Talk about a tale of two cities!
In Kenosha last week, prosecutors successfully concluded a ten year effort to bring Mark Jensen to justice for the 1998 murder of his wife Julie. At almost the same time Kenosha prosecutors were aggressively pursuing their case against Jensen, prosecutors in Madison were just as aggressively plea bargaining their case against Eugene Zapata down to next to nothing.
Whoever said that you can't get away with murder has never been to Dane County.
According to a statement he made in court, Eugene Zapata bludgeoned his estranged wife Jean to death on the morning of October 11, 1976. He then strangled her with both his hands and a cord in order to make certain that she was dead. Zapata then cleaned up the blood, rolled his wife into a tent and dumped her body in a wooded area.
Shortly after the murder, Zapata moved the body to a piece of property he purchased in Juneau County. In 2001, after deciding to move to Nevada, Zapata retrieved the body again and put it in a rented storage locker in Sun Prarie.
In 2004, detectives reopened the investigation and obtained enough evidence to lead to murder charges being brought against Zapata in 2006. At a trial last Fall, 10 jurors were convinced that the State had established his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. One juror was undecided. One idiot held out for acquittal causing the jury to be deadlocked and the judge to declare a mistrial.
Rather than retry Zapata on the homicide charges, the Dane County District Attorney's Office allowed him to plead guilty to a charge of reckless homicide. He was subsequently sentenced to five years in prison - the maximum possible. Under the law in effect at the time of the crime, Zapata will most likely be released after serving three years.
Three to five years for a guy who brutally murdered his wife and actively concealed the crime for 30 years. Life sure is cheap in Dane County.
Admittedly, the prosecution didn't know the full details surrounding Zapata's criminal activity until he made his statement in open court. At the same time, they put together a case that was strong enough to convince 10 jurors that Zapata was guilty. To bail on a case like this because one or two jurors were hung up on some aspect of the prosecution is shameful.
I can't help but be struck by the fact that the same DA's Office that didn't have the guts to retry Zapata for murder is hell bent on retrying Scott Jensen on public corruption charges. This decision is despite the fact that, since Jensen did not appeal his misdemeanor conviction, the DA's Office can at best only get a couple of extra months tacked on to Jensen's sentence should they ultimately succeed with the retrial.
Put another way, Brian Blanchard is willing to spend tens (perhaps hundreds) of thousands of dollars in a very problematic effort to try to get an extra couple of months for Jensen in jail (along with trying to saddle him with the stigma of a felony conviction). At the same time, Blanchard was willing to let a murderer walk away with a five year sentence rather than retry him.
I guess some cases are more personal than others for some prosecutors.
I recognize that Eugene Zapata is 69 years old and that he committed the murder 30 years ago. Still, it's hard to look at this case and not come to the conclusion that the Dane County District Attorney's Office allowed Zapata to get away with murder.
It's also pretty lucky for Zapata that he didn't kill his wife in Kenosha. Given their diligence in pursuing Mark Jensen, you'd have to think that they wouldn't have been as quick to plea bargain Zapata's case away.
It's really a tale of two cities.
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