As a liberal Dane County judge, Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Jill Karofsky has handed down sickeningly lenient sentences to murderers, child rapists, drug dealers, and organized crime kingpins. Here are just a few of the worst.
A month before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jill Karofsky announced her candidacy for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, prosecutors begged her to keep a murderer in prison for life. Instead, she handed him the lightest sentence she could.
Last April, Jesse Faber's family pleaded with Karofsky to sentence Daniel Lieske to life in prison without the possibility of extended supervision. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, who personally prosecuted the case, pleaded with Karofsky to throw the book at him. Lieske, 61, had just been convicted of first degree intentional homicide and hiding a corpse in the death of the 21 year-old Faber in an apartment building in the town of Medina, shooting him six times at close range and then rolling Faber's body into a rug covered with plastic and driving it 30 miles to a storage unit in Rio that Lieske had rented.
So cold-hearted was Lieske that he was seen laughing and joking with friends just hours after the murder.
The crime shocked Dane County for its viciousness and its cold-bloodedness, but after Lieske was found guilty at trial, Judge Karofsky's sentence was even more shocking. In Wisconsin, a guilty verdict on a first degree intentional homicide charge carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison. The only discretion a judge has is whether to allow the defendant the chance to leave prison on extended supervision. Surely a crime this heinous and this obviously meticulously planned couldn't warrant such leniency, could it?
It did. Karofsky handed Lieske the most lenient sentence she could--life in prison with the possibility of extended supervision after 20 years. Her reasoning? Lieske would be 81.
"The last thing I'm going to say is this to Jesse's family," Karofsky said after issuing the sentence to a stunned courtroom. "I know some of you wanted the most maximum sentence in this case and were I sitting in your seat, I would want the exact same thing, too. You don't have to like this sentence or agree with this sentence. The reason behind my sentence is that Mr. Lieske would be 81 years old."
Karofsky also sentenced Lieske to 7.5 years in prison after Lieske pleaded guilty to hiding a corpse, but Karofsky decided to allow Lieske to serve that sentence concurrently with his sentence on the homicide charge. While Lieske could have spent a total of 27.5 years in prison before he would be eligible for release, Karofsky bent over backwards to get him out of prison as soon as she possibly could.
The Faber family was distraught and furious. The Dane County District Attorney's Office was outraged. Even the liberal Madison community was in shock over the most incomprehensibly lenient sentence a murderer had received in recent memory.
Just a few weeks later, Karofsky announced her candidacy for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.
In 2017, Jay Perez was charged with five felonies--first degree sexual assault of a child under the age of 12, incest, and child enticement--in connection with the repeated sexual assault of his adopted sister when she was between five and six years old.
The horrifying details were discovered when the girl's diary was found years later.
"I think there is something I need to tell mom, dad [and my siblings] because it's not okay and even though it happened a while back it's still not okay," she wrote. "When we used to live at the farm house & mom and dad would leave & Jay would babysit us He would lock me in his room and basically make me have sex with him."
According to the girl, Prez would leave their four year-old autistic brother crying outside the door.
For years, Perez was able to keep both children quiet through repeated threats that the girl would be taken away from the family that adopted her. His abuse terrorized her for years, eventually causing so much anxiety and depression that she stopped going to school and began harming herself.
When his horrendous crimes finally came to light, Perez was tried and found guilty of all five counts against him. He faced a maximum sentence of 225 years in prison.
He never once admitted his guilt and, throughout the proceedings, blamed the victim--his sister--and his mother for his conviction.
Ahead of his sentencing hearing, the Dane County District Attorney's Office recommended 25 years in prison followed by 20 years of extended supervision.
Instead, Judge Jill Karofsky sentenced Perez to just 15 years in prison followed by 10 years of extended supervision. Even though, Karofsky herself admitted that "it really doesn't get much graver" than Perez's offenses, she gave him the absolute minimum sentence that she legally could.
Micknvgm M. Keodouangsy, 37, was convicted of two misdemeanor counts of fourth degree sexual assault in 2015. According to a criminal complaint, he groped two teenage girls outside of Madison East High School. Dane County Circuit Court Judge David Flanagan sentenced Keodouangsy to 60 days in jail with Huber work release privileges and placed him on probation for two years.
In 2017, he was before Judge Karofsky and pleaded guilty to a charge of battery (domestic abuse). Karofsky sentenced him to nine months in jail and placed him on probation for an additional two years.
While still on probation for both prior convictions, Keodouangsy groped a 12 year-old girl as she walked to school. He was charged with first degree child sexual assault, a Class B felony in Wisconsin that carries a maximum penalty of 60 years in prison. However, Keodouangsy was charged as a repeat offender, meaning that he could have faced a maximum sentence of 66 years.
In spite of this, Karofsky sentenced him to just a year in jail and five more years of probation. Even though he had violated probation twice before and had groped three girls in the span of less than three years, Keodouangsy spent just a year behind bars and was released last year. According to the Wisconsin Sex Offender Registry, he is homeless and thus could be anywhere in the Greater Madison area.
Kendall Ragland, 41, was charged with first degree reckless homicide, second or subsequent offense, in 2018 in connection with the death of a man who overdosed on heroin he purchased from Ragland in 2015.
Ragland was a well-known drug dealer who has been in trouble with the law literally his entire adult life. From almost the moment he turned 18 in 1997, he has been convicted of possession of TCH with intent to deliver, resisting an officer, illegally carrying a concealed weapon, bail jumping, possession of cocaine with intent to deliver, domestic violence battery, criminal damage to property, and possession of heroin.
Despite his lengthy criminal record and his refusal to admit guilt on the reckless homicide charge (which carried a maximum sentence of 40 years in prison and $100,000 in fines), Judge Karofsky sentenced him to just two years in prison and two more on extended supervision as part of his "no contest" plea.
Disturbingly, Karofsky said during the sentencing hearing that while she knew that her extremely lenient sentence went against the Wisconsin Department of Corrections' recommendation, she didn't much care.
"Let's not worry about the recommendation," she said. "I will tell you that I don't put a lot of weight on the recommendation of the Department of Corrections. I feel like that's my job."
She reiterated this later in the hearing.
"I've said it once in this hearing and I will say it again: I really don't pay any attention to what the Department of Corrections recommends in PSIs [pre-sentence investigations]," she said. "Often, if I do look at it, I forget what the number is, quite frankly, by the end of the hearing or even by the time the hearing starts if I've looked at it in days prior to a hearing. As I sit here right now, I couldn't tell you what it is."
Cleaster Moon, 25, is a career criminal whose first adult charges came when he was just 17. After he served 11 days in jail for theft in 2012, he was arrested and charged for the same crime again in 2014. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but that sentence was withheld and he instead served five months. Moon was emboldened because he realized that the justice system wasn't going to throw the book at him.
So he kept committing crimes.
In 2014, he was convicted of resisting an officer, receiving stolen property, and bail jumping. The following year, he was convicted of resisting again, and in 2016, he was convicted of theft of movable property again.
In 2017, he went before Judge Karofsky on charges of battery and burglary. While out on bond, he committed more crimes and in August of 2018 was charged with car theft, hit and run, eluding an officer, and resisting or obstructing, all as a repeat offender. A month later, he was charged with burglary again. All told, he faced 40 years in prison, but Karofsky sentenced him to just 18 months.
“There is no joy in sending someone to prison, especially when someone is as young as you are,” she said during his sentencing hearing, noting that he had promised to change his behavior and had scheduled a job interview at Sub-Zero in Madison. “I’m confident that if you go down the road that you’re talking about today, you’ll end up, in the future, putting this behind you and — and working at a place like Sub-Zero.”
He didn't. As soon as he got out of prison and while he was still on probation, he went right back to committing crimes. He stole a car in Waukesha County and led police on a high-speed chase. Last October, he was charged in connection to a car theft and burglary ring of which Moon was the alleged "kingpin."
Moon along with 19-year-old Juriese E. Bell of Benton Harbor, Michigan, and 19-year-old Stephon E. Williams of Madison were arrested Oct. 5 after a vehicle they used to escape arrest by Shorewood Hills police was found outside a home on Cimarron Trail. They were arrested after authorities said they tried to outrun police. A juvenile was also arrested for taking part in several Shorewood Hills burglaries.
Moon is facing 17 charges including burglary, taking and driving a vehicle without consent, theft, and misappropriate ID information to take money in three separate Dane County cases. Bell is facing 8 charges, and Williams is facing 6 charges.
According to three criminal complaints filed in Dane County Court, Moon is linked to vehicles stolen in Mount Horeb, Reedsburg, Jefferson, Town of Bristol, and Waunakee.
An arsonist who had jumped bail and faced 30 years in prison got just six months when he went before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Jill Karofsky in 2017.
Dustin J. Palmer admitted to police that he was high on Clonazepam when he lit a fire inside an office in 2016, causing more than $50,000 in extensive smoke and water damage when the sprinkler system turned on.
When Madison Police arrived on the scene, Palmer came crawling out of the building, soaking wet and coughing. WMTV reported at the time that in addition to setting the fire, he "also had entered a restaurant in the building. He scared employees as he went behind the counter and helped himself to a drink from a fountain machine."
The Dane County District Attorney's Office charged Palmer with felony charges of attempted arson and criminal damage to property and three misdemeanor bail jumping counts. At the time of the arson, Palmer was out on bail while three separate misdemeanor cases (marijuana possession and driving after revocation) proceeded against him.
In spite of this, and in spite of the fact that Palmer faced a maximum sentence of more than 30 years in prison on the new charges, Judge Karofsky accepted a plea deal in which he would spend just six months in jail and pay just $4,000 in fines and restitution.
Karofsky herself seemed to recognize the severity of Palmer's crimes, yet let him off easy just the same.
"Mr. Palmer, I'm really glad that no one got hurt, including yourself," Karofsky told him during her sentencing hearing. "It could have been a real disaster."