A Milwaukee woman has been jailed for 11 years for killing the man that prosecutors said had sex trafficked her as a teenager.

The sentence, issued on Monday, ends a six-year legal battle for Chrystul Kizer, now 24, who had argued she should be immune from prosecution.

Kizer was charged with reckless homicide for shooting Randall Volar, 34, in 2018 when she was 17. She accepted a plea deal earlier this year to avoid a life sentence.

Volar had been filming his sexual abuse of Kizer for more than a year before he was killed.

Kizer said she met Volar when she was 16, and that the man sexually assaulted her while giving her cash and gifts. She said he also made money by selling her to other men for sex.

  • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    This is a failure on her attorney to make a good case. There is no way a normal person votes to convict here. There has to be something we’re missing as to why they agreed to a guilty charge.

    • bitflag@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      She actively plotted and traveled to get revenge and clearly didn’t act in self defense. While it’s easy to be sympathetic to her story, her guilt seems difficult to deny.

      • FelixCress@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        This:

        Police said that Kizer travelled from Milwaukee to Volar’s home in Kenosha in June 2018 armed with a gun. She shot him twice in the head, set his house on fire and took his car.

        Whatever we think about this guy, it still was a murder.

      • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        This is a classic case of the differences between lawful good, lawful neutral, and neutral good.

        Lawful good would feel conflicted but settle on conviction, because it was premeditated and not self defense.

        Lawful neutral would convict and feel no conflict at all. The law was broken, nothing else matters.

        Neutral good would not convict, because they don’t think the law adequately handles this kind of situation.

        The problem is, within the legal system, neutral good is seldom an option – by definition it’s going to be some kind of lawful. And that sucks here.

    • ???@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      “Four months before Volar died, police arrested him on charges of sexual assault but released him the same day.”

      Yeah maybe we are not told about how corrupt police is.

        • dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          She wasn’t in any danger, so it wasn’t self defense. She grabbed a gun, got in a car, drove 40 miles to a completely different city, shot the dude twice, set his house on fire, and stole his car. It’s an open and shut case, so the jury would have to ignore all evidence to say she is not guilty (which some jurors might do because the murder feels justified).

          As happy as I am about his death, this is vigilante justice. She committed premeditated murder, acting as the judge, jury, and executioner. I do not want cops to have that freedom and don’t want normal people to have it, either.

          • thejoker954@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            This seems like a situation where maybe her mental health should be considered a factor?

            It’s not like she killed him for no reason/little reason. Premeditated on her end or not - she was abused and tortured by this man.

            And the police let him go.

            So yeah I’d argue she was and continues to be done dirty by the system.

            • AA5B@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Probably, but the system is also slow and we don’t know what would have happened

              • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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                3 months ago

                We know what did happen. The system let a known predator back on the street. If he didn’t abuse her again it would be someone else. That’s good enough justification for her actions for me.

          • Katana314@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            I don’t know how easily I’d agree that it wasn’t self defense. If it were me, knowing someone is out there that feels vengeful towards me, and that the law has failed to challenge, does not feel like a safe situation, even if I’m not physically locked at their address.

            It doesn’t seem like a very reliable plan to wait until he’s broken into your house and disabled your alarm before vigilantly grabbing your gun in time and defending yourself from him. The element of surprise is a far safer approach.

          • Kalysta@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            Do we know she wasn’t in danger? Just because she wasn’t in immediate danger doesn’t mean she wasn’t fearing for her life

        • ???@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          I wonder if she was coerced to do so under false pretenses. But I also saw others in the comments point out that it looked more like a premediated murder than a self defense one since she apparently went to his house to kill him, so she was not held against her will at the point of the murder.

          • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            She was free from him and sought him out. She drove from Milwaukee to Kenosha, shot him twice in the head, set his house on fire, and stole his car. It was premeditated murder.

          • Malfeasant@lemm.ee
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            3 months ago

            This. Court appointed attorney will always push you to take the deal, they’re so overworked, going to court is an absolute last resort. And a private attorney is unaffordable to most people.

            • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
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              3 months ago

              This is from the article:

              Kizer’s case had tested the leniency granted to victims of sex trafficking. Some states have implemented laws - called “affirmative defence” provisions - that protect victims from some charges including prostitution or theft, if those actions were the result of being trafficked.

              Kizer had tested whether an “affirmative defence” for trafficking victims could be used for homicide. In 2022, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled she could.

              The ruling allowed Kizer to use evidence to demonstrate her abuse at the time of the crime. The case attracted widespread attention and Kizer received support from activists in the #MeToo movement.

            • fine_sandy_bottom@lemmy.federate.cc
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              3 months ago

              No, I don’t think I would.

              I don’t really know that much about the case and the likelihood of a favourable outcome. Chrystul does, and she decided to take the deal, so I probably would too.

              I’m simply saying that she could’ve mounted a defence at trial if she chose to do so.

    • AA5B@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The guy was criminal scumbag that deserved justice, for sure.

      But after she was free at him, she came back with clear premeditation then burned the house to hide evidence. If not for the circumstances of her abuse, she’d likely get a much worse charge

    • fuzzy_ad@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      There has to be something we’re missing as to why they agreed to a guilty charge.

      You and all the commenters in this thread not doing a single moment of research before commenting is what is missing.

        • fuzzy_ad@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          You’re welcome! Sorry I can’t jump on the premeditated vigilante murder normalization train, looks fun!

          • Pacattack57@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            Nobody said normalize it. This is an extreme case where the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Yes she’s a murderer. She killed a serial child rapist. She deserves some leniency. I guarantee your world view would be different if you were a victim.

            The world isn’t black and white.