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Lawyer accused of stalking, beating woman may still practice while charged

By: Michaela Paukner, [email protected]//October 17, 2019//

Lawyer accused of stalking, beating woman may still practice while charged

By: Michaela Paukner, [email protected]//October 17, 2019//

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A Milwaukee criminal defense attorney is allowed to still practice law while he undergoes his own court proceedings for abusing, threatening and stalking a woman.

Matthew Meyer of Meyer Van Severen appeared in Milwaukee County court on Wednesday. The 34-year-old is faced with four felony charges for substantial battery, threats to communicate derogatory information, intimidating a victim, damaging property and stalking.

A criminal complaint filed against Meyer says he and the victim had been in a relationship on and off for three years. When she tried to break up with him, he’d threaten to hurt her, her friends and family, and ruin her life. The complaint says Meyer threatened to use his criminal defendants to hurt her family and friends, including sending her texts reading “Criminals owe me favors” and “some very dangerous people are heading his way.”

The complaint detailed Meyer’s threatening actions and abuse against the woman from October 2017 to October 2019. It said Meyer beat the woman in April of 2018, giving her a concussion and bruising so severely that she had to take two weeks off work.

The woman reported the attack to police and said she felt powerless against Meyer because he had told her he knows how to work the system as a criminal-defense attorney.

The documents said some of the other abuse included following the victim and her friend home, locking the woman in the bathroom of her apartment, spraying her car with Red Bull, damaging her car and pushing her to the ground when she refused to have sex intercourse with him.

Over the course of two years, the complaint said Meyer sent the woman hundreds of threatening messages and emails and called her more than 120 times a day. He admitted to using different phone numbers and spoof email accounts, including one with the woman’s father’s name, to contact her and her workplace. He said she needed to pay him, have sexual intercourse with him and tell him about her other relationships or he’d reveal “a ton of embarrassing dirty laundry” about her.

At his initial appearance on Wednesday, the commissioner forbid Meyer from having contact with the victim and possessing firearms. The prosecutor asked that Meyer be subject to GPS monitoring and that he be forbidden to enter a one-mile radius around the woman’s home. Meyer’s defense attorney, Robert LeBell of LeBell, Dobroski, Morgan, in Milwaukee, argued that the monitoring and GPS were inappropriate.

“This is not exactly New York City,” said LeBell. “One mile constitutes a large portion of this city. He’s a practicing lawyer who obviously needs to have access to clients.”

The commissioner ordered GPS monitoring for Meyer but not the establishment of the one-mile radius. He said because of Meyer’s threats against the woman, the GPS requirement was “not only reasonable, but imperative.”

Meyer has already posted $5,000 bail. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for Oct. 28 at 8:30 a.m.

The Wisconsin Law Journal left a message with Meyer’s office for comment and has yet to hear back.

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