Wisconsin Supreme Court rules in favor of Chrystul Kizer, allowing sex trafficking defense in homicide trial

By Doha Madani, NBC News

Prosecutors say Kizer killed a man before she set his home on fire in a first-degree intentional homicide. Kizer says she defended herself against a man who trafficked her.

The high court of Wisconsin upheld a lower court ruling Wednesday that allows Chrystul Kizer to argue self-defense to justify killing the man who she said sexually abused her when she was a minor.

Kizer, 22, is awaiting trial on a first-degree intentional homicide charge, as well as other felony charges, in the death of Randall Volar III. Prosecutors say Kizer shot and killed Volar in 2018, when she was 17, before she set fire to his home.

In a 2019 interview, Kizer said that she met Volar when she was 16 and that he sexually abused her multiple times. She didn’t remember going for a gun or setting a fire, she said.

“I didn’t intentionally try to do this,” she said.

Kizer has tried to use a legal defense under Wisconsin law that allows victims of trafficking to have “an affirmative defense for any offense committed as a direct result” of being trafficked.

An appeals court allowed Kizer to proceed with the defense at trial, a decision the Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed 4-3 on Wednesday. The high court’s ruling said that the defense was available to Kizer “regardless of whether anyone is charged with or convicted of trafficking” and that the facts of the case are to be determined at trial.

Learn more about the rulings in Kizer’s case.

Unfortunately, the trafficking of Black girls in America gets little attention.

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