Shawn A. Hodgkins, a Waukesha man who was charged with multiple domestic abuse-related charges in November after being accused of battering his pregnant girlfriend on three occasions, is heading back to jail.
Hodgkins, 29, was found guilty to two misdemeanor battery counts of domestic abuse as well as resisting or obstructing an officer after pleading no contest Jan. 19.
Seven other charges, including two felony counts of strangulation and suffocation, were dismissed as part of a plea agreement.
Hodgkins received a two-year prison sentence from Judge Lee S. Dreyfus, who has previously presided over criminal cases involving Hodgkins.
Hodgkins will spend 18 months behind bars for one of the battery charges, while the remaining six months of his sentence he will be on extended supervision.
He will receive credit for the 98 days he already spent in jail after his arrest.
Dreyfus stayed an additional one-year prison sentence for the second battery charge and also stayed another one-year prison term for the obstruction charge.
However, for those two charges, Hodgkins will serve two consecutive two-year probation terms. He also owes the court $528.
Hodgkins gets violent
According to the criminal complaint, Hodgkins spit in his 21-year-old girlfriend's face and struck her when she came over to get her belongings on Oct. 23. He had just been released from jail in August 2015 after his probation was revoked in 2013 that related to burglary charges from nearly a decade ago.
The complaint said the victim, who was 10 weeks pregnant with Hodgkins' child, lived with Hodgkins at a house he rented at 345 Wilson Ave.
According to the complaint, Hodgkins became upset when she came over early in the morning because he said she was disturbing his sleep. He then allegedly pulled her hair, pushed her into a closet door, on which she struck her head, and then knocked her on a nearby bed. He also struck her in the upper lip, head, chest and abdomen, the victim said in the complaint.
Hodgkins told the homeowner in the complaint that he is unable to get out of his gang — the Latin Kings — because "he is too high up, and it's in his heart."
When officers tried to arrest Hodgkins at a Waukesha apartment he was physically resistive, uncooperative and screamed profanities at police, according to the complaint.
Impact on victim
The woman also told police Hodgkins was physically abusive toward her on two occasions a month earlier, but she didn't report the incidents because she was scared.
In a victim impact statement filed in court in January, the victim said the incidents with Hodgkins has led her to seek therapy for the emotional and physical pain she experienced. She also wrote she relocated to "protect myself from the people that have been involved with Shawn and I whom now are people I am unable to trust."
She also wrote that because Hodgkins smashed the windshield to her vehicle and punched the rear driver's side window during one of the incidents, she doesn't have any transportation, affecting her ability to get a job and attend appointments.
Past charges
This conviction is the latest in an already checkered past for Hodgkins.
When he was 19, Hodgkins was charged with two counts of felony burglary of a building-dwelling over the course of two months — one in late 2004 and another in early 2005.
He was subsequently sentenced in July 2005 by Dreyfus to three years in state prison and four years of extended supervision for the 2005 burglary charge. But in 2009 his extended supervision was revoked.
At the same sentencing hearing in 2005, Dreyfus sentenced Hodgkins to five years' probation for the 2004 burglary charge. After his probation was revoked in April 2013 for that offense, he received a 30-month prison sentence.
The victim said in the complaint that Hodgkins told her, during the October 2015 incident, he had cut off the electronic monitoring bracelet he was required to wear after he was released on parole from prison in August 2015.