Kenosha County jury finds Mark Jensen guilty in the retrial of his wife Julie's 1998 death
A Kenosha man has been found guilty in the 1998 poisoning death of his wife.
The jury delivered the verdict against Mark Jensen on Wednesday, after a single day of deliberation.
This was the second trial for Jensen; He was convicted in 2008 of first-degree intentional homicide for poisoning his wife Julie Jensen, 40, with antifreeze and sleeping pills, then suffocating her with a pillow in the garage of the couple's Pleasant Prairie home in December 1998.
Jensen, 63, was sentenced to life in prison at that time.
What followed was a trail of appeals that revolved around key pieces of evidence that were shown to the jury during his first trial and pointed to him as a suspect. Among them were a letter Julie Jensen left with a neighbor and voicemails to a police officer suggesting that if she was found dead, her husband was likely responsible.
Attorneys for Jensen argued the recordings violated his Sixth Amendment right to confront his accuser; the judge in the earlier trial found Jensen had forfeited that right by causing her death, therefore making her unavailable to testify.
In March 2021, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld an appellate court decision that the case be retried and ruled that the incriminating statements made by Julie Jensen that were revealed after her death could not be used as evidence against him at trial.
The retrial, which began Jan. 11, lasted three weeks in which previous witnesses, family members of Julie Jensen, and evidence from the case were presented to the new jury.
Sentencing is scheduled for April 14.
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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Jury finds Mark Jensen guilty in wife Julie Jensen's 1998 death
