

Attorney Kathleen Zellner file an explosive motion Jan 24, 2019 seeking a hearing because the Calumet County Sheriff's Office secretly transferred evidence, the remains of a murder victim, Teresa Halbach, to private custody in 2011, in violation of state statutes that govern preservation of physical evidence collected, subject to criminal investigations, (Avery Legal Filings).

"[T]he State, in its response to Mr. Avery's motion, makes no effort to deny the due process violations Mr. Avery alleges, i.e., that the State concealed a police report, failed to give statutorily-mandated notice to Mr. Avery and his attorneys of its intent to destroy biological evidence, then facilitated the destruction of the same evidence. The State should not now reap the benefit of its past statutory and due process violations. Such an outcome would contravene the sense of basic fairness inherent in our justice system.," writes Zellner in a Feb 1 legal filing.

Judge Sutkiewicz divined that the State destruction of evidence accomplished by a conspiracy that includes two of the DoJ attorneys now defending the conviction in post-conviction litigation was done in good faith.

Sutkiewicz also determined what the state purported to be a murder victim's remains was not scientifically established as a murder victim's remains, hence the State may secretly destroy the evidence, and the defendant has no recourse.

The State previously suggested to the Court in its Dec. 28, 2018 filing that Avery and Zellner drop their appeal without the State ever having "admitted or disclosed that it had given the bones back to the Halbach family in 2011 without notice to Mr. Avery or his counsel," notes Zellner in her Feb. 1 legal filing.

In other words, law enforcement may hide evidence it claims is a murder victim, destroy this evidence, hide the destruction, then claim the evidence cannot be determined to be exculpatory.

Good enough for Judge Sutkiewicz who acknowledges what Zellner uncovered.


Writes Sutkiewicz: "The report of Deputy [Jeremy] Hawkins indicates that he, Sergeant Investigator Mark Wiegert, Attorney Thoman Fallon and Attorney Norman Gahn removed materials stored in evidence, and released them to the Halbach family," (p 2).
---
Can you imagine if Fallon and Gahn had to explain themselves as witnesses in open court, had Sutkiewicz held proceedings to determine the status of claims of potential exculpatory value of the remains that law enforcement illegally destroyed? How about an examination of Fallon and Gahn's motives to determine good faith?

Wisconsin Attorney General Joshua Kaul continues to allow these two DoJ attorneys who disregarded Wisconsin's Evidence Preservation statute to argue this post-conviction case, though their conduct is suspect and worthy of a criminal investigation in itself.

Judge Angela W. Sutkiewicz covered for Thoman Fallon and Norman Gahn, who along with a host of Wisconsin law enforcement are a criminal element.


In the coming weeks, the Wisconsin population may learn what a Brady motion violation is, and why the state's Brady violations should also result in vacating this wrongful conviction.

Further, as the Wisconsin DoJ and local law enforcement are incapable of policing themselves, surely a FBI probe is needed here in Wisconsin.

Another Innocent Sent Behind Bars for Life, More Prosecutorial Misconduct

The expectation today is that innocents are sent to prison en masse and police and prosecutors routinely commit misconduct.

From the New York Times:

How many constitutional violations will it take before the New Orleans district attorney’s office is held to account for the culture of negligence and outright dishonesty that has pervaded it for decades?

In dozens of cases over the years, the office — largely under the command of former District Attorney Harry Connick, Sr. — failed to turn over material to defense lawyers that would have helped their clients.

And yet the Supreme Court refused to find any pattern of misconduct when it was confronted in 2011 with one of the most egregious examples in memory: the case of John Thompson, who spent 14 years on death row before a private investigator discovered that several prosecutors in Mr. Connick’s office had lied for years about a crime-lab report that ultimately led to Mr. Thompson’s exoneration.

In an astonishingly myopic opinion by Justice Clarence Thomas, the court threw out Mr. Thompson’s $14 million jury award on the grounds that he had shown a violation only in his own case, and not a pattern of misconduct, as the justices have required.

In reality, Mr. Thompson’s case was one of many in which New Orleans prosecutors disregarded their constitutional duties. Louisiana courts have overturned at least 36 convictions as a result of these violations. And those are just the cases where wrongdoing was uncovered. Unfortunately, it’s all too easy for unscrupulous prosecutors to hide evidence that might hinder a conviction.

That’s what happened in the latest example of misconduct out of New Orleans, where prosecutors only last month disclosed a 19-year-old memo that undercuts their case against Robert Jones, who was sentenced to life without parole for a 1992 kidnapping, robbery and rape that he denies committing.

Failing to turn over material to defense attorneys is called a Brady Violation, and as U.S. Circuit Judge Alex Kozinski notes, this misconduct is rampant. See, for example, Brady Violations and the explosive book, Licensed to Lie by Sidney Powell.

As Brady violations by prosecutors are rarely pursued, what inducements do prosecutors have to reveal exculpatory information, as required by law?

Truth? Justice? Ethics? You jest.

Truth and justice have no starring role in the American criminal justice system.

Ask Penny Brummer, an innocent woman pursued, persecuted and convicted of first degree murder in 1994 for being a lesbian. Subsequently, Madison (Wisconsin) police, Dane County Sheriff's investigators and Dane County District Attorney prosecutors (including former D.A. Brian Blanchard) and former Judge Patrick Fiedler found charging and convicting Ms. Brummer convenient (Protess, Huffington Post) (Lueders, Isthmus).

No evidence presented, no evidence needed.

US Senator at AG Nominee Confirmation Hearing: Read Licensed to Lie

Licensed to Lie by former Assistant
United States Attorney and Chief of
of the Appellate Section for the
Western and Northern Districts of Texas,
US Department of Justice, Sidney Powell

U.S. Senator Orin Hatch (R-Utah) offered an unusual comment in last week’s confirmation hearings for the proposed new attorney general of the United States, Loretta Lynch.

Hatch suggested the nominee read a book: Sidney Powell's Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice (Brown Books Publishing Group, 2014).

Hatch is right.

Prosecutorial misconduct is rampant in prison-state America.

Prosecutorial discretion is a quaint term we see when one reads old essays and speeches by Robert Jackson.

Violations of the Brady Rule, prosecutors’ duty under the Brady v. Maryland (1963) case to turn over to the defense exculpatory evidence are "epidemic," to borrow a term from an opinion from Judge Alex Kozinski, Chief Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. (Cassens-Weiss, ABA Journal)

From small-town prosecutors in Mississippi to northern Wisconsin, from federal prosecutors across the country to the District Attorney's office in Grant County Wisconsin, too often the office of the Prosecutor has abandoned the conception of justice, in favor of careerism and convictions.

Wrongful convictions, abuse of process and malicious prosecutions are routine in the USA.

Richard Posner of the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit sounds the alarm in Fields v. Wharrie and Kelley.

And locally the Dane County (Wisconsin) District Attorney has spoken out favorably of the work of the Innocence Project.

"No prosecutor should want to have innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted stay in prison. If evidence is brought to the attention of the authorities demonstrating that a mistake has been made, the interests of justice demand that the evidence is carefully reviewed and the individual should be released if exonerated. As Dane County District Attorney, I have worked with lawyers from the Innocence Project, and will do so in the future. ...The ultimate goal of the system is not simply to secure convictions, it is to do justice," said Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne. (mal contends)

Sidney Powell, the author and federal appellate jurist whom Sen. Hatch recommends, wrote in response remarking of prosecutors:

Indeed, as officers of the court entrusted with the power of the Sovereign, they should be held to an even higher standard. Instead, abusive prosecutors have been promoted, gaining even more power that will make them even more corrupt.  What happened to the citizens in Licensed to Lie can happen to anyone. Just ask the teams of the Innocence Project who work tirelessly to free people who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit. More than half of those wrongful convictions were the result of prosecutorial misconduct.

Powell is among the few voices in this country standing up and stating repeatedly: Prosecutors have a license to lie, and this is wrong.