Chrystul Kizer agrees a plea deal to avoid life term for shooting dead Randall Volar, whom she said was her sex-trafficker.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.