Jackson Vogel was sentenced to life in prison without parole for strangled his cellmate (19-year-old Micah Laureano, a gay black man) within the Green Bay Correctional Institution, which prosecutors described as a racial and homophobic motivated murder.
A Wisconsin prisoner was found guilty by a ju judge last month of first-degree intentional murder.
Before the verdict, Vogel, who served a 20-year term in 2016, attempting to kill his mother at the age of 16, told Brown County Circuit Judge Donald Zuidmulder that he was “sorry” about his actions, but he appears to have shown no signs of regret.
“I may not show regret, I may not be able to understand emotions, I may not be able to understand myself regret,” Vogel said. “That doesn’t mean people don’t feel sorry for what they’ve done at any time, because I’m sorry.”
As reported by Green Bay Press Official Journal At the time, Laureano was placed in the same cell as Vogel in the prison treatment center hours before he was killed.
Around 9:30pm, during the daily inmate count, corrections officers noticed a pink paper covering the windows of their mobile doors. He ordered the residents to remove it, and Vogel comped.
Looking inside the window, the officer saw Laureano unconsciously, hanging from the upper bed, whose arms and ankles tied up by an orange cloth. Paramedics later declared he had died at the scene.
The corrections officer detained Vogel for making “a large number of unprovoked comments,” and admitted that he unconsciously knocked Loreano, tied him down and strangled him with his hand. Within the cell, officers found strips of orange cloth and handwritten notes containing racist and homophobic slurs, along with the words “kill everyone.”
Vogel is allegedly told investigators he killed Laureano because he was “bored” and “checked every box” including his cellmate being black and gay. He frequently thought about killing people and claimed that strangle someone gave him a sense of “ecstasy.”
At the time of his death, Laureano was 18 months left for three years’ sentences due to robbery-related charges. Shortly before he was killed, he wrote to his mother, Phyllis, expressing his fear of his safety at the Green Bay Correctional Facility. A letter arrived after his death, according to Green Bay Fox affiliate wluk.
Phyllis Laureano filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Green Bay Correctional Facility observer Christopher Stevens and Jared Hoy of the Wisconsin Department of Corrections, alleging that he was negligent in placing his son in Vogel cell. However, her attorney has not completed the required procedures, and according to WLUK, a judge overseeing the case could dismiss it.
Source: Metro Weekly – www.metroweekly.com
