Latest news with #USATODAYNETWORK-Wisconsin
Yahoo
03-06-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Attention, Class of 2025: Submit your high school graduation photos for our statewide gallery
Calling all Wisconsin high school graduates in the Class of 2025. We want to feature your graduation photos! USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin is asking students, parents and readers to submit their favorite graduation photos here. We'll create a statewide photo gallery featuring all our submissions throughout the month. SUBMIT: Send us your Class of 2025 graduation photos for our statewide gallery Of note, these should be cap and gown photos and not professional senior portraits. Here's a look at last year's gallery that had 126 submissions for what we're looking for. Congratulations to the Class of 2025! This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Class of 2025: High school graduation Wisconsin photo gallery callout
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
Man accused of hate crime homicide at Green Bay prison formally withdraws insanity plea
A man going to trial in June for the homicide of his cellmate at Green Bay Correctional Institution has withdrawn his insanity plea. Jackson Vogel, 25, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide as a hate crime for the August 2024 death of 19-year-old Micah Laureano. The trial is scheduled for June 2-5. Vogel is accused of strangling Laureano in their shared cell on the night of Aug. 27, 2024. According to court records, Vogel admitted to guards that he killed Laureano because he was "bored," and Micah 'checked all the boxes,' including the teen's race and perceived sexual orientation, which he referred to with slurs. Records indicate that Vogel, who is White, had a history of making death threats and white supremacist declarations before he was placed in a cell with Laureano, who was Black and Hispanic. At his arraignment in October 2024, Vogel pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, commonly referred to as an insanity plea. At a status conference in March, attorneys discussed issues with securing an expert to testify about Vogel's insanity defense. In April, Vogel's attorney, Ann Larson, filed a letter stating that Vogel wished to withdraw that plea and "proceed to jury trial with a not guilty plea." Vogel's plea was not formally changed until Brown County Circuit Court Judge Donald Zuidmulder approved the new plea at Vogel's final pre-trial conference May 21. The change means Vogel's trial will only consist of one phase, rather than possible second phase to determine his criminal responsibility. It also means that if he is convicted, Vogel will face life in prison, rather than the possibility of life in a mental health facility. Vogel is currently serving a 20-year prison sentence for attempted homicide in Manitowoc County. According to court records, he repeatedly stabbed his mother in 2016, when he was 16 years old, at their home in Two Rivers. Laureano was serving a three-year sentence for assault and vehicle theft. While the Brown County Sheriff's Office initially stated the two had been cellmates for just hours before Laureano's death Aug. 27, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections in May told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that Vogel and Laureano had been cellmates for five days, since Aug. 22. RELATED: Micah Laureano feared for his safety at Green Bay Correctional Institution. Then, he was killed. In a separate criminal case, Vogel is charged in Racine County with one count of threat to a family member of an officer of the court, and one count of threat to a prosecutor. According to a criminal complaint, Vogel, while incarcerated at Racine Youthful Offender Correctional Facility in spring 2024, mailed death threats to the Manitowoc County judge and prosecutor who oversaw his 2016 case. He has a status conference scheduled for that case after his homicide trial, on June 23. Laureano's mother, Phyllis Laureano, filed a federal lawsuit in February against the Wisconsin Department of Corrections and prison officials, alleging they violated her son's constitutional rights by allowing him to suffer cruel and unusual punishment. Laureano's death was the second homicide at Green Bay Correctional Institution in less than two years — and the second resulting in a hate crime charge. Contact Kelli Arseneau at 920-213-3721 or karseneau@ Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @ArseneauKelli. This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Man accused of hate crime killing at Green Bay prison withdraws insanity plea
Yahoo
21-05-2025
- Yahoo
Wisconsin Supreme Court denies review of Steven Avery's latest appeal
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has denied convicted murderer Steven Avery's petition for review of his latest appeal. The state's highest court issued the decision May 21. Avery's attorney, Kathleen Zellner, said in a post on X that the denial was "expected." The state Supreme Court denied Avery's petition for review for previous appeal attempts in 2011 and 2021. Avery's next step will be to file a petition in federal court — the first time Avery has done so, Zellner told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin. "Two things are certain at this point: (1) Steven Avery will never give up on proving his actual innocence. (2) Steven Avery's legal team is more dedicated to winning his freedom than ever before," Zellner said in an email. Avery, 62, is serving a life sentence with no possibility of parole for the murder of Teresa Halbach, a 25-year-old woman from the Calumet County community of St. John. Halbach, who worked as a photographer, went missing after going to the Avery family's auto salvage yard near Two Rivers to take pictures of vehicles on a work assignment on Halloween 2005. Avery and his teenage nephew Brendan Dassey were arrested and convicted of Halbach's murder after trials in 2007. The Manitowoc County case gained international attention after the 2015 premiere of the Netflix docuseries "Making a Murderer," which spotlights arguments made by Avery's trial attorneys: that Avery may have been framed by the Manitowoc County Sheriff's Office, as it stood to lose millions to Avery in a lawsuit for a wrongful conviction for which he served 18 years in prison. Avery was wrongfully convicted of a sexual assault in 1985 and released from prison in 2003, after DNA evidence pinned the assault on a different man. He had been a free man for just over two years when he was arrested for Halbach's murder. Avery has pursued numerous appeals over the years. His latest appeal, a third motion for post-conviction relief filed in August 2022, asserts that a different man killed Halbach, then framed Avery and was a key witness against him at trial. Sheboygan County Circuit Court Judge Angela Sutkiewicz, who was presiding over the case at that time, denied the motion in August 2023. Avery then appealed that ruling to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, which issued a decision in January siding with Sutkiewicz. A panel of three judges from the Wisconsin Court of Appeals District II stated that Avery's motion was "insufficiently pled" and that there was not adequate evidence to warrant an evidentiary hearing. Avery's attorneys then petitioned the Wisconsin Supreme Court to review the case in February. The Wisconsin attorney general then filed a response, arguing a review by the state Supreme Court would be a "waste" of the court's "scarce time and resources." RELATED: Wisconsin Supreme Court dismisses letter from Steven Avery; no decision yet on review RELATED: Court of Appeals denies Steven Avery's latest appeal, will not grant evidentiary hearing RELATED: Nearing 20 years since Teresa Halbach's murder, Steven Avery continues appeal efforts In March, while awaiting a decision, Avery sent a letter to the state Supreme Court without help or advice from his legal team. In the letter, Avery wrote that he is "a victim of a setup" that "has to be fixed now." The Wisconsin Supreme Court then indicated in the court record that it would not take Avery's letter into account in its decision, because "Mr. Avery is not entitled to hybrid representation in which both he and counsel present arguments to the court." Contact Kelli Arseneau at 920-213-3721 or karseneau@ Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @ArseneauKelli. This article originally appeared on Appleton Post-Crescent: Wisconsin Supreme Court won't review Steven Avery's latest appeal
USA Today
28-01-2025
- Politics
- USA Today
President Jackson: A villain to Indigenous peoples and hero to President Trump
President Jackson: A villain to Indigenous peoples and hero to President Trump Shekóli ('hello' in Oneida) and yaw^ko ('thank you') for reading the First Nations Wisconsin newsletter. As he did in his last term, President Trump hung a portrait of his presidential hero, Andrew Jackson, prominently in the Oval Office. Trump has expressed admiration of Jackson for his populist style of politics. Jackson served as the nation's seventh president from 1829 to 1837. Trump also said Jackson was the most politically attacked president before him, weathering all of it and still emerging triumphant. In Indian Country, Jackson is seen by Indigenous peoples as probably the most villainous of all past U.S. presidents. He enacted and enforced the Indian Removal Act forcing Indigenous peoples from their lands east of the Mississippi River to make room for slave plantations. And when Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall ruled that the government had no right and no enforcement power in Cherokee Nation lands in Georgia, Jackson ignored the ruling and said: 'John Marshall has made his decision. Now, let him enforce it.' The quote is apocryphal but sums up Jackson's belief that the Indigenous population was an obstacle to American success, an violence against tribes was preferable to friendship. The ensuing forced removal became know as the Trail of Tears in which many Indigenous people, including children, died on the forced march by foot to Oklahoma. 'That those tribes cannot exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain,' Jackson said about Indigenous peoples. 'Established in the midst of another and superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.' If you like this newsletter, please invite a friend to subscribe to it. And if you have tips or suggestions for this newsletter, please email me at fvaisvilas@ About me I'm Frank Vaisvilas, the Indigenous affairs reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin based at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I cover Native American issues in Wisconsin. You can reach me at 815-260-2262 or fvaisvilas@ or on Twitter at @vaisvilas_frank.
