McCandless files request for new trial with District 3 Court of Appeals
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By LeAnn R. Ralph
WAUSAU — Ezra McCandless, who was convicted of the 2018 murder of Alexander Woodworth in the Town of Spring Brook, has filed a request for a new trial with the District 3 Court of Appeals.
The 78-page brief was filed with the District 3 Court of Appeals May 21 and outlines five separate issues as to why McCandless should be granted a new trial.
The District 3 Court of Appeals is located in Wausau.
The brief states McCandless’s statements to police that were obtained while she was involuntarily detained in a locked psychiatric unit should have been suppressed because the police failed to provide a Miranda warning and that McCandless’s statements should have been suppressed because they were involuntary.
The brief also states that Dunn County Circuit Judge James Peterson unduly restricted the jury’s consideration of journals written by Woodworth that contained themes of violence and expressions of desire to harm himself and others and that the court erroneously limited the jury’s’ ability to consider evidence of the psychological effects of trauma and evidence of the defendant’s psychological history and functioning.
In addition, the brief alleges that the Dunn County District Attorney’s closing arguments were improper because the closing arguments disparaged McCandless’s defense counsel and experts and also vouched for the prosecution’s expert, which was allegedly a violation of McCandless’s right to due process.
Jury trial
McCandless was convicted by a jury in October of 2019 for the first degree intentional homicide of Alexander Woodworth following a three-week trial in Dunn County Circuit Court.
McCandless’s attorneys had argued that the defendant stabbed Woodworth in self defense.
First degree intentional homicide in Wisconsin carries a penalty of life in prison.
In February of 2020, Judge Peterson sentenced McCandless to life in prison and set McCandless’s eligibility for petitioning the court for extended supervision after she has served 50 years.
McCandless was 20 years old at the time that she stabbed the 24-year-old Woodworth 16 times. His body was found in her car in a Town of Spring Brook farm field on Friday, March 23, 2018.
The prosecution — Dunn County District Attorney Andrea Nodolf and state Assistant Attorney General Richard 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.
In his closing argument, Dufour said McCandless had wanted Woodworth to say their relationship had been a mistake because she wanted to get back together with a previous boyfriend, a man in his 30s named Jason Mengel.
Court TV televised the trial, and while McCandless’s face was mostly somber and expressionless prior to that, when Mengel walked into the courtroom to take the witness stand, McCandless appeared unable to keep herself from smiling .
Mengel, a witness for the prosecution, said he had met McCandless at Racy’s coffeehouse in Eau Claire.
Woodworth worked at Racy’s, and McCandless, who lived in Eau Claire then, spent time at Racy’s.
McCandless had lived with Mengel at one point, had become pregnant, had decided she did not want the baby, and had gone to the Twin Cities for an abortion.
Competency
Judge Peterson ordered a competency evaluation for McCandless following a preliminary hearing in Dunn County Circuit Court in April of 2018.
At a May 22, 2018, court hearing, Judge Peterson said he had received a report from Dr. Donna Minter, who had “attempted” to conduct a competency evaluation.
The report does not come to a conclusion about McCandless’s competency, Dufour had noted.
Based on McCandless’s ability to listen to advice from her attorney and to take the advice of her attorney, Dufour said he believed McCandless was competent to assist in her defense and to stand trial.
Nelson cited Wisconsin statute 971.14(4)(b): “At the commencement of the hearing, the judge shall ask the defendant whether he or she claims to be competent or incompetent. If the defendant stands mute or claims to be incompetent, the defendant shall be found incompetent unless the state proves by the greater weight of the credible evidence that the defendant is competent. If the defendant claims to be competent, the defendant shall be found competent unless the state proves by evidence that is clear and convincing that the defendant is incompetent.”
When Judge Peterson asked McCandless a series of questions, she answered “yes” in a clear, strong voice.
The questions focused on whether McCandless understood the charges against her, does she believe she has the ability to assist her attorney in her own defense and does she believe she has the mental capacity to proceed.
Given the responses from McCandless, Judge Peterson declared her competent, accepted the report from Dr. Minter and sealed the report from the view of the public.
Mental disease
McCandless, who was being held in custody at the Dunn County jail on a bail of $250,000 cash, changed her plea from “not guilty” to “not guilty” and “not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect” in November of 2018, seven months after the competency hearing.
The law says the court may appoint one or more mental health experts to evaluate a defendant, and in this case, there should be more than one, Judge Peterson had said, adding that he expected the defense would hire a mental health expert, the court would appoint one and that the state would hire one.
Section 971.15 of the Wisconsin Statutes defines not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, which is also referred to as “NGI.”
A defendant can be considered NGI if the defendant lacks the capacity to understand his or her conduct was wrong and is so ill, he or she cannot understand what has been done is illegal.
A defendant also can be considered NGI if the person is so ill, he or she cannot control his or her actions.
In the case of a trial where a defendant has pleaded NGI, the prosecution must prove the person is guilty of the crime, and it is then up to the defendant to convince the jury that he or she is not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
Withdrawn
In February of 2019, three months after she had changed her plea to not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, McCandless withdrew her plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
During a second hearing in November of 2018 concerning the evaluation of McCandless by mental health experts regarding the plea of NGI, Dufour had asked the court to allow him to advise the victim’s family whether the evaluation of McCandless did or did not meet the criteria of NGI.
There was no need for the victims to know until Phase 2 of the trial, Nelson had said.
The first phase of a trial would have involved the prosecution proving McCandless had been responsible for Woodworth’s death. The second phase of a trial would have involved persuading a jury that McCandless was not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.
A jury will decide if McCandless meets the criteria for NGI, Nelson had said.
Discussing the case with the victims is reasonable for the prosecution, but publishing the statements would be prohibited, Judge Peterson had said.
The written reports by mental health experts were due by February 1, 2019, but the reports became irrelevant when McCandless withdrew her plea of “not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect.”
New trial
McCandless petitioned Judge Peterson for a new trial in Dunn County Circuit Court in December of 2022, three years after she had been convicted of the murder, and Judge Peterson held a six-hour evidentiary hearing in July of 2023.
According to news reports, in the 86-page motion, attorneys for McCandless said 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.
Judge Peterson denied the request for a new trial in November of 2023.
McCandless based part of her request for a new trial on the ineffective assistance of her attorneys at the murder trial.
In his oral ruling, Judge Peterson said he found it uncharacteristic that McCandless’s defense attorney team would be characterized as providing ineffective assistance as counsel since the defense team attorneys were very knowledgeable attorneys, according to online court records.
In addition, the judge noted that the evidence which had been submitted at trial had been “voluminous.”
Judge Peterson also said that McCandless’s testimony during the trial did not match the evidence that had been submitted.
There was a “panorama of evidence” in the case, and Judge Peterson said he did not believe that the testimony was not credible.
The performance of law enforcement was sufficient, he said.
The journals written by Alexander Woodworth that had been submitted as evidence did not show anything that was meant to harm McCandless, the judge said.
Woodworth was not seeking out the defendant, and on the day he was murdered, McCandless initiated contact with Woodworth, Judge Peterson said.
The defense had asked for an acquittal on self defense, and the instructions to the jury were proper, the judge had said.
Appeal brief
The brief filed with the appeals court outlines the reasons why McCandless’s attorneys believe the verdict from the jury trial should be reversed and that a new trial should be held, but the District 3 Appeals Court will make the decision on whether to grant the appeal.
Among the arguments made by the attorneys representing McCandless, Colleen Marion and Kelsey Loshaw, in the brief filed with the District 3 Court of Appeals May 21 is that McCandless was not given the Miranda warning during a custodial interrogation, and therefore, her statements were inadmissible.
McCandless had been involuntarily committed to a psychiatric ward when an investigator came to question her on March 23, 2018.
“A reasonable person in her circumstances would not feel free to leave … Ms. McCandless was involuntarily detained; thus, not only would a reasonable person in her position not feel free to leave — she was in fact not free to leave. This was a secured unit. The patients were locked inside,” according to the brief.
“Ms. McCandless had been emergently detained by police and transported by ambulance to the behavioral health unit very late the night before. The decision to detain Ms. McCandless on an involuntary hold was made by police in conjunction with a local agency, Northwest Connections,” the brief states.
The next day, March 24, two investigators returned to question McCandless.
A social worker had testified that she had told McCandless that she did not have to meet with the officers but that they were asking to talk with her.
“The detectives were standing outside the unit and would have been visible. Ms. McCandless wordlessly got up and followed the social worker. Based on this, the court found that Ms. McCandless ‘agreed’ to the interrogation. To the contrary, nonverbal acquiescence by a psychiatric patient who was just awoken, and who could see two detectives waiting for her, is not affirmative agreement, and does not counterweight the other factors demonstrating custody,” according to the brief.
Denial of guilt
The brief to the appeals court also objected to the officers closing off “all avenues for Ms. McCandless to deny guilt, instead presuming she had hurt Mr. Woodworth and accusing her of not telling the truth if she were to disagree.”
In addition, the brief states, “The Miranda Court was particularly concerned about the coercive effect of guilt-presumptive interrogation techniques such as the ones used here.”
The brief also argues that during closing statements, the prosecution referred to the defense’s expert witnesses as “hired guns” although “there was no evidence that [an expert witness] was paid more than his customary fee.”
The brief goes on to say, “perhaps even worse, the [prosecution] blatantly accused defense counsel of deceiving the jury by trying to ‘distract from the truth’ … [and] argued the law and facts were not on the defense’s side …”
The conclusion of the brief was that the prosecution’s “improper [closing] arguments results in a violation of Ms. McCandless’ due process right to a fair trial.”
