Jackson Vogel appears in Brown County court, May 21, 2025. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – Jackson Vogel says his conviction for killing his prison cellmate, Micah Laureano, should be overturned because the judge should not have allowed Vogel’s comments about cannibalism to be heard by the jury, according to an appeal filed Wednesday.
Vogel is serving a life prison term with no chance at parole for the Aug. 27, 2024, murder of Laureano at the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
According to the 21-page appeal, the judge should not have allowed the jury to see video of an interview Vogel did where he references cannibalism because it was irrelevant to the murder case.
“Simply put, Vogel’s comments about cutting up a body and eating it were not relevant in any way to the trial of Mason’s death. The circuit court applied the wrong legal standard to determine the admissibility of such evidence when it claimed there was no legal challenge to admissibility left after Miranda Goodchild had been waived. As such, admission of the evidence was an erroneous exercise of the circuit court’s discretion,” wrote attorney Joseph Riepenhoff.
The appeal also contends the jury should have been given an instruction about ‘adequate provocation,’ given Laureano’s repeated sexual advances towards Vogel.
“The jury in Vogel’s case was not given instruction on self defense or any other form of affirmative privilege under the law for using deadly force. The jury was not provided the full legal context for Vogel’s actions afforded under the law, therefore their verdict is negated by its limited application. To argue that such an absence is harmless error would be to diminish the import and tradition of the laws of affirmative defenses,” the motion states.
The appeal asks for the case to be re-tried without the cannibal references and with an instruction about provocation.
The state’s reply is due in a month. Vogel will be given a chance to respond to that before the appeals court considers the case. A ruling is several months away.
Meanwhile, Laureano’s family has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Wisconsin corrections officials for placing him in a cell with Vogel. No trial date is currently scheduled, as the parties continue pre-trial briefings.
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