State v. Stetzer

1

State of Wisconsin, Plaintiff-Respondent, v. Joan L. Stetzer, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 2023AP874-CR

Court of Appeals of Wisconsin, District II

March 27, 2024

This opinion will not be published. See WIS. STAT. RULE 809.23(1)(b)4.

APPEAL from a judgment of the circuit court for Waukesha County No 2017CM1014: PAUL BUGENHAGEN, JR., Judge. Affirmed.

LAZAR J. ^[1]

¶1 Joan L. Stetzer appeals from a judgment of conviction for violating WIS. STAT. § 346.63(1)(b), operating a vehicle with a prohibited alcohol concentration ("PAC") (second offense). She argues that the trial court misapplied the law with respect to her defense of coercion, which was based on her being a battered spouse coerced to drive with a PAC to flee assault by her husband. For the following reasons, this court concludes the trial court correctly applied the law and affirms.

BACKGROUND

¶2 Stetzer stipulated that her blood alcohol concentration was above the legal limit for driving when she was arrested at around 2:13 a.m. on May 24, 2017. She waived her right to a jury trial and requested a court trial instead. The trial court concluded that her defense of coercion did not apply even it accepted all facts presented by Stetzer "as true up to the time that [she] leaves the driveway." Those facts, gleaned from Stetzer's own testimony as well as that of her husband and an expert witness on domestic violence, are as follows.

¶3 As a child, Stetzer witnessed (and was a victim of) domestic violence (specifically her father's physical abuse of her mother) in her home. She grew up and become a physician married a man named Bill in 1989, and lived with him and their four children (ages twelve to nineteen) in a home in Pewaukee at the relevant time. In early 2015, Stetzer discovered that Bill had been unfaithful. Fights regarding his infidelity led to numerous instances of Bill physically (as well as emotionally and sexually) abusing Stetzer in the years that followed.

¶4 In the first instance of physical abuse, in January 2015 Bill threw Stetzer into a fireplace, causing injury to her hip. In March of that year, he threw her down multiple times screaming and yelling at her. In July 2015, Bill started yelling at Stetzer at a restaurant; she walked home, and he followed in his car while yelling at her and calling her offensive names. In August 2015, Bill shoved Stetzer into an open cupboard door causing her to scratch her face. Roughly a year later, in the summer of 2016, Stetzer was living at the couple's lake property in Merton when she stopped by the Pewaukee house to get some clothes. Bill shoved her several times, causing her to "face plant[]" in the driveway. Finally, Stetzer recounted an incident in the fall of 2016 during which Bill used his hands to twist her neck ninety degrees, again causing pain and injury.

¶5 On the night leading up to the arrest underlying this case, May 23, 2017, Stetzer had several glasses of wine in the course of making and eating dinner. Another argument between Bill and Stetzer about Bill's affairs erupted after dinner. Bill "went irate" and used a "lot of profanity again." According to Stetzer, Bill pushed her several times before "[g]etting in [her] space, grabbing [her] arm, [and] pushing [her] shoulders." Bill then left the house.

¶6 Bill returned several hours later, at around 1:00 a.m. on May 24, because he learned (from a call from his daughter as well as a text message from Stetzer) that Stetzer had thrown all his clothes outside on the patio where they were becoming soaked in the rain. Stetzer, who was asleep in pajamas, woke up from the sound of the door slamming and Bill "yelling and screaming and swearing." In the ensuing confrontation, Bill screamed at her to pick up his clothes and said, "I'm going to take you out if you don't do it." After shoving her several times toward the door leading out to the patio, he pushed her down a stairway to get her out of his way. Stetzer fell down seven or eight stairs and experienced pain in her shoulder, chest, neck, and hip. She got up, walked up the stairs, and then "drank two large pour glasses of wine" rather than going to the emergency room, which she did not want to do "because [she] was embarrassed and humiliated."

¶7 At that point, Bill threatened to call the police. Stetzer walked outside and stood in the rain with no phone, driver's license, or shoes. Eventually, she went back into the kitchen, where Bill told her to "get the hell out" while running at her "with his fist closed and a look that [she had] never ... seen on his face." He grabbed a heavy pot and chased her into the garage, where he threw the pot at her. Stetzer got into her truck. The keys were in the visor inside of the truck. She locked the doors and started the truck. At that point, she had her son's cell phone with her (which she had grabbed from the kitchen when she went back inside after standing in the rain), though she testified that it was passcode locked. Bill was pounding on the windows of the truck, saying, "I'm going to take you out you fucking bitch."

¶8 Doctor Darald Hanusa, an expert on domestic violence who had been hired by the defense and who had conducted a six-hour interview of Stetzer, testified that this moment-"where [Stetzer was] in her car and he's banging on the window"-"presents a classic dilemma for her" in that she had to choose between staying and possibly "being injured" and taking the "risk to drive a car to flee to safety." She knew she had consumed alcohol and agreed that it was not "a good idea to be driving." But, as Hanusa opined, women with a history of abuse often experience intense fear that can provoke a "fight, flight, or freeze" reaction. Stetzer explained that she "didn't feel [she] had another alternative" but to drive away. She drove away. Initially, she "didn't even know" where she was going; she was "just trying to escape." She testified that her Pewaukee house was in "a pretty rural area" without many neighbors. She decided to go to her lake house in Merton, approximately a fifteen-minute drive away.

¶9 When she was approximately halfway to the lake house, Stetzer passed a squad car on the side of the highway. She stated that she "thought about" stopping there and asking for help, but that she had "called the police on two ... occasions when being physically abused," and that each time, "Bill lied and [she] got arrested." She did not stop for help because she thought the police wouldn't believe her. The officer that she passed stopped her shortly afterward and, eventually, Stetzer was taken to a hospital and arrested for driving with a PAC.^[2]

¶10 The State conceded that Stetzer met her burden of production for a coercion defense-in other words, that she satisfied the "relatively low" threshold of putting forth "some evidence" of each component of the defense. See State v. Schmidt, 2012 WI.App. 113, ¶34, 344 Wis.2d 336, 824 N.W.2d 839; State v. Peters, 2002 WI.App. 243, ¶27 n.4, 258 Wis.2d 148, 653 N.W.2d 300. In closing, the State acknowledged Stetzer's history of domestic abuse. It then pointed out that when she left her home on May 24, after her husband chased her with a pot, she had a phone with her that-despite being passcode locked-could have been used to place an emergency call. It also noted additional options available to Stetzer besides driving all the way to Merton with a PAC, one being going to an open hotel in Pewaukee and another being stopping at the police car she saw. The State questioned whether it was reasonable to believe that driving to the lake house was Stetzer's only option for escape.^[3] ¶11 Stetzer's counsel used his closing argument to remind the court that it was "the State's burden to disprove [the coercion defense] beyond a reasonable doubt" and that "[t]he standard is what a person of ordinary intelligence and prudence would have believed in the defendant's position under the circumstances that existed at the time of the alleged offense ... when the decision was made to unfortunately drive under the influence." Counsel emphasized Hanusa's testimony that victims like Stetzer tend to be secretive about their abuse because of the embarrassment they can encounter in seeking help and treatment and argued that "the only safe place she knew at that time of the day [was] the home in Merton."

¶12 After a brief recess, the trial court explained its conclusion that the defense of coercion did not apply. This conclusion was based on "the timing issue" the court saw with the facts as presented by Stetzer. "[T]ak[ing] everything as true up to the time that Dr. Stetzer leaves the driveway," the court stated, and "accepting all the circumstances that were going on at that point," including "that definitely she had to get out of there, that there was a fear of great bodily harm or death," the court found that "once she's out of the driveway she has more options." It continued:

Beyond a reasonable doubt she passed a police officer.... [S]he was clearly driving. She passed a police officer. She's in a city she knows. So beyond a reasonable doubt she knows there's other means of safety around other than going to the lake house ....

Of much importance in my consideration, the law doesn't ask me to determine if her actions were reasonable. I could find that she was acting reasonably in trying to go to that lake. The law requires that this is the only means of prevention. It may have been reasonable for her to think well this is a safe thing for me to do because this has worked in the past, and that's where this becomes difficult on me as a person, but I can't rule just upon my own personal beliefs. I can't take sympathy and say I don't want Dr. Stetzer to be in this position because it's unfair. She shouldn't have been in

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