Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County Circuit Court judge, refused to sentence a child sex predator to jail time, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the only reason. The following year, the defendant killed a woman in a drunk driving crash.
Kenneth D. Wright, 28, pleaded guilty in September 2020 to a charge of third degree sexual assault, a Class G felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison. According to a criminal complaint, Wright, who was then 25, approached a 15-year-old girl as she was walking down the street and shortly after started a sexual relationship with her. She became pregnant and her mother reported to police that she had been sexually assaulted.
Wright was arrested, charged, and was convicted after a guilty plea. That December, however, Protasiewicz, refused to give him any jail time even though he expressed no remorse for his crime during his sentencing hearing, even going so far as to blame his victim.
“Where was your mother at?” he said at the hearing. “Where was the parents? How could you be out late at night? How could we come and kick it like this if you was so watched over?”
Protasiewicz chastised Wright for his refusal to take responsibility for his actions, but still declined to give him any jail time, citing the COVID-19 pandemic as the sole reason.
“But for COVID, I would be giving you some House of Correction time,” she told him. “These are strange times, Mr. Wright. I’m not going to do that.”
Instead, she stayed sentences of three years in prison and five years of extended supervision, meaning that Wright would not have to serve a single day behind bars if he completed five years of probation.
He did not. Just 10 months after Protasiewicz freed him, Wright was charged with killing a woman in a drunk driving crash. Milwaukee Police arrested him on October 16, 2021 after he rolled his vehicle over while driving 83 miles per hour in a 30 mile-per-hour stretch of W. Capitol Dr. His passenger, Jamera Doyle, was ejected from the car and pronounced dead at the scene.
According to a criminal complaint, Wright admitted that he had “he consumed two shots of cognac liquor and smoked less than half a blunt of marijuana,” but testing revealed that he was well over the legal blood alcohol limit. Wright also told investigators that “he did not have a driver's license and was not supposed to be driving” and that “there is a no contact order between him and the victim.”
Wright is charged with second degree reckless homicide, knowingly operating a motor vehicle while suspended and causing death, homicide by the use of a vehicle under the influence of a controlled substance causing death, and violating a no contact order, all as a habitual criminality repeat offender.
On Monday, he pleaded guilty to the reckless homicide and violating a no contact order charges and was convicted. As part of his plea agreement, the other charges were dismissed but read into the record, as were the habitual criminality enhancers.
Wright will be sentenced on March 10th.