Slender Man defendant appeals denial of bail reduction
Two 12-year-old girls are charged with attempted first-degree intentional homicide for what police say was a plot, planned over months, to kill their classmate. Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier reportedly stabbed their victim 19 times with a five-inch blade.
One of the two Waukesha girls charged in the Slender Man stabbing has asked the Court of Appeals to overturn a judge's decision not to let her await trial with her grandparents under human and electronic monitoring.
In an emergency petition filed late last week, Morgan Geyser's attorney argues that denying her request violates prohibitions against excessive bail because she is no longer dangerous, would be subjected to multiple layers of supervision, and her current bail of $500,000 is way more than necessary to secure her appearance in court.
Geyser, 13, and Anissa Weier, 14, are charged as adults with attempted first-degree intentional homicide in the May 31, 2014, stabbing of their sixth-grade classmate, who survived 19 stab wounds.
Arrested within hours as they tried to walk to northern Wisconsin, the girls told police they committed the crime to impress or appease Slender Man, a fictional internet character.
The case has dragged on as both girls were evaluated for competency, and then sought to have their cases transferred to juvenile court. Their appeals of the decision to keep them in adult court have been pending before the same Court of Appeals since last year.
In the meantime, Geyser, who had been diagnosed during her competency evaluations as suffering from early onset schizophrenia, returned to a state mental hospital under civil commitment and for the first time received medication and other treatment that doctors said have stabilized her condition.
Specifically, she no longer claims to have contact with various fictional characters, including Slender Man, and has begun showing emotions appropriate to her situation, such as remorse and regret, according to her attorneys.
After her discharge back to the Washington County Juvenile Detention Center, where she stays alone in a windowless cell, her attorneys asked that her $500,000 bail be cut to $5,000 and she be allowed to live with her grandparents in Manitowoc County under electronic monitoring pending trial.
Last month, Waukesha County Circuit Judge Michael Bohren denied the request and a chance to be moved from a West Bend juvenile jail where she's been for most of 23 months.
Two days before the hearing, Weier's attorneys made a similar request, which Bohren also denied after a much shorter presentation.
In the emergency petition, Geyser's attorney, Anthony Cotton, argued that cash bail is appropriate only to assure a defendant comes to court. Considerations like community safety and the prevention of witness intimidation are better addressed by conditions of release, the petition states.
At the April hearing, witnesses discussed the impact of the Chapter 51 civil commitment process, the medication and the follow-up monitoring by social workers and doctors.
Geyser's grandfather, a retired police chief, testified that between him and his wife, they would have constant contact with Geyser, who would also be subject to electronic GPS monitoring that would alert a monitoring company any time she left her grandparents' home or yard except for scheduled treatment.
Cotton disputed Bohren's concern that because the girls walked five miles after the stabbing — the start of what would have been a 220-mile trek to the forest where they believed Slender Man lived in a mansion — they are a danger to flee trial.
"Whether these circumstances show 'tremendous ability as young kids of 12 to be out on the land,' is debatable," he wrote.
As of Tuesday, there was no indication whether the Court of Appeals has accepted the petition.
