Man to be retried in wife’s 2008 poisoning death

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KENOSHA, Wis. (AP) — A Wisconsin man whose conviction in his wife’s death by antifreeze-poisoning was overturned in 2013 will be retried.

The state Department of Justice said in a filing Wednesday that it will not take Mark Jensen’s case to the U.S. Supreme Court, setting up a retrial in Kenosha County, where he was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 2008 in the death of his wife, Julie Jensen.

A federal judge overturned Jensen’s homicide conviction two years ago after his attorney successfully argued that a letter written by Julie Jensen before her death implicating her husband should not have been allowed as evidence because it violated the defendant’s constitutional right to face his accuser.

In October, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the federal judge’s ruling.

Jensen remained in the Dodge Correctional Institution since his conviction was overturned because the state hadn’t decided how to proceed in the case.

He is expected to appear at a Jan. 6 bond hearing, where he will ask for his release pending the retrial. Jensen is to be transferred to the Kenosha County Jail prior to the bond hearing.

In response to Jensen’s petition for release, Attorney General Brad Schimel wrote on Dec. 30 that his office has decided to forego filing a certiorari petition and that Jensen instead will be retried.

Julie Jensen’s body was found in 1998 in the Pleasant Prairie home she shared with her husband and their two sons. Her death, initially considered a suicide, started a case that took more than nine years to go to trial. The defense said Julie Jensen was depressed and killed herself after framing her husband.

Prosecutors say Jensen killed his wife to make room for his mistress and that he searched the Internet for ways to make her death look like a suicide.