Editor’s note: This story contains content that readers may find disturbing.
GREEN BAY – A Green Bay Correctional Facility inmate who entered an insanity plea Tuesday in connection with the August murder of a fellow inmate faces additional charges for allegedly sending a judge and prosecutor death threats months earlier.
Jackson Vogel, 24, is accused of fatally strangling 19-year-old Micah Laureano on the night of August 27. He was charged in Brown County District Court with first-degree intentional homicide, a hate crime.
During a hearing Tuesday morning, Vogel entered a plea of not guilty and not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, which is commonly referred to as an insanity plea.
The hearing was scheduled for January 27-31. The trial could involve two steps – one to determine whether Vogel killed Laureano and the other to determine whether he should be held criminally liable based on his mental state at the time of Laureano’s death.
According to the Brown County Sheriff’s Office, Vogel and Laureano shared a cell at the jail’s treatment center for just hours before Laureano’s death. Laureano’s mother, Phyllis Laureano, told USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin that she is working to file a lawsuit against the Green Bay Correctional Facility for placing her son in the same cell as Vogel, who was serving a 20-year sentence for attempted murder. Phyllis Laureano stated that she felt the prison failed to keep her son safe.
Laureano, on the other hand, was serving a three-year prison sentence for concurrent robbery and battery cases in Waukesha and Columbia counties.
On October 3, the same day as his preliminary hearing in the Brown County murder case, Vogel was charged in Racine County with threatening a family member of a court officer and threatening a prosecutor: both Class F felonies.
A criminal complaint in the case says a Manitowoc County Circuit Court judge received a “threatening letter” from Vogel on May 5, and a prosecutor received a similar letter on May 28. Both letters were sent from the Racine Youth Offender Center, where Vogel was incarcerated at the time.
Vogel, a Two Rivers native, was sentenced in 2017 in Manitowoc County to 20 years in prison followed by 20 years of extended supervision for attempting to murder a family member when he was 16 years old.
In a letter to the judge, Vogel thanked the judge for sending him to prison, which he said “has become my home.” He also wrote that he planned to “torture” and kill the victim in the attempted murder case and her family, and then – according to the complaint – do the same to the judge’s family.
“Torture is a funny tool. Don’t you think so?” as the complaint states, we read in the letters.
In his letter to the judge, Vogel also referred to his release after 13 years and wrote: “Call my bluff! Only supermax can stop me or my death,” the complaint reads.
The complaint says the letter to the prosecutor contains anti-Semitic and misogynistic language and states that “people are just cattle that should be killed.”
Both letters refer to cannibalism.
RELATED: A Green Bay inmate accused of killing a fellow inmate in a hate crime will go on trial
According to online records, Vogel was transferred from the Racine Juvenile Correctional Facility to the Dodge Correctional Facility on June 18 and then transferred to the Green Bay Correctional Facility on June 19.
His virtual first appearance in the Racine County case is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. Friday.
In the Brown County murder case, Vogel’s next court appearances are two final pretrial hearing dates of 11:30 a.m. on November 22 and 11:30 a.m. on January 3.
Laureano’s death is the second homicide in two years at the Green Bay Correctional Facility related to a hate crime investigation. In October 2022, 40-year-old Joshua Scolman fatally stabbed 25-year-old Timothy Nabors and attempted to kill another person while distributing drugs.
Scolman was convicted after an April jury trial of first-degree intentional murder and one count of attempted first-degree intentional murder, both as hate crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of release.
Contact Kelli Arseneau at 920-213-3721 or [email protected]. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @ArseneauKelli.
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