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.
Wanting someone who killed in desparation in well-known and very extenuous circumstances a lighter punishment in no way condones the crime.
Many think the justice system should prioritize rehabilitation, not retribution.
Instead of fixing people, retribution just breaks them even further, making it more likely they'll commit a crime in the future, oftentimes because they're forced to by circumstances they find themselves in when (if) they're finally set free.
If somebody goes to the zoo, jumps in the lion pit, and throws rocks at a lion, I imagine a lot of people wouldn't "wish the death penalty on him for his sheer offence" when he's pulled out of the enclosure. However, I also imagine many people would feel unsympathetic if said person happened to die at the lion's jaws, nor wish for the lion to be punished.