Judge wants to block shining evidence
A Racine County judge who’s had trouble with the rules and ethics of the bench apparently struggles with similar parameters governing Wisconsin’s hunters.
Circuit Judge Michael Piontek was charged in April 2020 with being a party to the crime of illegal deer shining, a criminal offense, over an incident at Piontek’s cabin in Ashland County months earlier. He was ticketed for three other hunting violations, too.
On Monday, a fellow judge at the opposite end of the state will decide Piontek’s motions to dismiss key evidence in the case. Piontek says a game warden violated his constitutional rights by looking into his cabin with binoculars, and trespassing.
In May 2019, the Supreme Court suspended Piontek for five days for his conduct in two criminal cases in 2014.
Piontek, 71, a longtime lawyer, defeated incumbent Michael Nieskes in a 2012 election for Racine County circuit judge. In December, he announced his retirement, effective in April, 14 months before his current term would end on July 31, 2022.
According to the criminal complaint, Department of Natural Resources warden Dan Michels, while investigating a tip about illegal hunting, saw a buck walk into an area that was illuminated by a flood light mounted on the side of Piontek’s cabin around 7:30 p.m. on Nov. 26.
The warden then heard a gunshot, saw the deer buckle then run off, followed by Piontek and John Tussler, with a flashlight. When confronted by the warden, Tussler said he’d shot the deer from inside the cabin with Piontek’s rifle.
After noticing the cabin was surrounded by ten times the legal two gallons of bait — like apples, carrots, corn and sugar beets — the warden also cited Piontek for unauthorized use of illegal bait and being a party to the violation of shooting a deer after shooting hours.
Tussler, 59, pleaded no contest to the same misdemeanor charge in July, and was fined $1,000 and banned from hunting for three years. A count of possession of THC was dismissed, along with citations for hunting over illegal bait, and hunting after hours.
Last fall, Piontek filed a motion to suppress evidence. He argued that Michels’ preliminary surveillance of Piontek’s property, without a warrant, on Oct. 31, and Nov. 8 and 9, 2019, violated the the judge’s rights to privacy.
Michels later obtained a search warrant and placed cameras on Piontek’s land. In the affidavit in support of that search warrant, Michels noted observing, with binoculars, a cocked crossbow inside the cabin near what appeared to be an open window, as well as the flood lights and the deer bait.
Piontek sought to have not only such preliminary observations declared unconstitutional, but also to suppress his and Tussler’s statements to Michels the night of Nov. 26, and to suppress evidence Michels collected from inside the cabin. Piontek let the warden inside after he threatened to obtain a warrant to search the cabin.
The cases were all prosecuted by Ashland County District Attorney David Meany and heard by Circuit Judge John P. Anderson of neighboring Bayfield County, after Ashland County’s judge, Kelly McKnight, recused himself.
Piontek’s lawyer, Joseph Rafferty, of Ashland, argues that both by entering the land and using binoculars, Michels violated Piontek’s rights and that any information from those visits used to support the search warrant request were there therefore invalid.
Piontek also faces a citation, issued in April 2020, which charges that in early November 2018, he took a small buck deer to a butcher during the archery season that also showed evidence of having been shot.
According to the judge’s motion to dismiss evidence, a confidential informant’s tip to Michels about that incident appeared to form the basis for his investigation a year later. But the motion contends the tip was vague and that it would take expert testimony to distinguish wounds on the buck as being from a bullet or a bolt from a crossbow.