'This is really wrong': A Vesper woman has been held in jail for 8 months without charges. Here’s what legal experts say.
WISCONSIN RAPIDS – “Bizarre,” “shocking” and “wrong.”
That is how legal experts responded when a Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune reporter recently talked with them about a Wood County Circuit Court case that has kept a 39-year-old Vesper woman behind bars for nearly nine months without charges being filed following a fatal crash in Port Edwards.
While there is not a Wisconsin law that prohibits the court system from holding someone in jail for that amount of time without filing charges, there are legal avenues the woman and her attorney can take to object to the decision, they said.
The Daily Tribune is not naming the woman because she had not been charged in connection with the fatal crash as of Friday afternoon.
Details of the fatal crash and court case
Deputies arrested the Vesper woman on Sept. 16, following a crash on State 54, near Green Grove Lane, that killed 47-year-old Casey L. Wulf, of Port Edwards. Wulf was driving a motorcycle west on State 54, and Wood County deputies determined a vehicle traveling behind the motorcycle, driven by the Vesper woman, hit the back of it as they approached the intersection, according to the sheriff’s department.
Wulf was thrown from the motorcycle and died at the scene, according to the sheriff’s department.
Deputies noticed a strong smell of alcohol on the woman, and she gave multiple signs of being drunk during tests, according to court documents. A preliminary breath test showed she had a blood alcohol content of 0.183%, more than twice the legal limit for drivers, according to documents.
Wood County Circuit Judge Todd Wolf set a $250,000 cash bail for the Vesper woman later that day on suspected charges of homicide by drunken driving and driving without a license resulting in a death.
She remained in jail as of Friday afternoon.
Legal experts call situation 'shocking,' but say defendant has options
The fact that the criminal justice system has kept the woman in jail for more than eight months without charges is "bizarre," said Michele Lavigne, retired University of Wisconsin-Madison law professor.
"This is horrible; this is shocking," Lavigne said. "It shouldn't be bail at all. It should just be release her."
Lavigne said she's heard of judges setting a signature bail for defendants and ordering them to come back in once charges are filed. She said that also is a problem because the signature bails carry with them restrictions on the defendants' liberties without being charged with anything.
"This is insane; this is awful," Lavigne said. "Somebody, somewhere has got to do something."
John Birdsall, a defense attorney at Birdsall, Obear and Associates in Milwaukee, said holding the woman without charges interferes with her right to due process in the case. Birdsall said he doesn't know of a provision in Wisconsin law that directly deals with holding a suspect without charges, but there are objections a defense attorney can make.
The Vesper woman's attorney could file for a writ of habeas corpus, Birdsall said. In that case, the person responsible for holding the defendant, who is usually the sheriff, must produce the defendant before a judge and explain why the person is being held. Usually, the sheriff will say he's holding the person on the district attorney's order, and the district attorney will then have to prove there is reason to continue to hold the person.
Divorce case complicates defendant's ability to post bail
Three days after her arrest, the Vesper woman’s husband filed for divorce and their assets were frozen. She did not qualify for a public defender, and she didn’t have access to money to pay for her own lawyer.
When she requested her bail be lowered during a hearing in January, the victim’s family asked the judge to keep her in jail. At the time, Judge Wolf said the woman’s lack of movement on getting an attorney made him decide not to lower her bail. He told her what she needed to do to get a court-appointed attorney.
At the beginning of February, almost five months after the woman was arrested, attorney Eric Sheets became her court-appointed lawyer. In a bond hearing Feb. 9, Wolf lowered the bail to a $100,000 property bail. Wolf said the woman could contact the judge in her divorce case and ask that she be given access to half the value of her home for the property bail.
The woman does not have an attorney for her divorce case, but Sheets filed a request to allow the woman to use her half of the value of her home for the bail. Wood County Court Commissioner Richard Weymouth denied a request to issue a temporary order about the house.
On April 27, the divorce case was assigned to Wood County Circuit Judge Nicholas Brazeau Jr.
Sheets has asked for the issue of the house to be looked at again. The divorce case is scheduled for a new hearing in front of Brazeau on June 7.
Sheets did not respond to email requests for an interview.
Why is it taking so long to file charges?
Wood County Sheriff’s Office Lt. Scott Goldberg told the Daily Tribune in January the crash that caused Wulf’s death was still an active investigation and there was little he could say about the complex case.
Adding to that complexity was information the Daily Tribune learned through court documents that the motorcycle driver killed in the crash was actually hit by two vehicles on Sept. 16.
A 58-year-old Nekoosa man also drove over Wulf during the early morning hours of Sept. 16, while Wulf was still lying in the road on State 54. The Nekoosa man did not stop at the scene of the crash, according to the reports. At the time of the crash the man was on probation for fourth-offense drunken driving, and according to court records he had been at two different taverns the night of Sept. 15, which was a violation of his probation. He also had driven with a revoked driver's license.
Wood County District Attorney Craig Lambert has said during court appearances that the Vesper woman's case is waiting on a Wisconsin State Patrol accident reconstruction report. Lambert has said he doesn't know when the report will be done, but he's had to wait more than a year for some reports.
In at least one case, it took much longer. In April, Lambert filed a charge of homicide by negligent operation of a motor vehicle in connection with a fatal crash that happened three years earlier. A Wood County Sheriff's Office lieutenant said the delay in charges being filed in the March 2020 crash was because officials were waiting for the State Patrol to finish its accident reconstruction report.
Lambert did not respond to email requests for an interview.
Defense attorney Hank Schultz, a past president of the Wisconsin Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, said he's had cases where it took more than a year to get an accident reconstruction report, and that was when he was regularly calling the officer responsible for writing it. Schultz said, in his cases, the defendant wasn't in jail while waiting.
Schultz said, in many cases, judges will give prosecutors a time limit. If the charges aren't filed by the judge's deadline, the judge will order the person released, he said.
Even if the case is delayed by a backlog, it still puts a defendant in a disadvantage when it comes to defending herself, Birdsall said.
"This is really wrong," Birdsall said.
Wisconsin State Patrol handles over 400 accident reconstruction reports a year
The Wisconsin State Patrol’s Technical Reconstruction Unit, which issues accident reconstruction reports, has operated since 2006 and consists of 11 specially trained reconstructionists and one supervisor, according to the Wisconsin Department of Transportation.
The team uses specialty equipment, including laser scanning and 3D modeling software, provides crime scene investigators with forensic mapping and allows officers to collect data on-site to help clear the scene of a crash more quickly, according to the Wisconsin DOT.
Many smaller law enforcement agencies do not have the staffing or resources to complete these types of investigations on their own, the Wisconsin DOT said.
From 2018-2022, the 12-person team has handled 401 to 465 cases a year, and all but one of those years the team had between 400 and 420 cases. The Wisconsin DOT did not respond to a reporter’s question regarding how long it typically takes the team to create reports.
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Contact Karen Madden at 715-345-2245 or kmadden@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter @KMadden715, Instagram @kmadden715 or Facebook at www.facebook.com/karen.madden.33.
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This article originally appeared on Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune: Vesper woman held in jail 8 months without charges after fatal crash
