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Accused kidnapper appears in federal court

Kristen Smith, charged with kidnapping her half sister’s newborn from Wisconsin, arrives for a hearing Friday, Feb. 14, 2014 in Tipton, Iowa. At the hearing, Smith waived the right to challenge her extradition on a warrant from Texas charging her with tampering with government records. That means Texas authorities now have the ability to transport her to face that charge, but that isn’t expected to happen immediately as the judge ordered Smith to remain jailed in Tipton on $50,000 bond, citing the seriousness of the charges. (AP Photo/Ryan J. Foley)
Kristen Smith, charged with kidnapping her half sister’s newborn from Wisconsin, arrives for a hearing Feb. 14 in Tipton, Iowa. She made an appearance in federal court in Madison on Friday. (AP Photo/Ryan J. Foley)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A woman accused of kidnapping her newborn nephew and leaving him outside an Iowa gas station in frigid temperatures has made her first court appearance in Wisconsin.

A federal grand jury indicted 31-year-old Kristen Smith of Aurora, Colo., on a kidnapping charge earlier this week. Smith made her initial appearance in federal court in Madison on Friday. U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen Crocker ordered her detained while her family tries to hire an attorney.

Prosecutors allege Smith took the baby from a Town of Beloit home where her half-sister, who is the child’s mother, was staying on Feb. 6.

Police caught up with Smith in West Branch, Iowa, but she didn’t have the baby. Police later discovered the child alive in a crate behind a West Branch gas station.

Criminal code overhaul on hold until next legislative session – UPDATE

A bill that would rewrite Wisconsin’s criminal code won’t be passed during the current legislative session, though its sponsor said he will reintroduce it next year.

Rep. Jim Ott, R-Mequon, said that Assembly Bill 383 – which was introduced in September and is more than 350 pages – is “on pause” because there isn’t enough time left in the session to parse through the entire bill and address concerns raised by interested parties.

“Not that I wanted to slow the bill down,” Ott said, “but I felt that there was no way to get it passed in time.”

He said he plans to reintroduce it in February 2015.

“At that point, if there were issues that need to be addressed, we’d have the whole next year to work on it,” Ott said. “It’s just a matter of wanting to do it right.”

He said his office and the Wisconsin Judicial Council, which worked on the bill for more than 20 years, will use the time between sessions to work with the Wisconsin District Attorneys Association, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and victims’ rights groups that already have weighed in and expressed concerns.

The DA’s association supports part of the bill, such as clarifying discovery proceedings for defense attorneys, President Adam Gerol said. However, it opposed the bill as a whole because parts of it are out of date, he said.

“We felt that to rewrite it to meet the things we thought were good would be such a task that it would be better to [start over],” Gerol said.

A provision that would replace preliminary hearings with a pretrial motion to dismiss proceeding has the “potential to be very burdensome,” he said.

The Attorney General’s Office also opposes the bill as is, stating in an Oct. 11 memo that the current code generally is “well understood by practitioners and enables the fair, just and speedy resolution of criminal cases.”

“Without a sound rationale that would remedy established shortcomings in the current state of the law,” the memo reads, “any change may be superfluous and lead to unintended consequences. In our view, without a foundational case for change, there should be no change.”

The bill’s supporters say the goal is to clean up the language and organization of the state’s criminal law code, as well as codify practices that long have been justified by legal precedence.

Other proposed changes include allowing a misdemeanor citation to be used as a criminal complaint and specifying that a jury verdict must be unanimous.

The bill received two public hearings this past fall in front of the Assembly and Senate judiciary committees, led by Ott and state Sen. Glenn Grothman, R-West Bend, respectively.

The criminal code last was updated in 1969.

Man convicted of assaulting girl held in basement (UPDATE)

By TAYLOR W. ANDERSON
Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin jury on Friday convicted a 20-year-old man of sexually and physically abusing his stepsister while her parents starved her and kept her in the basement.

The now-17-year-old girl was just 68 pounds when she fled the family’s home in February 2012. She told doctors her parents kept her in the basement with boarded up windows, motion sensors and an alarm on the basement door.

Prosecutors said the man sexually assaulted the girl starting from when she was 9 years old because he thought he could get away with it. The Associated Press isn’t naming the man to avoid identifying the girl.

The judge’s secretary said Friday that jurors delivered their verdict around midnight after deliberating for roughly 10 hours on the charges of first-degree sexual assault of a child, second-degree sexual assault of a child and child abuse. They convicted the man on all charges.

Prosecutors said the abuse happened between 2006 and 2011 in the home where the then-children lived with the girl’s father and the boy’s mother.

Defense attorney Ronald Benavides didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Judge Julie Genovese scheduled sentencing for Wednesday. She could also sentence him then in another sexual assault case from December 2012. That case also involved a child.

The man pleaded no contest to sexual assault charges in a separate case in November 2011 and served 15 months in prison in that case.

Benavides argued that there were inconsistencies in the stepsister’s story that should prevent jurors from believing her accusations. A school social worker became involved after the girl said something at her elementary school that led officials to believe she may have been being abused at home. The girl later told the social worker she wasn’t actually sexually abused.

There was also a lack of physical evidence for the sexual assault charges, as doctors who examined the girl in 2012 said there was no evidence of sexual assault.

Assistant Dane County District Attorney Matt Moeser told jurors that the girl’s father and stepmother put her into in-patient psychiatric care after she told them about the first sexual assault.

Moeser said the parents’ punishment of the girl, along with her mistreatment, may have explained her reluctance to tell authorities she had been sexually assaulted in the home. He called living conditions there a “perfect storm” for sexual abuse.

The parents were convicted and sentenced to five years each in prison in separate trials.

The keys to content marketing

Journalists often live by the mantra, “content is king.” The idea is that the more information you can share with your audience, the more connections you make and trust you build.

The same applies to lawyers. But how does a firm go about creating content and then marketing it to the vast sea of potential clients? Through content marketing.

What is content marketing?

“Content marketing is attracting and retaining clients/customers through creating, distributing, and curating relevant content,” J. Michol Banes, senior marketing associate at Baker Tilly Virchow Krause LLP and president of the American Marketing Association-Madison, said.

The idea is to offer credible, trustworthy information on a subject, such as family law. Once your audience trusts your message, the hope is that they will turn to you not only for information, but also for services.

Where should I start?

To start developing a strategy, first figure out what you need, Joe Pulizzi, executive director of the Content Marketing Institute in Cleveland, said.

Figure out what you want to accomplish, or as Pulizzi puts it, “where it hurts.” Do you need more customers? Are people not spending enough time on your website? Are they visiting your site, but not hiring you?

Then, figure out how your content can help resolve that issue.

“Focus on a niche,” he said. “Ask yourself, ‘Where can I be the leading expert in my city, my region, even the world?’ And make it quality content.”

What platforms are best?

Content marketing can be used across platforms such as your website, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, client email list, etc. The important thing is to tailor the content or message to each channel.

If you’ve created a whitepaper, for example, Banes said, which is a report or guide to helping people understand something, you might want to distribute the whole thing via a client email list. But then on Facebook, you can focus on just a key part of the report, to start a conversation and get people to click through to your site.

content-marketing“On Twitter,” he said, “you would want to either give a snippet of information and link over or give another interesting fact and link over.”

You might even consider linking to other content.

“Great content marketers also build trust by curating content from other reputable sources,” Banes said. “This helps add some depth to the content that is given to your consumers.”

What about blogs?

“The first place you should look,” Pulizzi said, “before you start with Facebook and Twitter, is a consistent blog and a consistently driven email newsletter.”

Start by defining “consistent.”

If you only can commit to one blog post per week and one email per month to start, that’s fine, Pulizzi said, but plan that time.

“It needs to be Wednesday at 10 a.m., every Wednesday at 10 a.m., posting that blog,” he said. “And the first Monday of every month you send out that newsletter. It’s like Must See TV. Build demand for that content, because as soon as you miss a date, they’re gone.”

Where to find ideas

Firm owners use video to introduce themselves

When Fitchburg attorneys Iris Christenson and Johanna Allex decided to update their website, they agreed that a short introductory video would tie all their content together.

“We see it as a key part of our marketing plan,” Christenson, co-owner of The Law Offices of Christenson and Allex LLC, said. “That’s the first thing people see when they go to our website. It’s our calling card.”

Video has been a part of the firm’s content marketing strategy since 2006, when Christenson and Allex first opened the four-attorney firm. Back then, they scattered videos of varying lengths throughout the site. But, Christenson said, “I wasn’t sure people were getting deep enough to watch them; people look at a website so quickly.”

So, in 2011, the partners swapped their explanatory videos for text-based Q-and-As, just one paragraph, maybe even a sentence, answering common questions. And they cut video use to just a single introductory spot highlighted on the website’s main page.

“It’s just a quick exchange between Johanna and I,” Christenson said. “A ‘Hello, glad you’re here. The website has useful information, and we hope we can meet your needs.’”

Allex and Christenson contracted with a local video production company. The cost was equal to about 12 billable hours because they made several versions — ranging from about a minute to three minutes, so they can swap things out in the future – and took about four hours.

“I could fit it in my normal schedule and still get my client work done” Christenson said. The response from clients has been positive, she said.

— Jessica Stephen

Commenting on other’s content is a good way to start, Banes said.

“You can post your summary of a content piece from someone else,” he said, “giving your consumers value through your short summary and the longer content from another source. Plus, you’re adding to your credibility as a thought leader that is not trying to just sell all the time.”

Piggybacking off other posts is a great way to find blog ideas, Pulizzi agreed.

Answering questions common to your practice area is another way to generate ideas, he said.

“What are your customers 50 most common questions? I haven’t met one business owner who can’t spend 10 minutes to come up with 50 questions,” he said. “And, if you can’t do it yourself, ask a partner. Then, you’ve got 50 blog posts, right there.”

What about video?

“There are all sorts of benefits to using video on your website,” Mac Chorlton, vice president of business development at Tweedee Productions LLC, Madison, said.

Research suggests that video increases a customer’s likelihood to buy a product or service. And, since there are so many sites without video, adding video can help your website stand out.

Many law firms use video to introduce attorneys, and explain their backgrounds and areas of expertise.

“Choosing an attorney is a very personal decision,” Chorlton said. “Those videos can help familiarize people with the attorney and identify with them on a personal level.”

Run time is one of the most important considerations with video, he said.

“Length can be a deterrent,” he warned. “Most website visitors will look at the length of a video prior to viewing. If the video is perceived as being too much of a time investment, you may lose them. So, for most website videos, we usually try to keep them to three minutes or less.”

The bottom line

Above all else, Pulizzi said, remember to just be helpful.

“Be consistent. Talk like a human being. Fill a need for your customers,” he said. “Tell a different story, not just the same story but a little better. If you can’t discern your content from your six competitors, you’ve got a problem.”

And don’t confuse marketing with selling, Banes said.

“It really needs to be informational to the audience,” he said. “Otherwise, the consumer will go somewhere else for the information. You have to build trust with integrity and actually provide your consumers with value.”

To maximize your reach, Pulizzi said, “Give away as much information as you can.”

Siler avoids losing by helping others grow

Mark Siler (Staff photo by Kevin Harnack)
Mark Siler (Staff photo by Kevin Harnack)

Mark Siler knew he wanted out of the courtroom after losing a case in law school.

“We had to work on this mock case and I thought we did a great job, but we lost,” the Weiss, Berzowski, Brady LLP said. “I don’t like losing and knew right then I couldn’t do trial law.

“I wanted to be in an area of law where you help others and in business law, you are doing just that.”

Siler, an associate at the Milwaukee firm, earned his bachelor’s degree in business at the University of Iowa and his law degree at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill School of Law.

Now he specializes in business law, helping entrepreneurs get their businesses off the ground, drafting contracts and more.

“It’s really cradle to grave business law,” Siler said of his practice, which often involves startups. “It’s enjoyable to learn about these news businesses and what they’re doing. It’s fun to watch them grow from a couple of guys in someone’s garage to a full-fledged business with real office space.”

Siler, who’s been practicing since 2004, said he’s noticed more startups in the past several years as the economy continues to struggle.

“I think people who are either out of work or aren’t moving up as fast as they thought they would are looking for new opportunities,” he said, “and starting their own business is definitely one way to go.”

Part of his work helping businesses is dealing with tax law, an area of constant change. “We’re definitely seeing lots of changes coming through with the Affordable Care Act,” Siler said. “No one seems to know where that’s going to go.

“For the first time, we’re all learning on the fly and there’s not a lot of guidance. It’s going to be interesting.”

Wisconsin Law Journal: Who is someone you admire?
Mark Siler: My wife, Inga. She is a speech-language pathologist in a school. I have seen the reactions of parents who have struggled to communicate with their children and the joy they feel when that communication finally happens. My wife is responsible for a lot of that. As a lawyer, you can be caught up thinking that what you are doing is incredibly important, and while it is important, seeing what my wife does helping kids who are struggling to communicate find their voices keeps me grounded.

WLJ: What would you have pursued as a career if it you hadn’t become a lawyer?
Siler: I probably would have been a teacher if I was not a lawyer. I would love to have taught high school history or American politics. Those are both areas of interest. It also would have allowed me to be involved with coaching sports, which I would enjoy.

WLJ: What do you see as your biggest accomplishment?
Siler: Other than my children, which I think goes without saying, it is probably receiving a full academic scholarship to law school.

WLJ: What app can’t you live without?
Siler: Hawkeye Report. This is an Iowa Hawkeye sports app. I generally check it several times per day. I really enjoy sports and my undergrad institution is my team.

WLJ: What music gets heavy rotation on your iPod?
Siler: This one is hard because I have very eclectic musical tastes. It really depends on the day. Everything from bluegrass to ska gets heavy rotation on my iPod on any given day.

WLJ: What’s your favorite activity to do in Wisconsin?
Siler: In the summer, tailgate and attend Brewers games with my wife and kids. In the winter, downhill skiing.

WLJ: If you could live anywhere, where would it be?
Siler: In the United States, it would be San Diego, Calif. I have vacationed there before and it has always been a lot of fun. Anywhere else in the world, probably Glasgow, Scotland.

WLJ: Do you have a phrase or word that you tend to overuse?
Siler: I am sure there are many. Off the top of my head, I overuse ‘tremendous’ and ‘honestly’ a lot.

Redistricting isn’t going away

Bill Lueders is the Money and Politics Project director at the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism.

Few legislative causes have drawn as much interest and as little momentum as redistricting, the drawing of new voter boundaries after each 10-year census.

The Republicans who control the state Legislature have rebuffed pressure to hold hearings on Assembly Bill 185 and Senate Bill 163, both of which would shift responsibility for redistricting from politicians to the Legislative Reference Bureau, a nonpartisan state service agency.

So two of the bill’s main backers, Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, and Sen. Tim Cullen, D-Janesville, held a “public meeting” Feb. 10 in a packed room at the state Capitol.

Among those appearing, via Skype, was Ed Cook, legal counsel for Iowa’s Legislative Service Agency, which has run nonpartisan redistricting in that state since 1981. He said the process “has really stood the test of time.”

Districts are redrawn using objective criteria, subject to legislative approval.

“We do not look at any political information,” Cook said, such as where lawmakers happen to live or which party a district’s voters tend to support.

The cost, Cook said, is “not significant.” No approved map has been challenged in court. Some districts still lean Republican or Democratic but, Cook said, “redistricting doesn’t get in the way of a trend in an election.”

Sen. Tim Cullen (left), D-Janesville, and Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, attend a public meeting on redistricting Feb. 10 at the state Capitol. (Photo by John Hart, Wisconsin State Journal)
Sen. Tim Cullen (left), D-Janesville, and Sen. Dale Schultz, R-Richland Center, attend a public meeting on redistricting Feb. 10 at the state Capitol. (Photo by John Hart, Wisconsin State Journal)

In other words, the fortunes of Iowa’s political parties hinge on how much support they receive at the polls, not how cleverly they carve out districts to their advantage.

In contrast, according to University of Wisconsin political science professor Ken Mayer, Wisconsin’s process “is divisive, polarizing, expensive, litigious, and undermines basic notions of representation.”

The last redistricting, after the 2010 census, cost taxpayers more than $2 million and, as usual, was challenged in court. Mayer said the maps were “carefully drawn to maximize the partisan advantage for the Republican Party,” adding that Democrats “would have done the same thing” had they been in charge.

In the 2012 election, Republicans increased their control of the state Legislature despite getting substantially fewer total votes than Democrats. That was done, Mayer said, by packing Democrats into safe districts while creating a slight edge for Republicans in many more.

The result, Schultz said, breeds public anger and mistrust.

“They know that the system isn’t fair,” he said.

Hypothetical nonpartisan maps produced by the Legislative Reference Bureau at Cullen’s request show how different things could be. The redrawn districts are much cleaner and more competitive.

Had those maps been in place in 2012, Cullen’s analysis found, 28 Assembly and five Senate races would have been decided by a 6-point margin or less. In the actual election, only 11 Assembly races and one Senate race were that close.

Overall, the new maps would have favored legislative Democrats in 2012, consistent with their vote totals. But in 2010, a banner year for Republicans, the GOP still would have come out on top.

The antipathy of state Republicans to altering a system that has worked to their benefit is undiminished. Aside from Schultz, no GOP lawmaker supports a resolution calling for an advisory referendum on nonpartisan redistricting.

Chad Weininger, R-Green Bay, one of the committee leaders blocking a hearing on AB 185, has denounced it as a “gimmick” because the Legislature would not have to follow the method.

Mayer conceded the point, but only in the sense that lawmakers can pass new laws. By that standard, he said, “virtually everything the Legislature does is a gimmick.”

At the hearing, Schultz, who is not seeking reelection, said every candidate for state office should be asked about redistricting. Cullen, who is also stepping down, said it is a topic on which the public, not politicians, should take the lead.

“This is going to be a bottom-up solution,” he said at the hearing. “It will not come out of this building. It will come from all of you.”

State appeals Jensen’s overturned conviction

Mark Jensen is pictured before opening statements in his trial. A federal judge has overturned the Wisconsin man's conviction, Thursday, Dec. 19, 2013, for first-degree intentional homicide in the 1998 poisoning death of his wife. (AP Photo/Kenosha News, Sean Krajacic)
Mark Jensen (AP Photo/Kenosha News, Sean Krajacic)

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — State prosecutors filed an appeal Friday of a federal judge’s decision overturning a Wisconsin man’s conviction for killing his wife with poison.

The Wisconsin Department of Justice has filed a notice of appeal in the Mark Jensen case with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit.

The state had 90 days to appeal a Dec. 18 ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge William Griesbach, who said Jensen, 54, was improperly tried 15 years ago in the death of his wife, Julie Jensen, because he couldn’t confront her about a letter she wrote implicating him as a primary suspect in the event she died. Julie Jensen suspected her husband was trying to kill her and gave the letter to her neighbor in Pleasant Prairie.

Julie Jensen died in 1998, and her husband was charged four years later. The case was slowed by a legal debate over whether the letter and her statements to others could be used in court, or whether that evidence would violate Jensen’s constitutional right to confront his accuser.

A county judge ultimately decided the letter was admissible. A jury convicted Jensen in 2008 and he was sentenced to life in prison.

Griesbach concluded the case didn’t meet the narrow specifications under which that constitutional right could be overlooked.

Julie Jensen had told neighbors and a doctor that she believed her husband had never forgiven her for an affair she had years earlier and that she suspected he wanted to kill her. She told police he was researching poisons on his computer.

Assembly OKs 2 more heroin bills

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Assembly has approved two more bills designed to curb heroin abuse.

The first bill would require the Department of Corrections to set up a formal system of quick sanctions short of prison for offenders who violate their parole or probation. The bill’s author, Republican Rep. John Nygren, says faster sanctions would help heroin addicts get treatment center.

The other measure would require state health officials to create regional opiate treatment centers in underserved areas. Nygren wrote that bill, too.

The Assembly passed the sanctions bill on a voice vote and the treatment centers proposal 95-1 on Thursday. Both bills now go to the state Senate.

The Legislature has passed four other Nygren-authored heroin bills over the last two months.