On Point: 46. WI Court of Appeals

County of Walworth v. Bozena Twarowksi, 2020AP208, 9/16/20, District 2, (1-judge opinion ineligible for publication); case activity

Twarowski went to pick up her dog from a kennel, balked at an inflated bill, and apparently became argumentative and hostile. The trial court convicted her of disorderly conduct, and she appealed pro se.  According to the court of appeals, which criticized her poorly developed argument, Twaroski challenged the trial court’s finding that the County’s witness was credible. 

State v. Johnathan L. Johnson, 2019AP1398, 9/9/20, District 3 (not recommended for publication); case activity (including briefs)

Johnson was arrested for OWI in a McDonald’s parking lot. He’d ordered some food at the drive-through, and an employee had noticed his intoxication and called police.

State v. James E. Brown, 2020AP489, 9/9/20, District 1 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs)

Officers responded to a call for shots fired; the caller apparently described the shooting party as a “black male wearing a black hoodie and shorts.” On arriving in the “vicinity” they saw a black man, Brown, driving a vehicle. Illuminating the interior of the vehicle, an officer thought he saw that Brown was wearing a dark-colored hoodie, and he stopped Brown. On approach, though, the officer saw that Brown was wearing a maroon sweatshirt and pants.

State v. Ashley L. Monn, 2019AP640-CR, 9/9/20, District 3, (1-judge opinion, ineligible for publication); case activity

When police executed an arrest warrant for a man at his trailer home, they found Monn there too. They cuffed her, conducted a protective search, confirmed she had no outstanding warrants, and told her she would be released without charges. Unfortunately, she asked to get her purse from the trailer.

Sauk County v. S.A.M., 2019AP1033, 9/3/20, District 4 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication), reversed, 2022 WI 46; case activity

Wisconsin involuntarily commits mentally ill people  at a higher rate than any other state in the United States–close to 5 times the national average. Click here. Wisconsin is also in the minority of states that will dismiss an appeal from an expired commitment order as moot. Unless we’re  prepared to accept that, compared to the rest of the country, Wisconsin has a much larger percentage of residents who are both mentally ill and dangerous, this is troubling. It suggests that Wisconsin may be unlawfully committing and medicating people and then denying them their right to appeal. SCOW is poised to decide whether commitment appeals are ever moot. So the court of appeals could have stayed this appeal until SCOW resolved the point. Instead, it walked out on a limb to dismiss the appeal as moot.

State v. Andrew W. Bunn, 2019AP2127-CR, 9/9/20, District 1 (1-judge opinion, ineligible for publication); case activity

One evening, an unknown woman approached a cop car in a church parking lot near a playground and said that two adults were having oral sex in a pickup truck on the other side of a fence. The cops saw the truck but no activity inside. They didn’t ask for the woman’s name, but they did go investigate.

State v. Victoria L. Conley, 2019AP902, 9/10/20, District 4 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity (including briefs)

Conley pleaded to one count of disorderly conduct related to a couple of altercations occurring over a few minutes in Madison. After sentencing she moved to withdraw her plea alleging that the court failed to apprise her of the nature of the charge, and that she did not otherwise understand. The court of appeals holds that, assuming the colloquy was deficient, the record shows she understood the charges.

On August 31, 2020, the court of appeals ordered publication of the following criminal law related cases:

State v. Nathaniel R. Lecker, 2020 WI App 65; case activity (including briefs)

The application of a statute to undisputed facts is a question of law. This is an incontrovertible maxim of appellate review. “Question of law” sounds so august and erudite and specialized, doesn’t it? A question of law is a question into which an astute lawyer–or judge–would have special insight; he or she could be trusted to come to the right–or at least a particularly sound–answer to such a question. But sometimes statutes are written in very ordinary terms with no particular resonance, and no special definition, in the legal world. And sometimes these ordinary terms are also rather elastic–or relative. In those instances, can the answer to a “question of law” be something other than a standardless, “know it when I see it” exercise of arbitrary will?

State v. D.S., 2019AP2230 through 2019AP2233, District 1, 8/25/30 (one-judge decision; ineligible for publication); case activity

D.S. challenges the orders terminating her parental rights to her children on the ground, first because her lawyer was unable to appear and represent her at a pretrial hearing because his law license was temporarily suspended, second because trial counsel didn’t obtain 400 pages of discovery until the day before the  dispositional hearing. Her challenges are rejected.