20-year kidnapping sentence thrown out

The death of Duane Carpenter’s estranged wife before she could testify at his trial on a kidnapping charge was the basis for a court ruling Wednesday vacating a 20-year prison sentence handed down in 2004. Carpenter, 60, had already served his time for two other felony counts in the case and was ordered released from prison. A jury found Carpenter guilty of forcing his wife, Jodi, from her parents’ home in the town of Waukechon at gunpoint on April 28-29, 2002. Jodi Carpenter died in 2003 due to complications from heart surgery. Testimony she gave at a preliminary hearing in the case was read to the jury at Duane Carpenter’s trial. Wednesday’s ruling followed a motion from the state recommending the kidnapping sentence be vacated because of a subsequent U.S. Supreme Court decision that held defendants must be given the right to confront witnesses testifying against them. That decision was handed down in March 2004, one month after Carpenter’s trial. The Court of Appeals denied Carpenter’s motion for a review of his case in March 2006. Petitions for a review to the state Supreme Court and federal courts were also denied. Judge William Kussel Jr., who granted Carpenter’s release Wednesday, had also granted him the right to begin a new appeal in May 2013. Kussel agreed at that time with defense arguments that Carpenter’s post-conviction counsel was ineffective for not raising the issue of ineffective trial counsel. Wednesday’s hearing had been expected to be the first hearing in Carpenter’s new appeal process. Instead, Shawano-Menominee County Assistant District Attorney Catharine White told the court that the Supreme Court ruling in Crawford v. Washington left her no choice but to ask that the kidnapping sentence be struck down. “I am required by professional ethics to make a motion to vacate the conviction of Mr. Carpenter for the offense of kidnapping,” White said. The vacated sentenced called for 20 years in prison and 10 years of extended supervision. Carpenter had also been convicted of false imprisonment and being a felon in possession of a handgun. He was sentenced on those counts to two years in prison and two years extended supervision. He would have completed his prison term on those two charges in 2006 and would have completed extended supervision in 2008.