Micah Laureano with his mother, Phyllis, who filed a lawsuit after Micah's death | Photo courtesy Phyllis Laureno
Jackson Vogel allegedly told a corrections officer that he killed his cellmate, Micah Laureano, because Laureano was Black and gay. A case report the Examiner received from the Brown County Sheriff’s Office shows Vogel had a history of racist and threatening behavior.
After Laureano died in late August at Green Bay Correctional Institution (GBCI), Vogel was charged with homicide with hate crime and repeat offender penalties, the Examiner reported.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
Micah Laureano’s mother, Phyllis Laureano, has sued Secretary Jared Hoy and GBCI warden Christopher Stevens of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections. The federal civil rights lawsuit alleges “defendants’ willful and deliberate indifference to Mr. Laureano’s safety” resulted in the murder.
The sheriff’s office said the suspect and victim had occupied the same cell for only hours before the incident. The statement said the medical examiner’s findings confirmed Laureano died of strangulation/suffocation by manner of homicide.
Beth Hardtke, communications director for the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, said both individuals involved in the incident were in temporary lockup status.
Before Laureano’s death, Vogel, 25, had been found guilty of attempted first-degree intentional homicide, the Examiner reported in late August. Laureano, 19, had been found guilty of taking and driving a vehicle without consent and as party to a crime for substantial battery intending bodily harm, robbery with use of force and first-degree recklessly endangering safety.
Conduct reports
A narrative in a Brown County Sheriff’s Office case report described information from a few conduct reports Vogel received. The Examiner received the report last year through an open records request.
Sergeant Justin Raska reviewed conduct reports for Laureano and Vogel, according to the case report. He found nothing relevant in Laureano’s reports but wrote about three of Vogel’s infractions.
The first report Raska described was dated March 5, 2024, and was completed by a staff member at the Racine Youthful Offender Correctional Facility (RYOCF). The staff had received inmate complaint forms filed by Vogel that “contained obscene, profane, abusive and threatening language,” some of which was written in German, according to the description of the incident.
The complaints included swastika symbols. According to the report, Vogel’s writing included the words “you all need and deserve Death!” and “White Power (WLM).” He voiced support for Adolf Hitler and the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist gang.
A second conduct report was dated March 6, 2024, according to Raska. A lieutenant received interview request forms from Vogel, which were written to several staff members at RYOCF and made “numerous disrespectful racial remarks.”
The request forms included “several inappropriate remarks and symbols,” such as SS Bolts and “das Endlosung.” This referenced Hitler’s “Final Solution” of mass murder of Jewish people, according to the report.
The third conduct report described by Raska was completed by a sergeant at GBCI and dated August 27, 2024, the day of Laureano’s death.
Incarcerated people were removed from a cell so that maintenance could fix a clogged sink, according to the report. Unit staff discovered the wooden bulletin board was broken, and the sergeant heard from unit staff that Vogel admitted to breaking the board because he was bored.
The bulletin board had jagged edges and it was unsafe to house incarcerated people in the cell, according to the report. This might have led to Vogel being housed in a different cell, with Laureano.
Laureano and Vogel’s cell was in a “segregated Treatment Center area,” according to a narrative in the case report by Raska.
Raska said he was told “the Treatment Center block” serves as a “step unit” to bridge the gap between restricted housing and general population housing. Restricted housing includes disciplinary separation — which occurs when an incarcerated person commits a violation.
Raska said the treatment center serves as an alternative to single cell segregation in the restricted housing unit. He said incarcerated people could be housed in the treatment center due to clinical observation or because of a pending investigation.
Lawsuit alleges ‘deliberate indifference’
Phyllis and Micah Laureno | Photo courtesy of Phyllis Laureno
Laureano’s lawsuit contains three Eighth Amendment counts. It alleges deliberate indifference to Laureano’s safety, failure to protect Laureano and failure to train subordinates. The lawsuit does not mention Vogel’s conduct reports or the racist statements mentioned in them.
The lawsuit alleges that the defendants didn’t consider and/or willfully ignored Vogel’s “substantial history of violent assault, mental health issues, and multi-decade length of sentence when assessing his compatibility with Mr. Laureano,” who was serving a lesser sentence of three years.
It also alleges that defendants failed to “adequately train, monitor and supervise GBCI staff” to make sure administrative requirements and protocols were being followed during housing decisions.
Phyllis Laureano is represented by attorney Lonnie Story, who said he has spoken to incarcerated people who might be deposed prior to a trial.
“It was very apparent to the inmates, as well as what — from what they communicate to me about staff, it would be kind of hard to deny by anyone… to say there was no knowledge of Mr. Vogel being a racist, and expressing other very negative opinions and ideas outside of just the race factor,” Story said, adding that this applied to sexual orientation.
On Sept. 10, the Examiner made an open records request to the DOC, requesting reports regarding incidents involving Vogel and/or Laureano. The request’s status is “in progress” in the DOC’s open records request portal.
Beth Hardtke, the communications director for the DOC, said it’s the DOC’s practice not to comment on cases where there is ongoing litigation.
A sign for the Oneida Community Health Center in Hobart, Wis. | Photo by Jason Kerzinski for Wisconsin Examiner
Wisconsin state Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto) and Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart) heard concerns about potential Medicaid cuts and gambling at alistening session Monday in Oneida, Wis.
A woman at the session said her son receives Medicaid through the Katie Beckett program, which serves children under 19 who live at home and have certain health care needs. She said that “with the $880 billion that is going to be reduced in the federal budget, it is without a doubt going to impact Medicaid in our state.”
A budget proposal approved by the House in late February requires lawmakers to cut spending to offset tax breaks,likely requiring Medicaid cuts, KFF Health Newsreported. The committee that oversees spending on Medicaid and Medicare is instructed to cut $880 billion over the next decade.
The Congressional Budget Office found House Republicans’ budget goals would require cuts to Medicaid, CBS News reported on March 6.
The woman said she’s wondering what’s happening in the state budget to “plan for these shortcomings that are going to be coming from the federal level.”
“I don’t know on the federal side, what’s going on there,” Wimberger said. “…I can’t imagine that we’d let any sort of tragedy happen to people who—if there’s a cut of any kind, so we’ll have to adjust to it.”
Medicaid is funded by both federal and state governments. Proposals that would reduce the amount of money paid by the federal government would not require states to pay more to make up the difference, and most states will not likely increase their health care spending, according to an opinion article by the president of the health policy research and news outlet KFF.
Wimberger is a member of the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance, which is responsible for reviewing state appropriations and revenues. The committee will hold listening sessions on April 2 in Kaukauna, April 4 in West Allis, April 28 in Hayward and April 29 in Wausau.
Oneida Nation requests anti-gambling efforts, grant funding
Brandon Stevens, the vice-chairman of the Oneida Nation in northeast Wisconsin, spoke at the listening session. One topic discussed was online and in-person gambling.
In Wisconsin, tribes have the exclusive right to operate Class III games, through compacts with the state. Class III includes banking card games, electronic games of chance, including slot machines and, generally, high-stakes, casino-style games.
Tana Aguirre from the Oneida Nation’s intergovernmental affairs and communications office sent the Examiner a statement that covers a few of the tribe’s budget priorities.
The Oneida Nation is requesting an increase in funding to help address illegal/unregulated gambling activities, according to Aguirre. The tribe requests compliance and/or enforcement measures “to help deal with illegal gambling machines and practices throughout Wisconsin.”
“We’re paying a premium for exclusivity through the gaming compact [between the tribe and the state]. It’s basically a violation of the compact if they’re allowed to game at a particular level,” Stevens said.
Rep. Joy Goeben (R-Hobart)
Aguirre said the Oneida Nation and other tribes want to see increased funding for a tribal elderly transportation grant program. The grant gives the state’s 11 federally recognized tribes financial assistance for transportation services for tribal elders on and off the reservation.
The Oneida Nation also wants funding to go toward an intergovernmental training program, Aguirre said.
The program “is meant to enhance the skill set and understanding between state and tribal officials.” It aims to promote the different governments engaging in “meaningful and productive” consultations and discussions.
Aguirre said that for the items included in his email, the tribe is requesting that funding come from Oneida Nation gaming revenue that the state of Wisconsin receives.
Tribes submit gaming-related payments to the state. A variety of state programs receive state funding from tribal payments, such as gaming regulation in the Department of Administration and law enforcement in the Department of Justice. Gaming revenue has been put toward tribal family services grants, a tribal law enforcement grant program and other programs.
Kelly O'Keefe Boettcher holds a photo of Brittany Doescher at a vigil near Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac on March 22, 2025 | Photo by Andrew Kennard/Wisconsin Examiner
At a vigil across the road from Taycheedah Correctional Institution in Fond du Lac, Wis., advocates sought to increase attention on the women’s prison.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
“There’s been a lot of publicity with what goes on in the men’s prisons in the last couple of years, but that is something that is not just within those prisons, it is at the women’s prisons too,” Juli Bliefnick, who was once incarcerated at Taycheedah, said at the vigil on Saturday.
The small group of advocates met in a neighborhood near the prison and walked up to the facility, carrying signs bearing photos of two women.
Wisconsin Watch and Wisconsin Public Radio published an article on March 11 that reported the deaths of Shawnee Reed, 36, on Feb. 23, and Brittany Doescher, 33, on March 6, following hospital stays. The women were incarcerated at Taycheedah Correctional.
Bliefnick is the operations coordinator for FREE, a nonprofit addressing the gender-specific issues of women’s incarceration and reentry to society. She spoke about getting “some visibility for these women and honor[ing] their memory” and showing support for women currently incarcerated at the facility.
The official causes of the deaths are still not public, according to the article. Family members said hospital staff linked the deaths to pneumonia. Following discussions with doctors, an unnamed family member of Doescher believes earlier treatment could have prevented her death. Family members said both women started mentioning health issues over the phone around a month before the article’s publication on March 11.
Pneumonia fatality
The obituary for Doescher says that she “suffered and died from complications from pneumonia left untreated.”
In a statement to Wisconsin Watch and WPR, Department of Corrections communications director Beth Hardtke said the agency was taking steps to prevent the spread of respiratory illnesses to staff and incarcerated people in a time of reportedly high numbers of respiratory illness cases in Wisconsin, the article said. She detailed actions taken by the department and said people incarcerated at Wisconsin prisons, including Taycheedah, recently received testing and treatment for Influenza A.
Another advocate at the vigil, Melissa Ludin, said she is a member of FREE’s board.
“And I think if anything, I think there’s things that really need to be looked into with that,” she said, referring to Doescher’s family saying the cause of her death was untreated pneumonia. “…Are there other women that are sick?”
Cellmate homicide
In July 2023, Cindy Schulz-Juedes, 68, died at Taycheedah Correctional. Taylor Sanchez, 29 and also incarcerated at Taycheedah, was charged with first-degree intentional homicide of her cellmate. A jury trial is scheduled for July and early August.
In early March, the Examiner sent a records request for any reports produced by the Fond du Lac Police Department’s investigation into Schulz-Juedes’s death. The department denied the request on the grounds that disclosure could interfere with an ongoing prosecution or investigation.
Attorney Steve Hurley with documents of the type Wisconsin prisons are shredding. | Photo by Erik Gunn/Wisconsin Examiner
The Office of the Wisconsin State Public Defender and other attorneys are expressing concerns over attorney-client confidentiality and the timely and accurate delivery of legal mail for clients incarcerated in state prisons.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
On Sept. 10, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections (DOC) adopted a new policy for external paperwork sent to prisons. The protocol calls for incarcerated residents to watch the copying of their legal mail and allows them to review the copies; then the original mail is shredded.
Mail covered under the policy includes letters from an attorney, law office, clerk or judge of any state or federal court, court staff or tribal court. It also covers correspondence with federal and state elected or appointed officials including the governor, Wisconsin legislators, the secretary of the DOC and others.
The process of opening and photocopying the mail, providing the copy to the incarcerated person and shredding the original mail is documented with the facility’s camera system, the DOC policy states.
The policy’s general guidelines allow staff to inspect legal documents “to the extent necessary to determine if the documents contain contraband or if the purpose is misrepresented.” If staff have reason to believe a letter is not a legal document “and the safety and security of the institution is implicated,” the policy allows them to read legal documents.
The DOC’s protocol has garnered criticism from the Wisconsin public defender’s office. Public defenders’ primary concerns are timely delivery of information to clients, the accuracy of the copying and protecting attorney-client confidentiality.
“Unfortunately, with DOC’s new mail policy we have experienced significant delays with mail delivery, compromised confidentiality, and in some cases legal documents have been lost,” said Deputy State Public Defender Katie York. “This has impacted our ability to develop trusting attorney/client relationships and has caused unnecessary delays for our clients and others impacted by the legal system. However, in our continuous efforts to provide the highest quality defense for our clients, we will keep doing everything we can to maintain communication with our clients.”
The Wisconsin American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also raised concerns about how the DOC’s handling of legal mail is affecting incarcerated people and the legal process.
“Alarmingly, the DOC continues to introduce new restrictions that have made it increasingly difficult for people in DOC custody to receive legal mail and books,” Emma Shakeshaft, senior attorney for the ACLU of Wisconsin said in an October statement, “and we are very concerned about how these policy changes are negatively impacting those in custody. Legal mail is essential to incarcerated individuals’ ability to access the courts and to communicate confidentially with their legal counsel.”
Beth Hardtke, director of communications for the DOC, said the department was not aware of any recent concerns from the Office of the State Public Defender about the DOC’s legal mail policy, and that the DOC would follow up with them to learn more.
Hardtke said the public defenders’ office had input into the development of the policy, and that the policy was revised based on the office’s feedback before it went into effect in September 2024. The DOC is not aware of any significant delays regarding legal mail, she said.
She said the postal service delivers legal mail directly to facilities, “where it is promptly processed in front of the individual to whom the mail is addressed.”
“The policy also details a number of steps that are taken to protect the confidentiality of the process including having the process take place in front of cameras placed so that writing is illegible, special copiers just for this purpose and ensuring that the person in our care is part of the process,” Hardtke said.
Drug concerns
DOC’s goal with the legal mail policy was to prevent intoxicating substances from entering facilities through legal mail, Hardtke said.
In November2021, the DOC announced that it would start partnering with a company to photocopy the personal mail of all incarcerated adults in an attempt to keep drug-laden mail out of prisons. The department began giving residents photocopies of their mail instead of original letters.
In a 2021 press release about the new policy, the DOC said that despite its previous efforts, in September 2021 alone there were 182 drug incidents within Wisconsin prisons, with 16 people needing emergency medical treatment.
The department said it had seen an increase of drug incidents among incarcerated people. This included the use of synthetic cannabinoids, which can cause violent behavior or a need for emergency medical treatment, the department said. The DOC said paper and envelopes could be sprayed with or soaked in the drugs and sent into prisons through the mail.
In August 2022, the agency said it had seen a decrease in the total number of drug incidents at adult facilities between November 2021 and February 2022. The agency attributed the decrease to its new policy of photocopying mail. The DOC also said it saw a decrease in overdoses requiring transport to a medical facility.
After receiving inquiries about the department’s controversial ban on used books, the department sent data to reporters in late September. DOC staff reviewed contraband incident reports that facility staff had flagged as drug-related between 2019 and Sept. 18, 2024.
The department said some drug-related incidents recorded through a medical record or conduct report may not be reflected in their numbers. The DOC also said not all incident reports flagged as drug related turn out to actually be drug-related.
The DOC said legal mail tested positive in five incidents in 2021, and in 2022, there were 10 instances of material “purporting to be legal mail” that tested positive for drugs.
Six incidents in 2023 involved legal mail, the department said. The DOC said legal mail tested positive for drugs in at least seven incidents in 2024, as of Sept. 18.
When it comes to mail or donations that tested positive for drugs, the department said it is “often unable to say” whether they are from a legitimate entity, or from someone impersonating another person or organization.
In an email to the nonprofit Wisconsin Books to Prisoners in August, then-Administrator of the Division of Adult Institutions Sarah Cooper spoke about impersonation. She said “bad actors” impersonated agencies to send drugs into prisons.
“To provide some examples, there have been many instances of drugs coming in via mail (and publications/books) which appear to be sent from the Child Support Agency, the IRS, the State Public Defender’s Office, the Department of Justice and individual attorneys,” Cooper said.
In the August email, Cooper said the DOC had had to “implement a whole new process” for handling mail from the entities she mentioned.
The number of drug incidents involving legal mail has fallen to zero, according to a review of contraband incident reports that facility staff flagged as drug-related, Hardtke said. She said between Sept. 19 and Feb. 28, there were no incidents documented in those reports of legal mail testing positive for intoxicants.
She said these records may not include all incidents, since some incidents may be documented in conduct reports, other types of incident reports or medical records.
“The most important thing to know about the legal mail policy is that it works,” Hardtke said.
But York said she also knows there have been instances of false positive tests.
“I know it has happened because I’ve talked to both staff and private bar attorneys where the institution has sent back materials because they tested positive,” York said. Transcripts that were not drug-laced have been returned after positive tests, she said. She could not provide a number of such incidents and said she also believed some documents that were confiscated after positive tests were not sent back.
Hardtke said the DOC uses the IONSCAN 600 testing technology to test books, packages and other materials coming into DOC facilities. She said the technology was chosen in consultation with the Wisconsin Department of Justice and the Wisconsin State Crime Laboratories “in part because its results have held up to court scrutiny.”
Steve Hurley, a defense attorney at Hurley Burish, S.C. in Madison, told the Examiner about a case a few years ago in which his firm represented a lawyer who was accused of sending drugs to a client.
He said their investigation used the test used by the DOC and got a false positive, and that the department relied on a presumptive test that was not intended to give a conclusive result.
This test was not the IONSCAN 600. The DOC did not say whether it currently uses other tests as well as the IONSCAN 600.
“They didn’t charge him criminally because I think they knew that they had misused the [drug] test,” Hurley said. “So when I called them on it, eventually, they just dropped the whole thing and reinstated his ability to communicate with his client.”
Attorneys suggest creating a verification method for legal mail
Shakeshaft said attorneys attempting to communicate with their clients are not the source of drugs in prison. She thinks there should be an alternative method of getting legal mail to clients without having all the documents copied and the originals shredded.
“To the extent that third parties are attempting to disguise contraband as legal mail, there’s a lot of less restrictive ways to address that, to ensure that legal mail is coming from licensed attorneys… [Methods that] are not nearly as much of a threat to attorney-client confidential communications,” she said.
York said her office asked about creating a process that would certify the mail was from the assigned attorney and not from an impersonator.
“We asked if there was some sort of system, if it was like, some sort of changing numbering system, or something that we could put on the envelopes that would ensure that they knew that it was coming from our office,” she said.
York said her office also made an offer to reach out to a facility beforehand when they’re sending a client their file. The public defender’s office would let them know how many boxes they would be sending with a client file, so the facility would know in advance that the documents were coming from their office. She said the offer was not accepted.
York said her office used to receive calls seeking to verify that her office had sent mail to a resident. She didn’t think this was consistent across all facilities.
“They would call our office and ask, ‘Did you send mail to this person?’ when they got letters,” said York. “I used to get those calls when I was the appellate division director. So that was another way that they used to try to kind of validate the fact that it came from an attorney.”
Confidentiality concerns
Hurley said that as a defense lawyer, it’s his job to not trust the government when it comes to his clients. He believes his clients should receive their legal mail unopened.
“The minute you open a lawyer’s mail, somebody is going to look at it,” Hurley said. “I don’t care what they say about their policies, somebody’s going to look at it. And you can’t do that.”
If others know what someone is convicted of, it could lead to a more difficult time in prison, Hurley said. He also said information in an incarcerated person’s legal mail isn’t necessarily about their criminal record.
“If you were getting divorced, do you want your neighbor to know what you’re arguing with your spouse over about what the extent of your property is?” Hurley said. “No, and you don’t want a guard to know that either.”
Nicole Masnica, an attorney with Gimbel, Reilly, Guerin & Brown LLP in Milwaukee, said prison staff reviewing privileged communications and legal mail from counsel creates a concern about the safety and security of incarcerated people in the DOC.
Legal correspondence and materials “may very well contain” information detailing a person’s cooperation with authorities against other incarcerated people “and even sometimes staff employed by the Department of Corrections,” she said in a statement emailed to the Examiner.
“I have represented individuals who have expressed concerns about confidential information from legal correspondence getting into the wrong hands at the prisons, and policies like those currently in place with the DOC that permit the reviewing of confidential information by DOC staff only amplifies those risks to individuals assisting law enforcement investigations,” Masnica said.
Shakeshaft said there are opportunities during the copying and shredding of legal mail for someone to view the documents. She also raised the question of how the process would be filmed without the camera viewing information in the legal mail.
“There’s a number of different parts of the policy where confidentiality is threatened overall,” she said.
Attorney Lonnie Story sent the Examiner a conduct report from when an incarcerated man, Justin Welch, was written up by a DOC staff member in February 2024. The report indicates a staff member read a letter from Welch that was “addressed to Story Law Firm Attorney Lonnie Story.”
According to the report, in the letter, Welch referenced a recent assault he was involved in with another person. Welch said that he was going to be placed by this person and “will have no choice but to fight him again. This is what the WCI does this time I will hurt him.” The staff member wrote the conduct report, saying Welch was making direct physical threats to the other person.
Story said he contacted Department of Justice attorneys, who called the warden. Story sent the Examiner a letter from the warden on which Welch was copied, dated March 25, 2024. The letter said the warden had initiated a review of the incident, and the hearing officer’s decision and the punishment of 30 days in restrictive housing were reversed.
Welch sent the Examiner a complaint he made to the DOC about a prison denying three of his emails, preventing them from reaching the intended recipients. (Electronic correspondence is not treated as legal mail under DOC policy.)
Two emails were intended for a reporter, while the third was sent to Story. According to Welch’s complaint, a staff member told him that emails were not for legal communication and an attorney call should be set up instead. Welch’s complaint was successful, leading to a ruling that his emails should not have been denied.
Devin Skrzypchak, a resident of Oshkosh Correctional Facility, said he has concerns that the prison staff have had access to his legal mail for up to three days while the prison was setting up a time for the copying and shredding when he could be present. He has concerns that his legal mail could have been read during that wait time.
Not all legal mail involves physical documents, according to Masnica. If there are large files, it’s cheaper to send a hard drive or USB. In one case, Masnica said she sent documents related to potential jurors and received an email from the prison.
The person from the prison who contacted Masnica didn’t necessarily think the documents were related to litigation, she said. To her, it was clear that the prison had reviewed the mail in detail.
“They had made remarks that it was not just the jurors in the case, but all jurors potentially that were going to be called that week, or that month,” Masnica said.
Masnica said she complained and was sent a policy. DOC policy says that when a facility receives new digitally formatted legal material, it shall assign staff to review the content with the incarcerated person present to make sure it is “legal in nature.”
The policy states that “if any file is found to contain contraband, the data storage device may be subject to disposal” in accordance with the DOC’s contraband policy after consultation with the Office of Legal Counsel.
Timeliness concerns
“We’ve heard of attorneys having to push back court deadlines and delays because they can’t continue that communication [with clients],” said Shakeshaft. “They can’t get the legal documents to clients in time, or clients aren’t getting the correct legal documents.”
The Examiner asked York about specific situations that make it critical for the incarcerated person to have the legal mail for the case to proceed in court.
“There is not a super clean answer to this, but there are some situations, for example, we need clients to sign documents,” said York. “One example of that is notice of intent to appeal in a termination of parental rights case; we have to have a wet signature from the client on the notice before we file it, and it’s a pretty tight turnaround. It’s 30 days.”
York said there’s also a problem when clients don’t accept their mail due to the policy of copying and shredding. This leaves the attorney with the option of meeting in person to get a signature on a form, which can be time consuming.
Lost in the mail
Masnica recalled her firm having to send mail multiple times because a client didn’t receive it.
“If we’re sending something to a client on the street who is living in their home, we never really have issues,” Masnica said.
Story said he’s had an issue with not receiving mail that a client said they sent to him.
“Most disturbing is when my clients have part of their case record from their legal materials disappear,” Story said. “Their file doesn’t follow them to the next institution, or part of it is mailed to me and not the whole of it.”
Dorin Ferguson, who is incarcerated at the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility in Boscobel, said he has sent mail to Story that didn’t arrive, including mail that was returned to Ferguson.
DOC policy allows the resident to check the copied legal documents and request two rescans. York said sending large files poses a risk of miscopying.
The Milwaukee County Jail. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
A 49 year-old Shorewood man who had been in custody at the Milwaukee County Jail died in a hospital Tuesday, the Milwaukee County Sheriff said in a statement. The Waukesha County Sheriff is investigating.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation
Shorewood Police brought the man to be booked on three criminal charges, according to the sheriff’s statement. He had been in the custody of the jail since Friday.
On Monday evening, a nurse with Wellpath, the jail’s health care provider, observed the man experiencing a health crisis and initiated emergency protocols, the sheriff’s office said. Efforts to stabilize the man, including the use of NARCAN, were unsuccessful.
The man, who had a pulse and was breathing, was brought to an area hospital and then a second area hospital, where he died.
The Milwaukee County Sheriff is not investigating itself, in accordance with Wisconsin law, the statement said. It directed all inquiries to the Waukesha County Sheriff.
An audit of the jail found “systemic issues ranging from dangerous suicide watch practices and a mental health challenge to critical staffing shortages and occupant overcrowding,” the Examiner has reported. During a 14-month period from 2022 to 2023, the jail saw six deaths in custody.
The Waukesha County Sheriff did not immediately respond to a call seeking comment.
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