{"id":806,"date":"2013-03-13T17:04:26","date_gmt":"2013-03-13T22:04:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uwpowerswi.com\/?p=806"},"modified":"2015-04-13T14:00:39","modified_gmt":"2015-04-13T19:00:39","slug":"uw-la-crosse-alumni-prosecute-criminal-cases-statewide-to-serve-people-preserve-justice","status":"publish","type":"campus_story","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/story\/uw-la-crosse-alumni-prosecute-criminal-cases-statewide-to-serve-people-preserve-justice\/","title":{"rendered":"UW-La Crosse alumni prosecute criminal cases statewide to preserve justice"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kevin Potter stands in his office on the eighth floor of the Wisconsin Department of Justice overlooking the capitol. From a shelf filled with UW-La Crosse football memorabilia, he grips a coffee mug with a picture of himself and three other teammates in UW-L jerseys. The picture is from one of the years they won the conference championship under legendary Coach Roger Harring.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou don\u2019t always appreciate some of the things coaches imparted on you, but looking back you realize how smart they were,\u201d says Potter, a 1977 graduate. \u201cThey\u2019re not just teaching you about football, they\u2019re teaching you about life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Principles he learned from Harring \u2014 teamwork and camaraderie \u2014apply to the team of prosecutors he manages today within the WDJ\u2019s Division of Legal Services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you have a private practice, you can represent one person and work for their interest. But when you are working here, you are working for the citizens of this state,\u201d says Potter. \u201cYou need to be part of a team benefiting the whole.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prosecutors on Potter\u2019s team come together to score their own kind of touchdown. They have to piece together a collage of evidence, testimony and background interviews to find what is just \u2014 and then do what is right.<\/p>\n

It sounds simple, but Potter and his staff say the line between what\u2019s right and wrong isn\u2019t always clear. Finding the truth requires collaboration. Three UW-L alums and WDJ attorneys \u2014 David Wambach, \u201981, Tara Jenswold, \u201995, and Michael G. Schaefer, \u201984 \u2014\u00a0 regularly work with local law enforcement and district attorneys around the state to prosecute criminal cases with the goal of seeing that justice is done.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Working for justice in Wisconsin<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sometimes finding what is true and just requires sleepless nights and a lot of questions from national news media. Wambach, an assistant attorney general with WDJ, attracted cameras from \u201c48-Hours Mystery\u201d while digging up the 30-year old Marilyn McIntyre Cold Case.<\/p>\n

McIntyre, 18, was murdered on the morning of March 11, 1980, while her three-month old baby slept nearby. The jury found Curtis Forbes, a long time family friend, guilty. Wambach\u2019s dedication to solving the case earned him the 2011 Wisconsin Association of Homicide Investigators Prosecutor of the Year award.<\/p>\n

But McIntyre debates whether it was his toughest case. That title likely goes to an investigation where he had no crime scene or forensic evidence. He was tasked with proving that a young man \u2014 Derek Nicholas Anderson\u00a0 \u2014 killed his family on the Fourth of July weekend in 1998 in Jefferson County and buried the evidence 800 miles away in remote North Carolina woods. He first had to convince the jury that the crime actually took place in Wisconsin.<\/p>\n

He called the case an \u201cuphill battle,\u201d but, in the end, \u201cextremely satisfying\u201d because he was able to do justice by putting the son behind bars.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are two sides to justice,\u201d notes Wambach. \u201cYou take people who created horrible, heinous offenses and see that they are held accountable, and, on the other end, you are making sure only someone who should be charged is.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"UW-La<\/a>
A team of UW-La Crosse alumni works to serve the people of Wisconsin in the Wisconsin Department of Justice. They include, from left, Kevin Potter, class of \u201977, Tara Jenswold, class of ’95, and David Wamback, class of ’81.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But when the offenses aren\u2019t \u201chorrible\u201d or \u201cheinous,\u201d justice becomes a bit more blurry. In the vehicular homicide cases that UW-La Crosse Alumna Tara Jenswold prosecutes, some of the defendants are careless in ways we\u2019ve all been at least once. They text while driving, speed or don\u2019t pay attention for a brief moment on the road.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe victims of these crimes are, for the most part, truly innocent, in the wrong place at the wrong time,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

She prosecuted a landmark case this summer involving a Sun Prairie woman who a jury found was criminally negligent for texting as she drove, causing her to hit and kill a UW-Madison student in 2010. Jenswold\u2019s case was the first time someone in Wisconsin was convicted of homicide by texting and driving, and one of only a handful in the U.S.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Working for the people<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThere isn\u2019t a day that doesn\u2019t go by that I don\u2019t think about the victims,\u201d says Jenswold. \u201cThat\u2019s what motivates me. That\u2019s why I work 90 hours a week during a trial.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wambach recalls the 11-year-old victim he called up to the stand to tell the jury her stepfather had murdered her mother. That was 16 years ago, but Wambach still vividly recalls the crime scene and the young girl who saw justice when the trial was over and her stepfather was put behind bars for life. Throughout those 16 years Wambach has kept in touch with that young girl, now a mother of three with a nursing degree.<\/p>\n

\u201cHow rewarding that is to make that kind of positive difference in someone\u2019s life,\u201d he says. \u201cThere are attorneys who make six figures, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll ever have that kind of satisfaction.\u201d<\/p>\n

Successful results don\u2019t just happen. A case with holes won\u2019t be prosecuted, says Potter. The team needs to work together \u2014 just like he learned on the UW-L football field.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kevin Potter stands in his office on the eighth floor of the Wisconsin Department of Justice overlooking the capitol. From a shelf filled with UW-La Crosse football memorabilia, he grips a coffee mug with a picture of himself and three other teammates in UW-L jerseys. The picture is from one of the years they won […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":2524,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","institution":[104],"story_category":[],"class_list":["post-806","campus_story","type-campus_story","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","institution-uw-la-crosse"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story\/806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/campus_story"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/campus_story"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=806"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"institution","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/institution?post=806"},{"taxonomy":"story_category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/all-in-wisconsin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/story_category?post=806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}