A Neopit woman who cut a man’s head and shoulder with a knife was sentenced Jan. 16 in federal court to 3½ years in prison and three years’ supervised release.
Justine V. Peters, 34, pleaded guilty in October to assault with a dangerous weapon in connection with bursting into a Neopit residence and telling a man, “I going to kill you,” and stabbing or throwing a knife, cutting him.
According to court documents, the man told a Menominee Tribal Police detective that he and others were drinking at a Neopit residence on Dec. 20, 2022, when Peters attacked him, stabbing him with a knife.
A witness told a detective that he heard arguing when he entered the front room of the residence and saw Peters throw an object at the man, which hit him in the neck. Blood spurted from the man’s neck which was tended to by the witness and others present while waiting for an ambulance to arrive.
The man said he was stabbed near the left shoulder and in the left side of his head. Peters fled the house, and officers found her hiding in her mother’s basement where they arrested her.
Peters’ mother told a tribal detective that her daughter came to her house upset and saying she had stabbed a guy, revealing his name to her.
The man was transported to ThedaCare Medical Center-Shawano and then airlifted to ThedaCare Regional Medical Center in Neenah where lacerations to his neck were sutured. The man was released the next day.
Peters was indicted in August and faced maximum statutory penalties of 10 years in prison and three years’ supervised release.
On Jan. 16, Peters’ attorney, Thomas Phillip, argued that at her October plea hearing, Peters faced a sentence of 37-46 months calculated from the advisory guideline range. By sentencing, that was recalculated at 51-63 months due to convictions she received in Shawano County Circuit Court on Jan. 5.
“Had Peters’ Shawano County court dates been delayed by two weeks; her guideline range would have been 37-46 months,” Phillip wrote the court.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Andrew Maier recommended a sentence from the low end of the guideline range.
District Judge William Griesbach imposed a 42-month sentence but reduced that by the eight months he credited Peters for time served in tribal jail.
Griesbach also ordered that Peters’ federal sentence be served consecutive to the combined three years’ incarceration imposed on Jan. 5 by Shawano-Menominee County Circuit Court Judge Katherine Sloma. Peters was convicted for threats to law enforcement and being a passenger in a stolen vehicle.
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