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In a groundbreaking decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that a teenage girl who killed her sex offender may have a chance to be acquitted of all charges.
The ruling is a major victory for Chrystul Kizer, now 22, a black woman who faces life in prison for crimes she committed when she was 17, and for trafficking advocates who have spent decades pushing for laws to protect victims like her.
Kizer has not denied killing 34-year-old Randall Phillip Vollar III in 2018. For years, she has fought to be able to show evidence to a judge and eventually a jury that her actions were a “direct result” of exploitation and abuse , to which Vollar subjected her. She hoped to use a previously unused Wisconsin law designed to offer legal protection to some trafficking victims who are often coerced or cornered into committing crimes while being exploited.
He sexually abused underage girls. Then one of them killed him.
The law states that such victims have an affirmative defense for “any crime committed as a direct result” of trafficking. But the prosecutors and Kizer’s lawyers have been at odds over what “direct result” actually means.
They also argued over whether the law would grant Kizer a “full defense” to the charges, meaning she could be fully acquitted, or whether her charge should only be reduced from first-degree murder to second-degree murder — meaning that she would still face up to 60 years in prison.
The court, in a 4-3 decision, resolved the issue, affirming the lower court’s decision and siding with Kizer on both issues.
“We hold this [the law] is a complete defense to a charge of first degree premeditated murder,” Judge Rebecca Frank Dallett wrote.
Now Kizer’s lawsuit, which has been stalled for years, can move forward.
If a judge agrees there is “some evidence” that her crimes were a “direct result” of trafficking, she will be able to make the same argument to a jury.
If the jury sides with her, she could be acquitted of some or all of the charges against her.
“Krystul Kizer deserves a chance to present her defense, and today’s ruling will allow her to do so,” Colleen Marion, one of Kizer’s public defenders, said in a statement Wednesday. “Although the litigation in this matter is far from over, we, along with Crystal and her family, believe that today’s decision affirms the legal rights afforded by Wisconsin statute to victims of sex trafficking facing criminal charges.”
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, whose office argued against Kizer in court, said in a statement: “Today’s decision brings much-needed clarity to the scope of affirmative action protections for survivors of the heinous crime of human trafficking.”
The news is a triumph for those who have rallied around Kizer. There are more than 1.5 million signatures on a Change.org petition calling for all charges against her to be dropped. Celebrities and high-profile sex-trafficking survivors, including authors Cyntoia Brown-Long and Sarah Cruzan, say Kizer needs therapy, not prison. Sex-trafficking advocates and lawyers, including those who have represented victims of financier Jeffrey Epstein, believe Kizer’s case is a clear example of the extremes to which victims of trafficking are sometimes taken to survive.
Kizer was first arrested in 2018 after Kenosha police found Vollar shot twice in the head and his house set on fire. The investigators already knew who he was. Records show Vollar, who is white, was under investigation for sexually abusing another black child. Police recently found “hundreds” of videos of child sexual abuse in his home during a raid, including videos he filmed of his own abuse of black girls.
One of those girls, records show, was Kizer.
Kizer told The Washington Post in 2019 that Vollar paid her in cash, dinners and gifts. Under Wisconsin and federal law, this meets the definition of child sex trafficking because Volar is exchanging something of value for sex. Regardless of the circumstances, minors cannot legally consent to engage in commercial sex.
Read The Washington Post’s investigation into the Kristul Kizer case
But while Vollar was investigated by Kenosha police, they allowed him to remain free for months. One night in June, he paid Kizer to take an Uber to his house. Kizer, who has yet to give evidence in court, told police she was tired of Vollar touching her and that he was on top of her on the ground when she went for the gun she had brought in her purse. In interviews with The Post, she said Vollar tried to rip her jeans. She said she set fire to his house and fled in his car because she panicked.
Despite video evidence that Vollar sexually abused Kizer, prosecutors chose to bring the highest possible charge against her: first-degree murder, which carries an automatic life sentence in Wisconsin. They say evidence shows Kizer planned the murder, lied about it and was only trying to steal Volar’s BMW.
The affirmative defense law, Assistant Attorney General Timothy M. Barber argued in March, “is not a license for a victim to kill a trafficker.”
Kizer remained in jail for two years before her supporters posted her $400,000 bail in the summer of 2020, using bond funds raised after the killing of George Floyd. It received even more attention in 2021 after a jury acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse, a white teenager, in the same county where Kizer was charged. Rittenhouse claimed he acted in self-defense when he killed two people at a protest in 2020. Kizer also claimed she acted in self-defense.
But even as people around the world learned her story, her potential fate remained the same as the appeals process dragged on.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court’s decision makes clear what she will need to prove to obtain the protection of the protection law.
[Chrystul Kizer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court and a watershed sex-trafficking case]
The judges defined what “direct result” should mean in the eyes of the law: “if there is a logical, causal connection between the crime and the trafficking, such that the crime did not result, in substantial part, from other events, circumstances, or considerations, other than the traffic violation.”
That interpretation is even broader than the appeals court’s ruling, which ruled that Kizer would have to prove her crimes were a “logical and foreseeable consequence” of being trafficked. Instead, the state’s highest court recognized the unique, long-lasting trauma experienced by victims of trafficking.
“Unlike many crimes that occur at discrete points in time, human trafficking can trap victims in a cycle of seemingly inevitable abuse that can continue for months or even years,” the majority opinion states. For that reason, the judges wrote, Kizer would only have to prove that there was a “necessary logical connection” between her crimes and the trafficking she experienced, even if there were “other factors.”
Legal experts noted that even the three dissenting justices, all of whom are conservative, did not appear to dispute the majority opinion’s definition of “direct result.” Instead, they argued that the law should not provide “full protection” for murder.
But in a rare move, Justice Rebecca Grassel Bradley broke with her fellow conservatives and sided with the court’s liberal bloc. During oral arguments, Bradley was vocal about the severity of the victimization Kizer experienced.
“They found evidence that this 34-year-old man was paying girls for sex, using them to make child pornography, prostitution them with other men,” Bradley said in March.
With Bradley on their side, the justices made clear what the ruling means for Kizer — and for other trafficking victims charged with crimes that may not be as serious as murder. The decision creates an avenue for these victims to show the courts how their exploitation was a factor in what they did.
“There’s something disheartening and disheartening about saying that this young woman just wants to explain the circumstances to her victim that led to this horrible event, and she can’t do it?” said Caitlin Noonan of Legal Action Wisconsin. “Now the court accepts that Hristul should have the opportunity to present his story. That’s all she wants from the start.
The decision will likely have ramifications far beyond Wisconsin.
Most countries have some version of laws to protect victims of trafficking who are charged with crimes. But most states specify specific crimes to which the defense applies. Victims in many states can seek protection only if they are convicted of prostitution. Other states go broader, naming crimes that trafficking victims are often ordered to commit by their abusers, such as transporting drugs or committing fraud.
The anti-trafficking movement is pushing for laws that give victims much more leeway, citing the severe psychological and physical trauma victims suffer — and the way it alters their brain chemistry and decision-making.
“For too long there has been this tragic pattern of trafficking victims being punished instead of being protected by the legal system,” said Lindsay Ruff, an attorney who represented multiple groups in a brief supporting Kizer. “This statute and this case can be a model for other states that want to provide this kind of broad protection to victims of trafficking.”
Wisconsin’s decision could also bolster efforts to pass a proposed federal law named after Cruzan that would allow judges more leeway in handling cases of child trafficking victims.
Meanwhile, Kizer’s case may finally be headed for a resolution. Her next court hearing is scheduled for September.
correction
A previous version of this story was incorrect…
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