The high court of Wisconsin upheld a lower court ruling Wednesday that allows Chrystul Kizer to argue self-defense to justify killing the man who she said sexually abused her as a minor.
Kizer, 22, is awaiting trial on a first-degree intentional homicide charge, as well as other felony charges, in the death of Randall Volar III. Prosecutors say that Kizer shot and killed Volar in 2018, when she was 17, before setting fire to his home.
In a 2019 interview, Kizer said that she met Volar when she was 16 and that he sexually abused her multiple times. She didn’t remember going for a gun or setting a fire, she said.
“I didn’t intentionally try to do this,” she said.
Kizer has attempted to use a legal defense under Wisconsin law that allows victims of trafficking to have “an affirmative defense for any offense committed as a direct result” of being trafficked.
An appeals court allowed Kizer to proceed with the defense at trial and that decision was affirmed in a 4-3 ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday. The high court’s ruling stated that the defense was available to Kizer “regardless of whether anyone is charged with or convicted of trafficking” and that the facts of the case are to be determined at trial.
The court also looked into the question as to whether Kizer’s crime was a “direct result” of being trafficked, and determined that the statute on the matter is too abstract and does not offer a definition of the phrase.
“Unlike many crimes, which occur at discrete points in time, human trafficking can trap victims in a cycle of seemingly inescapable abuse that can continue for months or even years,” the court ruling read.
It went on to say that because of this cycle a crime “that is unforeseeable or that does not occur immediately after a trafficking offense is committed can be a direct result of the trafficking offense, so long as there is still the necessary logical connection between the offense and the trafficking.”
Kizer said she met Volar, then 34, through Backpage — a now-shuttered sex ads website — and he sold her to men for sex.
The night of the fire, Kizer said in a Washington Post interview that she went to Volar’s home after an argument with her boyfriend at the time. She had a gun in her purse at the time that she went to Volar’s home.
According to her account, Volar had given her a drug that night and they began to watch a movie. Volar began to touch her, and they fought when she refused to have sex with him.
“I just thought that I didn’t want to do that stuff anymore because I was trying to change,” she said.
He pinned her to the ground and her actions were a result of self-defense, she said.
Kizer originally gave a different story to police, saying she saw another woman shoot Volar and that she didn’t know him, according to the Washington Post. But Kizer said she lied because she was scared.
Volar had been previously arrested in 2018 on charges of child enticement, using a computer to facilitate a child sex crime and second-degree sexual assault of a child, but was released the same day, according to the Washington Post.
The Kenosha County District Attorney’s Office previously confirmed it was working on a case against Volar at the time of his death.
Kizer’s case was given renewed attention after the acquittal of teenager Kyle Rittenhouse last year. Rittenhouse was charged with the fatal shootings of two people, as well as injuring a third, during the protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.
Rittenhouse, who was 17 at the time, argued that he was in fear of his life at the time of the shooting. A jury found him not guilty.
Char Adams and Erik Ortiz contributed.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
