McCandless hearing scheduled for July 3
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
MENOMONIE — An evidentiary hearing is scheduled July 3 in Dunn County Circuit Court concerning the request from Ezra J. McCandless for a new trial following her conviction of first-degree intentional homicide in the death of Alexander Woodworth.
McCandless was convicted by a jury in the fall of 2019 in Woodworth’s murder in the Town of Spring Brook in March of 2018.
A post-conviction motion was filed in Dunn County Circuit Court December 22.
According to news reports, in the 86-page motion, attorneys for McCandless say the court never heard the “full story,” that the trial was “compromised” and that McCandless was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder as the result of sexual assault when McCandless was a child.
At a court hearing held January 20 before Judge James Peterson, McCandless appeared by video from Taycheedah Correctional Institution, and attorney Colleen Marie Marion also appeared by video for McCandless, according to online court records.
Dunn County District Attorney Andrea Nodolf appeared in court as the prosecuting attorney, and state Assistant Attorney General Richard Dufour appeared by video for the State of Wisconsin.
Judge Peterson indicated he had received a written motion pertaining to a new trial for McCandless.
McCandless’s attorney, Marion, said a day would be needed to call three witnesses.
The state prosecutor, Dufour, said the state did not expect to call any witnesses but that they would do cross-examination of the witnesses called by McCandless.
Nodolf and Dufour said they wanted 60 days to respond to McCandless’s motion, and Marion said after the state had filed a response, she would like to have two weeks to reply.
One of McCandless’s original attorneys, D. Vishny, would not be back until May, but attorney Aaron Nelson said the timeline would work for him, according to the online records.
Judge Peterson ordered the state to respond to the motion for a new trial by April 18 at 4:30 p.m., and the reply by the defense is due by May 18 at 4:30 p.m.
Judge Peterson also ordered the state to issue a transport order for McCandless for July 3 to appear in Dunn County Circuit Court.
The evidentiary hearing on July 3 is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m.
Judge Peterson sentenced McCandless to life in prison in February of 2020 and set McCandless’s eligibility for petitioning the court for extended supervision after she has served 50 years.
Conviction of first degree intentional homicide in Wisconsin requires a mandatory life sentence.
McCandless, who is now 25 years old, was 20 at the time of the murder and had stabbed the 24-year-old Woodworth 16 times.
Woodworth’s body was discovered in McCandless’s car in the Town of Spring Brook, south of Elk Mound, on Friday, March 23, 2018.
During the three-week trial in the fall of 2019, McCandless’s attorneys, Nelson and Vishny, argued that McCandless had stabbed Woodworth in self defense.
The prosecutors in the case, Nodolf and Dufour, said McCandless had lured Woodworth to his death in the farm field that was out of sight of the road.
Woodworth was a philosophy student at UW-Eau Claire and had been planning to apply for graduate school.
Certain statements McCandless made were inconsistent with the evidence.
For example, McCandless said Woodworth had attacked her in the back seat of the car, and that she had stabbed him inside the car, but the blood evidence associated with Woodworth being stabbed was mostly located outside of the car.
Prosecutors said that while no one would ever know the true story, they believed Woodworth had gotten into the back seat of the car to try to get away from McCandless. His body was found hanging out of the car’s open back door.
Medical experts testified at trial that Woodworth had virtually no defense wounds, indicating to them that he had been taken by surprise when McCandless began stabbing him.
