April 15, 2015 at 4:52 p.m.
Suspects in 2003 homicide appear in court
Suspects in 2003 homicide appear in court
Shannon Wolf's attorney, Maggie Hogan, has requested a change of venue. At Tuesday's hearing before Branch I Judge Michael Bloom, Hogan argued that extensive news coverage of the case, including a 3 1/2 minute newscast that was aired by a local television station a total of five times between March 10 and 11, will make it difficult to seat a jury of area residents who have not formed an opinion on the case. The broadcast included parts of a video reenactment of Wells' murder played at the preliminary hearing to establish probable cause.
Wells' body was recovered from the Wisconsin River behind the Trig's Riverwalk Centre on July 1, 2003. According to the criminal complaints filed against both Wolfs, the two are alleged to have killed Wells underneath the Davenport Street bridge in late June 2003. The case lay dormant for years until Latoya Wolf made statements incriminating both herself and Shannon during the course of a separate investigation.
After the court viewed a recording of the newscast, Hogan argued that it had the potential to inflame potential jurors against her client. She also cited extensive coverage in area newspapers and on social media.
"I think that there is a problem that the primary and key evidence the state has against Mr. Wolf is that reenactment by Latoya, or the most recent reenactment on Jan. 23, that was disseminated to the public," Hogan said. "It was played to the public. There were allegations that Mr. Wolf threatened Latoya, the state's key witness. I think that there is highly prejudicial information that isn't informative. I don't think it is informative, I think it is inflammatory."
She said the information was replayed in the news broadcasts at least five different times.
"And that is just a minor clip of one example of what the public has been hearing in respect to this case, combined with a long list of articles and information that can be obtained online on the 2012 case for which Mr. Wolf is serving a prison sentence," Hogan said.
She said the 2012 incident is still in the "public's consciousness" from when the event occurred. She said it is hard to gauge whether potential jurors have been influenced by the coverage because a trial date hasn't been set. Still, she doesn't think it will be possible to seat an impartial jury of people from the Rhinelander area.
Hogan also contended that Oneida County District Attorney Michael Schiek was directly involved in distributing the alleged inflamatory information to the public because his office released a copy of the video reenactment to the television station.
"It doesn't get any more serious or severe as far as the charges are concerned. It's first-degree intentional homicide," she added.
She also submitted an affidavit from an investigator researching the case who came across a number of online links to information and articles about the case. She said he wasn't even searching for any news media accounts of the case, but just entered the search term "Davenport Street bridge" and was "barraged, basically, by inflammatory news articles about Mr. Wolf" as a result.
Because Hogan had just received Schiek's written response to her motion for a change of venue, she asked for a week to prepare a formal written response. Bloom granted the request.
Schiek noted the video reenactment is a matter of public record and thus he is required to make it available upon request.
"There are a couple of competing issues that I see as a problem," Schiek said. "As district attorney, it is my job to prosecute cases on behalf of the state of Wisconsin. Specifically, we have charged the defendant with first-degree intentional homicide. With that charge, comes media attention. The defendant, has, on the one hand, the right to a fair trial, but the media also has the constitutional right to report in the press. And the community has an interest in what is going on. That's not constitutional, but I think it has to be taken into consideration."
Schiek said it is common for members of the media to be in attendance at every hearing in a high profile case such as this one.
"In this day and age, it can be Facebook, Twitter, I don't even know the names of all these social media sites that are out there," Schiek said. "You can literally take a few seconds and a story can be submitted throughout the state, the United States, and potentially internationally."
Schiek said his job includes the burden of proving probable cause, which he did in this case with the criminal complaint and police report. That document is also public record and can be requested by the media to assist in reporting the allegations.
"I need that report to support the charge. If I don't attach that, the defense can file a motion to dismiss based on a lack of information," he said.
At the preliminary hearing stage, Schiek said he must present enough evidence to satisfy the judge that probable cause exists to support the felony charge. This often requires testimony from the investigating officer to support what is in his or her report. Schiek said that when preparing for the preliminary hearing in Shannon Wolf's case, he thought including part of the video reenactment would make the case even more convincing to Bloom.
"I did that because I thought it was important for the court, as well as the defense, to see part of the information that we had, to substantiate a cold case that we had that had allegedly taken place a number of years ago," Schiek said.
He said using the video in addition to the testimony of Detective Joshua Chiamulera of the Rhinelander Police Department was not intended to inflame the public.
"I think it was informational, it was required for my burden of proof, and I cannot prohibit the press from reporting on what they saw and what they observed," he said, noting that his office did not provide any information regarding the 2012 incident to the media. Wolf is serving a 12-year prison sentence for stabbing a motorist on Sutliff Avenue in 2012.
"That is something that they independently reviewed and found on their own," Schiek said. "There are Supreme Court rulings on pre-trial publicity that prohibit my office from releasing any information that might be prejudicial to the defendant. It was not my intent to do that, it is my intent to provide the defendant with a fair trial and not produce any possibly prejudicial information."
He said he has been open to the media regarding to procedural issues and reiterated that the press is free to attend any court proceedings in the case.
"Because of the hearing today, there will be another cause for the media to report on the case, and it will be on the news this evening, throughout the written media for the next few days," he said. "So it is somewhat ironic that we're in this position to establish a fair trial, but by arguing it we are producing more media than we would like."
He added that Bloom can wait until potential jurors are questioned to determine if media coverage has introduced a bias into their thinking before deciding whether to bring in a pool of potential jurors from outside Oneida County.
Bloom, while allowing Hogan time to file a written response before issuing an oral decision on the motion on May 15, did address some of the concerns raised.
"The media has a right to under the state and federal constitution to report," Bloom said, adding that even before social media and the Internet made the dissemination of news instantaneous, people would sit around area bars and restaurants and discuss current event.
Bloom also said that based on what he saw in the newscast Hogan played, it did not show that Schiek's office was actively involved in getting the information to the press, rather the office was responding to lawful media requests for information.
"I toss that out only to show how I am thinking thus far," Bloom said.
In a separate hearing, Latoya Wolf's attorney, Chris Gramstrup, told Bloom he has reviewed between 80 and 90 percent of the state's discovery information. He asked for more time to finish going through the information. Another pretrial conference in her case was scheduled for June 2.
Jamie Taylor may be reached at [email protected].
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