A bill in the Wisconsin Legislature would make youth who received life without parole eligible to appeal to shorten their sentences; currently 28 states ban life without parole for juveniles offenders | Getty Images

Since the 2022-23 session of the Wisconsin Legislature, a bill (SB-801/AB-845) has been discussed that would eliminate the court-imposed sentence of life without parole for a juvenile (under 18 years of age) and require the court to consider specific factors when sentencing youth, namely their level of maturity.

The bill would also allow those already sentenced to life as a juvenile the opportunity to appeal and adjust their sentences after serving 15 years for crimes that didn’t involve murder and at 20 years for those who were convicted of homicide.

Two U.S. Supreme Court rulings (Miller v. Alabama, 2012, and Montgomery versus Louisiana, 2016) have held that life without parole for a juvenile comes under the category of cruel and unusual punishment. The Court has found that youth shouldn’t be held to the same level of accountability as adults because they are not psychologically or emotionally as mature and their brains are not fully developed.

According to an April 2024 report by the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, “Unusual & Unequal: The unfinished business of ending life without parole for children in the United States,” 28 states have banned juvenile sentences of life without parole (JLWOP):

“The scientific understanding that young people have limited decision-making abilities and impulse control informed widespread, rapid rejection of JLWOP in state legislatures, the Supreme Court, state courts, and the court of public opinion. Declaring that youth is ‘a mitigating factor’ that must be considered by sentencing judges in Miller v. Alabama (2012), the U.S. Supreme Court held that life without parole is disproportionate for the vast majority of youth.”

Nikki Olson, founder and executive director of Wisconsin Alliance for Youth Justice, is one of the advocates pursuing the legislation in Wisconsin.

“Their liberty was taken away before they even had full rights because they were kids,” she said of juveniles sentenced to life. “We are talking about people who weren’t even 18, who couldn’t legally smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol or couldn’t even drive without their parents’ permission. They couldn’t sign contracts or be on a jury or vote in society. We understand that kids are fundamentally different. The science says kids are fundamentally different. The Supreme Court says they are fundamentally different. We would like Wisconsin law to reflect that as well.”

Two past Republican sponsors of the proposed Wisconsin legislation are Rep. Todd Novak and Sen. Jesse James.

“Ending juvenile life without parole in Wisconsin is not just about reforming our justice system; it’s about restoring hope, potential and the promise of a future for our youth,” Novak has said. “This would also ensure that Wisconsin remains in compliance with the United States Supreme Court precedent.”

Sen. James has also gone on the record endorsing the bill. “The science is clear: brains are still developing. They cannot fully comprehend the extent of their actions,” James said. “For example, how is a 15-year-old supposed to understand life without parole when that sentence is literally quadruple the entire time they’ve been alive. People can grow; people can change, especially when their brains are still forming. Juveniles deserve a second chance.”

According to Sen. James’ office, the bill will be reintroduced as soon as the Department of Corrections (DOC) provides data on how many people currently incarcerated in Wisconsin  would be eligible to apply for a sentence adjustment if the bill is passed. The advocacy group Kids Forward puts the number somewhere north of 100.

Sen. James was asked whether his Republican colleagues known for supporting tough-on-crime legislation would also back the bill.

“As legislators, we introduce legislation with the hope that it’ll pass,” he said. “It is a part of our job to advocate for our bills and highlight the potential benefits and positive impact of the legislation with supportive research. Last session was my first time authoring this bill, and I’m still learning new information about this issue myself. We unfortunately didn’t get the opportunity to have a public hearing on this bill in the Senate last year, so myself and other advocates have not had the chance to testify in support and provide that background and context to members of the Senate.”

Convicted as a juvenile, serving life as an adult

Zachary Reid, 33, incarcerated at the New Lisbon Correctional Institution, has been in prison for 17 years. He is serving a life sentence, but he can apply for extended supervision after serving 40 years. If there isn’t a change in the law or Gov. Tony Evers doesn’t offer him a commutation or pardon, Reid is looking at another 23 years of incarceration.

If the bill does become law, Reid said he would apply at his 20-year mark, and he would be granted a hearing for a sentence adjustment.

The current language of the bill says the hearing should consider “relevant information” including “expert testimony and other information about the youthful offender’s participation in any available educational, vocational, community service, or other programs, the youthful offender’s work reports and psychological evaluations, evidence of the youthful offender’s remorse and the youthful offender’s major violation of institutional rules, if any.”

In 2008, when Reid was 16, he was charged with killing his father. Then, in 2009, a Winnebago County trial jury convicted him of first degree  intentional homicide, and he was given a life sentence which he began to serve in Waupun Correctional Institution when he turned 17.

Reid continues to contend that the death of his father was not intentional but an accident and that  Reid was defending himself from his alcoholic, abusive father, who was wielding a knife and making threatening gestures. Reid claims he choked his father with the intention that his father would pass out, not die.

But Reid also admits he did some things after his father’s death that he shouldn’t have, such as placing the body in the trunk of his father’s car instead of reporting the death immediately to the police.

 At 16, Reid said, he was a very immature young person, often in trouble, using drugs, not attending school, and stealing, making many poor decisions.

“At that age, you think you’re an adult; you think you know everything,” he said. “Those things adults tell you to do, some certain things, and you think you know better. And I was guilty of all the same types of thoughts like that, of just thinking that I really knew what was best for my life.”

When Reid was arrested in October of his junior year of high school, he had not attended very many days of class, a trend of skipping school he had started as a sophomore.

“And I just thought I didn’t have to prove anything to anybody, like, I know this stuff,” he said. “Why do I have to prove to a teacher that I know? Just an ignorant way of thinking and really low maturity level compared to how I am now. I look back, and I just kind of shake my head a lot of the time. There’s just a lot of the stuff that I did, and on top of it, I was doing drugs and drinking. At the time, I was already binge drinking. I started drinking really bad when I was 15, and it really picked up even more when I was 16, because my grandmother passed, and I used it as basically a reason to implode. And so the combination of being immature and the drugs and drinking, I was making a lot of really poor decisions.”

At Waupun, Reid could have been a prison statistic with an attitude and gotten into drugs and gangs and trouble, but instead he decided to take a different path by learning to weld and machining and later to crochet and donate items to charities. He was transferred to New Lisbon, where he continued to work as a welder and machinist, and then five years ago, he began training dogs that assist the blind.

“We do basically high-level obedience training, preparing the dogs to be able to go to harness school, where they learn the actual skills of working with a blind person or visually impaired person, to basically give them back their life, to be able to get them out of their house and be able not to be stuck there,” he said.

In prison, Reid said, he’s applied himself to learn new skills and gain an education.

“I have valuable skills that Wisconsin needs right now, you know, like welding and fabricating is a really in-demand training, even the machining,” he said. “Like I can run a mill, a lathe, you know, that type of stuff. I’ve gotten two vocational certificates since I’ve been here. I got an electromechanical service technician certificate. It’s also part of a pre-apprenticeship program through the Department of Workforce Development. I’m actually a certified professional dog trainer, like I got that through Chippewa Valley Technical College. I just finished my associate’s degree earlier this year, so I have an Associate of Science through Milwaukee Area Technical College.”

Reid also intends to pursue a bachelor’s degree from Marquette University in peace studies.

“I contribute to society right now in the environment I’m in, so I have no doubt that I can contribute in a meaningful way out there,” said Reid.

Since he has been in prison, Reid claims he has only received two conduct reports or complaints, one in 2010, his first year in prison, and another in 2016 for a tattoo.

Not many 33-year-old men have to wake up every day and live with the consequences of an action they took as a 16-year-old.

“Most of the time I try to just, kind of like, live in the right now,” he said. “I know it’s kind of like, you hear that phrase a lot, like live in the now type of stuff. I try to do that to the best of my ability as a coping mechanism, because, dwelling, obviously, on what happened and everything like that, like it was my dad, you know, so to me, I think it’s even a little bit more burdensome than for most of these people in that, I mean, my intent wasn’t to kill him. I was trying to just get him to stop attacking me in the situation we were in, and he passed away. So it’s like it’s not only just the guilt of taking a life, but it’s like I was so drug-addled or whatever it was, but it’s like I failed in that moment, like that was my failure.”

In-prison testimonies

At a future hearing to have his sentence adjusted, Reid would likely hear from others who would offer endorsements.

Patricia Muraczewski provided the dog training for the residents in New Lisbon and worked with Reid for two years. She was impressed by his work ethic and character and believes Reid should be considered for an early release.

“He was a member of the Paw Forward team of inmates who train dogs for the visually impaired,” she said.  “Mr. Reid was extremely diligent in class attendance and was very serious in acquiring and understanding the methods needed to train each dog that he was partnered with.  He had a very relaxed demeanor and got along with all of the other teams.  Even though there were frustrations at times with new instructors and conflicting material, he never expressed any anger.”

She added, “Over the course of my time in New Lisbon, never was Mr. Reid disrespectful and he never broke any rules or overstepped his position.” 

“Of all of the inmates I had worked with during that time, in my opinion, he was the inmate most likely to be successful when released and least likely to reoffend,” she said, adding,“During the four years this program has been in existence at New Lisbon none of the men that have been released have reoffended.” 

Brandon Horak knew Reid as a fellow resident at Waupun and later at New Lisbon. Horak had been sentenced to 10 years of incarceration for felony murder in the commission of an armed robbery after he set up a drug dealer for a robbery that resulted in the murder of the dealer.

“I wasn’t in a good state of mind,” he said when he first entered Waupun and met Reid.  “I had just been sentenced to 10 years in prison, so I met him in Waupun and he ended up encouraging me to get a job, so we worked in the laundry room together for a year and a half or two years. He encouraged me to get into school, and I didn’t want to do any of this stuff, so he was a really big influence on my life.”

Both Reid and Horak left Waupun and then later met up again in New Lisbon, where Reid had begun training dogs, and Horak said he noticed that Reid had lost a defensive, protective shield that many residents carry in amaximum security prisons like Waupun.

“I asked him why he didn’t care if someone stole something from him, which is obviously a big no-no in prison, and he said the dog program had changed his life and he had something to live for,” said Horak.

Even though Horak wasn’t officially in the dog program, Reid taught Horak what he had learned, and after he left prison, Horak set up his own dog training business based on Reid’s mentoring, a business called EDU Training.

“We train dogs in people’s homes, and to be honest, it was all thanks to Zach,” he said.

Out of prison, Horak often reaches back to Reid and his cellmate for advice on working with client pets.

“I’ve never been back to jail,” Horak said “I have a full-time job. I own a business. I do all this stuff, and I honestly do not believe I would have been able to do it without his (Reid’s) help. I just talked to him last week and he always tells me, ‘You better be doing good out there.’”

In prison, Horak said, he saw many people released and then come right back. Because of that, he doesn’t automatically believe everyone deserves leniency. Still, he says, Reid isn’t one of those who should be in prison and he believes he could do more good on the outside.

Engaged to be married 

Reid and his fiancée Samantha, got to know each other as pen pals in 2013, and that developed into a relationship in 2018. In 2019, they became engaged. In 2024, she moved from Florida to Wisconsin to be closer to Reid.

“The only reason we’re not married right now is that we’re hoping to get him out one day,” said Samantha, “so we can have just a normal marriage out here, versus having a marriage done or a wedding ceremony done inside the prison.”

Samantha said she has been communicating with Reid since they were both in their early 20s, and she’s seen him mature over the years.

“But just even in the last maybe five years, it’s just blown up like he has just matured and wants to do so much good,” she said. “ … He loves that he can actually make a difference, and he’s done other charity programs that even the prison doesn’t offer. He crochets hearts for suicide prevention.”

She said it recently occurred to her how much Reid is trying to do good for others and also maintain a relationship with her from prison.

“That is work, too, to just step up and almost religiously call somebody regularly, and never let me down, and to take care of me with all this distance,” she said.

If the legislation is passed, Samantha says that Reid would be the “poster child for this bill.”

“It’s like he went out of his way to get welding experience,” she said. “He went out of his way to do charity work. He went out of his way to do all these wonderful things over the years. And I mean, just since I’ve known him, he’s grown and matured. He’s checking off every box he can possibly check off, and could prove that over the course of 17 years, like he is not that person [that he was at 16], and look at all these good things he is doing and all the things he could contribute to society, and right now we’re just warehousing him. We’re wasting all these taxpayer dollars housing somebody that is very clearly not a threat.”

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• The Legislature and Gov. Tony Evers have been fighting for control of the administrative rulemaking process since before Evers took office. The rules affect many facets of Wisconsin life, such as water quality.

• The liberal-majority Wisconsin Supreme Court has ruled legislative committees can’t indefinitely block rules from taking effect.

• Republicans have instructed the Legislative Reference Bureau not to publish rules that aren’t approved by legislative committees. Evers has filed another lawsuit to address the situation.

Are you worried about toxic algae blooms closing beaches and ruining local lakes? Here’s a story worth following:

Nearly two years ago, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources submitted a rule change to the Legislature that would update policies on preserving the quality of Wisconsin water bodies. The purpose was to bring the state in line with updates the federal government made to the Clean Water Act in 2015. 

At that point in 2023, the DNR had already received feedback from industry and environmental groups, and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers signed off on the proposed change. But nearly two years later, the update is still making its way through Wisconsin’s administrative rulemaking process. 

The DNR water quality update is among executive agency rule changes swept up in a yearslong political debate over who gets the final say on those policy changes in Wisconsin’s state government.

Evers argues the Republican-led state Legislature has obstructed his administration in delaying rules during legislative committee review periods. Republican legislative leaders counter that their oversight of policies from the executive branch during the rulemaking process is necessary to ensure checks and balances remain in place. 

The debate has made its way up to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, where there has been a liberal majority since 2023. In July, the court ruled the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules lacks the authority to delay publication of rules from executive branch agencies.

In August, the Republican-led Joint Committee on Legislative Organization voted along party lines to direct the Legislative Reference Bureau not to publish administrative rules still going through standing committee reviews. Evers and several executive agencies responded with a Sept. 9 lawsuit filed in Dane County Circuit Court that seeks to force the Legislature to comply with the Supreme Court’s ruling from earlier this summer.

There continues to be finger-pointing from different groups about why the DNR’s rule has taken so long to get through the process. Rep. Adam Neylon, R-Pewaukee, a co-chair of the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, said in a statement to Wisconsin Watch that the DNR “has not taken the steps to get it through the process.” DNR declined to comment on the rule, citing ongoing litigation.

In the most recent lawsuit the Evers administration specifically highlighted the DNR’s antidegradation rule, which would require permit holders to justify new or increased pollution discharges into state water bodies.

“Currently, Wisconsin does not apply antidegradation review to all discharges of pollutants, to discharges of stormwater, or to discharges from new concentrated animal feeding operations,” Evers’ lawsuit states. “The long promulgation delay has therefore meant that some discharges that this proposed rule would cover have not been and are not being evaluated, risking the degradation of surface water quality.”

The rule is scheduled for a public hearing before the Assembly’s Committee on Environment on Thursday at the Capitol, the second time the change will be heard before that committee this year. 

Environmental advocates say the delay means Wisconsin’s water antidegradation policy remains below minimum federal standards, jeopardizing Wisconsin lakes and rivers.

For example, a pollutant like phosphorus, which is found in farm fertilizers, can cause toxic blue-green algae when discharged into water bodies, said Tony Wilkin Gibart, the executive director of Midwest Environmental Advocates. That’s “an important consequence” for Wisconsinites who live near a lake or river, he said. 

Erik Kanter, the government relations director for Clean Wisconsin, called the delay a “good example” of a “broken process” in state government. 

“It was an easy thing, just trying to comply with federal law,” Kanter said. “And it became this political football lost in this complicated process.” 

How we got here 

The administrative rules debate has pitted business and private property interests against administrative attempts to boost public health and environmental protections. The rules are written by executive branch agencies to fill in the details of laws passed by the Legislature and governor.

But Republicans have long decried the rules as bureaucratic red tape, rallying voters during their 2010 takeover of state government with promises to make Wisconsin “open for business.” Assembly Republicans, led by Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, launched a “Right the Rules” project to streamline administrative rules during the 2010s, but it hit a crescendo when Evers defeated former Republican Gov. Scott Walker in the 2018 governor’s race.

In the weeks before he left office, Walker signed legislation that sought to strip power from the incoming governor and attorney general. Those laws gave the Legislature authority to block or delay administrative rules that come from executive agencies, such as the DNR. 

After liberals gained a majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2023, recent opinions have dialed back some of the Legislature’s power over the executive branch. In 2024, the court ruled that a legislative committee could not block DNR spending for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program. Then in July, the court sided with Evers when it ruled a legislative committee could not block executive agency rules from going into effect following approval from the governor. 

The July opinion specifically highlighted delayed administrative rule proposals on banning conversion therapy and updating Wisconsin’s commercial building code. Prior to the court’s July decision, the Legislative Reference Bureau could not publish administrative rules until legislative committees reviewed and acted on the changes. 

In a Sept. 12 video posted on social media, Senate President Mary Felzkowski, R-Tomahawk, argued lawmakers’ review of executive agency rules is necessary before some of the Evers administration’s proposals essentially become law. She slammed a recent proposal from the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection to raise fees on animal markets, dealers and truckers. One animal market registration fee, according to the proposed rule, would increase from $420 to $7,430. 

“Evers and his unelected bureaucrats are going to implement their ideology through administrative rules, knowing that the leftists on the Supreme Court shockingly gave them a green light,” Felzkowski said in the video.

Wisconsin’s fight over administrative rules sounds wonky, but it affects important issues like water quality and public health is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Back in her clowning years, Karen DeSanto got a call from the king of Morocco.

“We hung up on him,” she said. “We thought it was one of our friends pranking us.”

It was actually employees of the consulate, but the king wanted them. DeSanto and her then-husband were both professional clowns with the Ringling Brothers, and they also performed as a duo.

Somehow, King Hassan II had heard about the DeSantos, and he flew them in on his private jet to perform for his granddaughter’s birthday at his palace in the capital city of Rabat.

His royal majesty, sitting on his throne in the middle of a room, loved their performance. The little girl? Not so much.

“She hated it,” DeSanto said with a chuckle. “That was our first and only birthday party.”

Clowning has taken DeSanto all around the country and the world, from the most opulent spaces of Carnegie Hall to much humbler places — she has used a pig barn to change into costume before performing in a rural field — and now, to the Wisconsin State Capitol.

A longtime Baraboo native, she was elected to the state Assembly in 2024 after heading the Boys & Girls Club of West Central Wisconsin for more than a decade.

But it’s been a long journey on the circus train — both literally and figuratively — to get here.

Running away with the circus

Born in Sacramento, DeSanto, now 61, said she dreamed of seeing the world. Her father took her to see the circus every summer, and young Karen would go every day it was in town, so much that the clowns recognized her and even roped her into the act, pulling her out of the crowd to perform gags with them.

Her father was a big part of her life, she said, and she was his caregiver when he got sick in his early 60s. While sitting in the waiting room during one of his appointments, DeSanto came across an ad for clown college in a magazine. She tore it out and shoved it into a pocket. After her father died a few months later, when she was 27, she found herself “itching to do something different” with her life, so she auditioned.

“I’m a big believer in saying yes,” she said. “The world just opened up to me after that.”

After graduation, DeSanto got one of the few contracts offered to a female clown by the Ringling Brothers.

She lived and traveled on the circus train, where her quarters were next to the elephant car. The friendly beasts would reach their trunks to her window to grab bananas from her hand. One of the elephants she rode during performances was also named Karen, and she reunited with her friendly steed years later at the zoo where it had retired. DeSanto swears the much larger Karen remembered her.

She married another clown after meeting her husband under the Big Top. They toured the big-city circuit, visiting places like New York and Los Angeles, as well as the rodeo route, which took them to smaller cities, including Waco, Texas, and Erie, Pennsylvania.

One of her first brushes with politics came in 1995, when DeSanto and her comrades performed for then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, future presidential candidate and then-Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole and other politicians in the parking lot of the U.S. Capitol. Gingrich had asked the Ringling Brothers, already in town for a few nights, to perform outside the halls of Congress to celebrate the company’s 125th anniversary. The entertainers executed the famous elephant long mount, where the massive animals line up, place their hooves on the pachyderm in front and pose.

“I have great stories of kings and queens and all in betweens,” DeSanto said. “You name it, we’ve done it.”

The Boys and Girls Club

Eventually, the DeSantos bought a home near the Ringling Brothers headquarters in Baraboo, where they worked as the resident clowns for the Circus World Museum, and raised their daughter Emily, now 27.

In 2012, DeSanto left the circus to work for the Boys & Girls Clubs of West-Central Wisconsin, most of it as CEO.

In her time there, she led the revamp of the financially failing organization, which included clubs in Baraboo and Tomah, putting it on firmer ground, she said. DeSanto also oversaw the expansion of new clubs in Reedsburg and Portage.

She and her staff made the organization self-sustaining by tapping into moms and dads, local businesses and philanthropic organizations like the United Way, she said. They connected with their elected officials, like state Rep. Dave Considine, a Democrat from Baraboo, and pursued state and federal grants to help fund their after-school programs for rural kids.

“I’m just going to toot the horn that our clubs were the rural footprint for the nation,” she said. “But don’t get me wrong, it was always a struggle.”

She retired in 2024 from the Boys and Girls Club, but another interesting challenge arose for the versatile performer. And DeSanto found herself saying “yes” once again.

The Wisconsin Assembly

After Considine announced he would not seek reelection in 2024, he went about recruiting several Democratic candidates so his constituents could have options, he said.

DeSanto, with whom Considine had worked to secure some grant funding, was one of his picks.

“She’s really good in front of people. She knows people really well,” he said of DeSanto. “I think she also is a really strong fighter for individual rights. It was all about fighting for people to have the right to be successful and happy.”

Having worked at her existing clubs and helped to launch the new ones, DeSanto said she got to know the district and the people who live and work there.

She saw how important institutions like schools and the health care system were to the well-being of rural communities and knew she could be an advocate.

“I felt I had the chops, I felt I had the experience, I felt I knew my communities quite well,” she said. “That’s why I threw my hat in the ring.”

And in an era where money is so rampant in politics, her fundraising background couldn’t hurt either.

A three-candidate race emerged in the primary, and some voices, mostly online, tried to “weaponize” her background against her, DeSanto said, suggesting a clown didn’t belong in the Wisconsin Legislature.

Considine had prepared her for that.

“One of the first things I said was ‘Karen, don’t run from it.’ Embrace it and run on it,” he said. “And she did and I think she ran a really good race.”

The circus is quite popular in the district, DeSanto said, noting that the Ringling Brothers had grown up in Baraboo and made it their home base of their internationally renowned organization.

The criticisms backfired. She cruised to victory, winning more than 53% of the vote in the primary, a greater share than the other two candidates combined. DeSanto won the general election with more than 54% of the vote against a Republican challenger. The district had become more friendly to Democrats in the most recent round of redistricting.

About half a year into her 2-year term, in which her party is in the minority and thus unable to do much without GOP support, DeSanto has been a sponsor on a couple bills, including ones that would provide free, healthy school meals, lower prescription drugs and expand the homestead tax credit, but Republicans looking to cut spending stripped those from the budget.

She cast one of her first contentious “no” votes last month on the state budget negotiated by legislative Republicans in the majority, Gov. Tony Evers and state Senate Democrats, saying it did not do enough on issues important to her district, like affordable housing expansion, broadband access and public school funding.

Asked what she’s hoping to accomplish in her first term, DeSanto said, “I really am concentrating on listening, and absorbing what this Legislature is, and how the state Capitol works.”

“People say the Legislature is a circus, and I say ‘no, it’s not,’” she said with a chuckle. “The circus starts and ends on time. The people there are talented and kind and friendly.”

Another one she hears is that “government is a bunch of clowns,” an assertion with which she vehemently disagrees.

“Clowns are highly trained individuals, and they can do just about anything,” DeSanto said. “And they take their craft very seriously. And they bring joy and happiness.”

This article first appeared on The Badger Project and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

The Badger Project is a nonpartisan, citizen-supported journalism nonprofit in Wisconsin.

From one circus to another: Professional clown serving in Wisconsin Legislature is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.