Section III: It’s Too Scary

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Falsifications to Obscure the Scandalous Treatment of Kevin McCoy by the Dane County DA’s Office

As outlined below, one particular aspect of Raisbeck was especially egregious.  This situation was known to many, and the scariness of what took place would terrify all who knew.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court and OLR decided that the best way to handle the scandal was to minimize ADA Paul Humphrey’s misconduct by reducing it to a relatively minor discovery violation.  Simultaneously, Sommers was falsely accused of fabricating in a motion that evidence be heard on Kevin McCoy’s treatment.  The accusation was useful to infer to the public that Sommers had embellished what occurred to McCoy.

Sommers would be cleared by the OLR process.  The very allegation against him relied on numerous falsifications.  These included misquoting both documents and testimony.  They included OLR Director Keith Sellen falsely claiming to have personally found in a court file a served subpoena that everyone now concedes could never have been in the court file, because the DA’s Office has conceded that the subpoena was never produced.

OLR’s false allegation was very successful for the Supreme Court’s agenda.  Sommers paid a heavy price in time, money and energy.  However, this price paled in comparison to the irreparable damage done to Sommers’ reputation.

As the Dane County DA’s office prosecution of Adam Raisbeck began to fall apart due to disclosures related to the fraudulent expert analysis, the DA’s Office came up with an alternative way to convict Raisbeck:  Pressure a teenage friend of Raisbeck into committing perjury by falsely claiming that Raisbeck had confessed his speeding to this teenage friend.

Kevin McCoy was the teenage friend of Adam Raisbeck.  He gave an innocuous statement to police on the day of the accident where he indicated no knowledge whatsoever of the accident.  However, McCoy would find himself harassed by both fraudulent subpoenas and a fraudulent warrant.  McCoy’s mistreatment culminated in a fraudulent warrant, leading to McCoy being given the alternative of staying in jail or having to agree to testify against Raisbeck, as desired by the Dane County DA’ Office.

The Dane County DA’s Office’s treatment of McCoy had a clever, but sinister twist to it.  If permitted to play out, with the court’s acquiescence, this evidence would have been disingenuous at Raisbeck’s trial, but possibly definitive to the outcome.  If McCoy took the stand and he conceded to making the statements that the DA’s Office attributed to him, the DA’s Office’s case was enormously boosted.  If McCoy denied making the statements, there was an insurance valve.  Pursuant to Wisconsin evidentiary statute §908.01(4)(a)1, Stats., (i.e., a witness’ prior inconsistent statement), the jury would still hear via the detectives the statements attributed to McCoy.  The jury would then be told that McCoy’s reluctance to testify to these statements was merely because he didn’t want to be responsible for his good friend’s conviction.

Raisbeck’s defense therefore needed the jury to hear the circumstances surrounding McCoy’s statements in order for the jury to realize why and how these statements came about, and why they could not be trusted.  The Dane County court was presented with powerful evidence to McCoy’s mistreatment.

McCoy, his roommate and his cellmate would all provided sworn affidavits to McCoy’s mistreatment. (See Attachment #45)  These three and two other witnesses were willing to testify.  The Dane County DA’s Office, while categorically denying that McCoy was mistreated, convinced the trial court that they could not permit any testimony on McCoy’s treatment at either an evidentiary hearing or Raisbeck’s trial.

Eventually, the DA’s Office lost control of the McCoy scenario, and the facts were so nasty that the DA’s Office wanted the entire matter suppressed.  The DA’s Office no longer wanted McCoy to testify, but they also convinced the court that no testimony related to the McCoy matter would be permitted in any circumstance.

Post-trial, powerful evidence to McCoy’s scandalous treatment surfaced.  The evidence came from Humphrey’s boss, Humphrey’s subordinate and Humphrey’s case detective.  All of these were ignored by both OLR and the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Humphrey’s boss, DA Brian Blanchard, in an internal letter dated January 20, 2004, acknowledged that the warrant obtained for Kevin McCoy was illegitimate, was an abuse of Humphrey’s authority, and the unnecessary harassment of a witness. (See Attachment #46)

Humphrey’s subordinate, Jeanne Higuera, testified under oath that the affidavit Humphrey utilized to obtain the warrant on McCoy was “not true.” (See Attachment #47)

Humphrey’s case detective, Janet Boehnen, testified that she served McCoy with the attached subpoena on June 11, 2002, where McCoy was told on the subpoena that he was to meet with Humphrey on July 5^th at 3:00 p.m. (See Attachment #48)  This served subpoena constitutes a criminal act, because at the time McCoy was being subpoenaed and subjected to an interrogation, there was no actual court date validating McCoy being served.

None of the above is included, or even hinted at, in either of Chief Justice Abrahamson’s decisions relating to Raisbeck, and in particular the McCoy scenario.  Justice Prosser’s dissent, where he complains that Humphrey has been treated unfairly, makes no mention of how the Supreme Court and its in-house law firm (OLR) swept all of the above under the rug.  This is despite Justice Prosser knowing all of the above.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s handling of the McCoy matter must be seen in light of the Wisconsin State Journal’s reporting on the McCoy scenario.