On February 11, 2015, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, District II, reversed an order of the Walworth County Circuit Court, and ordered a new trial for a minor child, identified as Charles C.S. Jr., aged fourteen at the time of his conviction. See, State v. Charles C. S., Jr., No. 2014AP1045, unpublished (Wis. Ct. App. Feb. 11, 2015), available at https://www.wicourts.gov/ca/opinion/DisplayDocument.html?content=html&seqNo=134396.
Charles spent a year incarcerated after an unjust conviction in which the appeals court found that
(1) a Walworth County Sheriff’s Department investigator gave “demonstrably false testimony” under oath about conversations with a witness,
(2) a Walworth County Asst. District Attorney introduced clearly inadmissible evidence and argued evidence that was not true, and
(3) Charles’s defense counsel was deficient for failing to object to the false testimony or legally-prohibited prosecution arguments.
At the end of this post, I have embedded the written decision of the appellate court, as dated and filed on 2.11.15.
I’ll write more about this matter tomorrow, with a series of questions for those involved.
Today, I’m posting the appellate court decision and order. There are two reasons for posting the ruling, mostly on its own, today.
First, the court’s reasoning and ruling speak for themselves.
Second, in our area, we seldom see original documents like this published, as the pressure against the local press for displaying them causes those papers to shy away.
Americans are, and should always be, of stronger stuff than that.