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.
Milwaukee, another flyover state. WOW. Really I see my self having absolutely no reason to ever step foot in that state.
Uh … Milwaukee is not a state.
We can agree on that.
It should be legal to kill any person who traffics you.
Is jail where they give her her medal of honor?
I hope someone shook her hand and thanked her for her service before they put her away.
This is fucking infuriating.
Sounds to me like she has a new abuser.
To preface, I am not defending the police or the piece of shit abuser. This was handled extraordinarily horrendously. Police even knew about the guy’s crimes and let him off without a slap on the wrist.
The basis of my thoughts comes from this paragraph in the article:
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.
I don’t know any info beyond what the article gives, but it sounds like at that point she wasn’t being held captive and murdered to get away from her abuser. She actively plotted and had the freedom to travel and kill him. Unless there’s something I’m missing, I don’t think I could consider this as actively being self defense.
If it was a movie she would be the protagonist at least
There’s a whole season of Dexter with basically this premise
No but it was deserved justice for a crime that was going unpunished
Do we really want vigilantism though? Because that’s where this leads.
When the official justice system fails people, some of them will take matters into their own hands. Frankly it’s surprising there isn’t more political violence targeting police and corrupt judges.
And remember, jury nullification exists.
ahem Yes, surprising. And, yes it does.
Maybe the police should do their job for a change.
Which is true, and also doesn’t address the point. (Also, obligatory ACAB.)
The problem with vigilantism is that the vigilante both decides whether an offense has been committed, and what the punishment should be for that offense. If I’ve been hit repeatedly by people speeding in my neighborhood, and cops aren’t giving the speeders tickets, no one in their right mind is going to say that I should start shooting at people driving in my neighborhood. (Or, I would hope no one in their right mind would say that.)
There’s still answers out there that are “more right” than others.
Jill, what do you think the price of this bag of rice is? $8.50? Unfortunately, not correct at all. Bob? The 1950s Hall of Rock and Roll on VHS? That’s a thoroughly nonsensical answer that barely even respects the question! The answer was $11.
Sentencing judge, what do you think this man’s punishment for rape should be? Nothing? Oh, wow, that’s a very obviously wrong answer! Vigilante, your go. Well, we were looking for “A life sentence with chance of parole after 30 years”, but I will say, “Shoot him in the head” is closer to correct.
I feel like some people there’s a “magic light” applied to courtrooms with judges, that makes their judgments more fair by implication. But it’s absolutely possible for three people in lawnchairs discussing matters over beer to make a more fair judgment than some judges.
I feel like some people there’s a “magic light” applied to courtrooms with judges
That’s certainly true if “fair” in your view isn’t the same thing as, “consistent with the law and precedent”.
Let me pose this a slightly different way: a person murders a baby. Should the person be arrested? Should they be tried for murder? Should they be executed? What if the ‘baby’ is actually an 8 week old fetus, and the person is a doctor performing a legal elective abortion? Religious zealots and right-wing misogynists are going to argue that killing the doctor is morally justified and “fair”. Should each person get to apply their own moral code?
This isn’t a case of fighting moral codes. This is a case of battles of safety.
There are many issues of safety that affect all people, including food safety, mental safety, economic safety. All of those have resulted in court battles, as well as court failures. Safety from violence is the basic one, and people will often need to make their decisions around it on a faster basis than courts can proceed.
That’s the practical analysis, rather than the idealistic view where every single disagreement of any kind would receive a protracted court debate with all evidence present.
People are all capable of in-the-moment vigilantism (heck, most murderers feel this way). Society can still evaluate their cases afterwards to say whether they were warranted or not. I argue people should feel some safety from repercussions if society can agree their actions demanded some form of immediacy beyond what courts could provide, and did something good for society or were necessary for their own safety.
A zealot would get no such votes unless they were given a jury of their fellow zealots, and if that’s possible then I can think of no fair justice system in such a society.
We need to change the precedent so that rapists get life in prison.
Precedent can be shit too. Remember when “separate but equal” was precedent?
She knew whether an offense had been committed.
That doesn’t prove it to anyone else, of course, but it doesn’t seem like anyone is (now?) contesting the the offense in question was committed. Just that he got off free and she had no recourse. This is not a one time event, either, it’s a pattern where the law fails to protect people in this situation and then throws the book at them if they take matters into their own hands. If she had not, do you think this dude would still be free? Or would the law have eventually caught up to him, after who knows how many more victims?
You don’t get a license to kill just because the justice system failed you. I’m loving how everyone is screaming about how bad the justice system is with this case yet they think a bunch of pissed off ppl thirsty for revenge is a somehow the more measured and practical solution.
What if after she set the house on fire it burned down the whole block? What if the guy had a victim in the house with him when it happened? Another person pointed out she could’ve destroyed evidence from other victims. Two wrongs don’t make a right
Even if she didn’t harm any other people - the criminal justice system in the US doesn’t allow for the death penalty for cases of rape. (And in point of fact, part of the reason that we don’t do that any more is because it tended to be disproportionately applied against black men accused of assaulting white women.)
I’m not saying it’s more measured or practical, I’m saying it’s inevitable when the system doesn’t serve the people. I’m saying chaos is preferable to tyranny.
Downvoted just f the ACAB. Who said it’s obligatory? Why? That one phrase that reeks of generalization, civilized society has adopted it now? If this is not what it’s supposed to mean, I am open to explanations.
The point is that the system of policing that we have now is corrupt, and doesn’t protect or help victims. We see this quite often with sexual assault, where cops flatly refuse to investigate; rape kits remain untested for decades. The “good” police officers that try to affect change from within the system end up empowering the system, or get thrown out.
So if the current system is corrupt, what are the chances for a vigilante system? Somehow less corrupt? And based on what, the goodness of those who are willing to be vigilantes? Sounds like Police v2 minus any shred of accountability or system to handle abuse cases.
Not defending the cops here but the guy was arrested. The justice system set him free again.
Fair enough, the courts didn’t do thier job. The courts and the police work for us. If they fail us, we have to take over. That should be the defense.
Just a thought: what happens when that “we” is people who - say - think the courts and the police are not doing their job in sending home all “these illegal immigrants” or something like that?
Then we have a nice little civil war again, kill a few million of them, and this time when they surrender for the second time, we do a hard reset of their entire culture - no monuments, no statues, no memorials, no representation or voting for any of them or any who aided or abetted them, or their children, or their children’s children.
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That is supposed to be the motivation for the system to do it’s job… preventing groups with minority opinions from taking matters into thier own hands. But that doesn’t seem to be enough anymore. I don’t suggest this path because it is a good choice. It’s a horrible choice. Innocent people will be hurt or killed for sure. But that is already happening in larger and larger numbers from the systems inaction. And the cost of inaction is past the tipping point with the cost of action. And I see no other choice. But I am open to suggestions.
You literally just described vigilante justice.
Yes, I did. Sadly, it’s time.
The dowvotes on this one worry me.
Yeah the police don’t work so your solution is to go be even worse police? At this point, no justice at all might be better rofl.
I’d rather have vigilante justice than no justice at all.
Vigilante justice has as notoriously bad false positive rate.
So does ‘real’ justice.
The theoretical extreme alternative is a society with two classes, criminals doing whatever they want and victims with no recourse.
Kinda feels like where we are now…
The proper name for them is police, not criminals, silly!
In this case? Absolutely yes.
That’s not how it works.
Are you willing to universalize that though? Are you willing to allow all people that believe that they have been treated unjustly to take justice into their own hands?
Absolutely not.
That’s your risk though. You let this person administer their own justice, why shouldn’t someone else?
Where, exactly, is the line? How do you keep that slope from getting covered with oil and grease?
I mean you talk like it isn’t already a vigilante based system.
Everything you are arguing is already happening. Except the vigilantes are state sanctioned.
Cops pick and choose what laws to both follow AND enforce all the time. And the judges protect them.
Once he was dead, setting the house on fire had nothing to do with justice.
Won’t somebody please think of the property?!
Man, it’s almost like house fires can both spread to other houses and also set off gas explosions that then endanger the lives of innocent neighbors.
And first responders could have died trying to search for occupants or while trying to put out the fire.
Fires can spread. Neighbors could have lost their lives.
Eh, fair point.
[citation needed]
You want a citation for the house being burned not being justice? Do you think the house deserved it?
So charge her with arson, not murder.
And easily could have put innocent people at risk if it had spread to neighboring houses.
Trauma is a hell of a thing to deal with. Feeling unsafe as long as a person’s abuser walks freely, even if they are far away, is VERY common. I’d imagine if it was someone who was repeatedly abused that’d magnify the trauma response.
Not saying she didn’t murder that guy, but knowledge about the psychological effects of sexual abuse does give context to her actions. If she was feeling tortured by this unsafe feeling, like he could come back at anytime to hurt her again, and almost obessing over it(trauma can do this to anyone) I can see why she did what she did.
It’s not like mental health care and support is widely available to people here in the US. Shit is expensive, and that’s if your insurance covers it…if you even have insurance. Add in trying to find someone who specializes in trauma care and it can get really overwhelming and discouraging. People give up on seeking help and spiral.
A lot of things could’ve prevented this. Things like easy access to mental health support, or I dunno…actually putting rapists in jail where they can’t hurt more people.
What could have prevented this is not shooting someone. Can we go around shooting all the people who wronged us in life?
Rapists could just not rape people. Seems simple right? It’s not like that rapist raped someone in self defense. It not like he raped her because he felt unsafe. He did it because he was a terrible human being.
On another note, looking at your comment history you’ve said the same thing multiple times on this article.
Why? Why are you pushing so hard on this topic? Why go so hard defending a rapist? Are you his public defender or something?
Let me save you some trouble. We don’t agree. End of story.
Have a good day sir or madam.
Man, if I went around shooting all the people that raped and imprisoned me for years, the streets would be awash with a whole 0 gallons of blood.
That’s essentially what happened here. She wasn’t at risk any longer and the murder was premeditated. The prosecutor did their job here as they are supposed to, and it was sentenced as it should have been according to the law.
That being said, this is really why we have pardons, and I hope one is granted in this case.
Do we know she wasn’t at risk any longer? I don’t see that in the article. Or what about this guys other victims. Are they also no longer at risk? Again, don’t see mention of that in this article
I can’t find the statistic right now, but it’s something like over 2/3 of women in US prisons (and likely elsewhere) are there for killing or otherwise harming the man who was abusing, raping, and or trafficking them.
Meanwhile a large majority of abusers rapists and traffickers walk away from their crimes scot free.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
Best outcome she could have is she could get early parole, or serve some years of her sentence while the rest is suspended. There have been cases before of victims killing their captors/traffickers and received long term prison sentence, but were later paroled or their sentence had been reduced or commuted to something more lenient.
No its absolutely not. The best and only just outcome would have been acquittal via nullification by the jury.
She took a plea deal to avoid life sentence. Only hope is parole or a pardon.
Alright kids.
There’s this wonderful thing called “Jury Nullification”
That means if 1 juror refuses to convict then there is no conviction.
It is your privilege, right, and I daresay even duty to use this helpful tool when you deem it necessary. If you’re called for Jury Duty on a case. Let’s say non violent drug case. I don’t believe nonviolent drug offenses should be against the law at all except in the case of something really bad like Fentanyl. So if I was called I would refuse to convict if the defendant was there for let’s say Mary Jane.
But don’t ever say those words. Don’t allude to it. Don’t discuss it with your fellow jurors. Don’t Google it after you’ve been called. It’s your secret. But it’s a secret everyone should know if you get my meaning.
Now go forth and make the world a better place.
She took a plea deal. No jury.
I just posted this somewhere else but it belongs here…
It’s a jury’s job to find a defendant guilty or not guilty of a given charge.
When a jury starts considering whether they feel a charge is fair, they’re pretty much just making up the law. At that point you don’t need a court and a jury you could just have a bunch of people deciding the defendants fate based on the vibe.
When you say they “don’t want jurors to know”, they simply want jurors who understand their role in finding a defendant guilty or not guilty. Thinking that nullification is a possible outcome is tantamount to a refusal to fulfil the role of a juror.
Whether a jury feels a charge is fair is the whole reason trial by a jury of peers exists.
It’s a feature of the system, not a bug.
This is patently false.
It might feel like a nice idea to have a jury sitting around thinking about what the fairest outcome might be but that is simply not their role.
A jury’s sole job is to determine whether a defendant is guilty of the charges against them.
If it was a jury’s job to decide on fairness she would’ve gone to trial rather than taking the deal.
I don’t think her decision to take the deal took into account whether jury nullification exists or not. The way you explained it sounds like retrocausality, though I don’t know if that’s the way you meant it.
Jury nullification isn’t about fair outcomes, I should clarify, but about whether the law itself is lawful, representative of the people, or applied lawfully. Maybe that fits into the definition of fair I had in mind, but I was thinking on it more objectively, not subjectively.
There are proponents and opponents within the United States, true, but if a legal system does not permit punishment of jurors, then jury nullification is a logical byproduct of the system. And an important one I would argue. It fits into why trials by jury are important in a democratic legal system - the people have the final say, whether they realize it or not.
Jury nullification doesn’t exist as an intended option to be afforded Jurors.
Judges instruct jurors to find defendants guilty or not guilty, there is no third “nullification” option.
Jury Nullification is the name given to this type of frustrated process. A jury unanimously declaring a defendant not-guilty of charges they know them to be guilty of is a perversion of their function.
In a democratic legal system, the people elect governments to make the laws, police enforce the laws and judges apply those laws. There is no “juries ultimately decide based on the vibe” part of democracy.
Tell that to those abolitionists who were not convicted of harboring fugitive slaves because of jury nullification.
Sometimes laws aren’t just. And as citizens we have a right to stand up to unjust laws.
as citizens we have a right to stand up to unjust laws.
Correct, but that is not the function of a jury.
That is exactly a function of a jury.
Why do we have a jury to decide if a defendant is guilty or not guilty when a judge is trained to do the same thing? Why do we allow a jury at all? I think there’s more to the function of the jury than just guilty/not guilty or else they would be replaced with a different system.
I’m getting weary of repeating myself.
It is very clearly not the role of a judge to decide whether a defendant is guilty or not guilty. They are not “trained” to do that. That is the role of the jury. Hence the phrase “you have been found guilty by a jury of your peers”.
You have a jury to balance the power of the judge, such that a judge can not simply dole out “justice”.
Defendants can elect to have a jury trial. If they don’t have a jury trial, who finds them guilty or not guilty? Is it the judge? If it’s the judge, why do we allow jury trials to occur when every trial could be determined by a justice of the peace?
What is “training” if not education in the laws and legal system? Are judges not educated in law school before becoming lawyers and then justices? Is this irl experience not also considered training?
Honestly I’m not really sure what you’re talking about.
The role of a judge and the role of a jury is a fundamental characteristic of a court. You seem to be mixing them up?
One juror refusing to convict is a hung jury and a mistrial, which prosecutors will then retry.
Jury nullification would require a unanimous vote to acquit.
Time for some Shawshank redemption shit
She’ll probably have an easy time inside. She’s gonna be a Rockstar in there.
shouldn’t EVER have been an issue, even the prosecution knew she was trafficked. if it was a jury trial, fuck them.
Plea deal means it never made it in front of a jury.
yeah, even worse they convinced her to agree. I didn’t read the whole thing.
Tbh, prosecutors are just as evil as the criminals.
Yep. They made an example out of her.
A direct message to otjer victims. Don’t fight back.
It’s fucking disgusting.
Biden could pardon her
Oooo, good idea.
Only if she was prosecuted for a federal crime. IANAL, and I have no idea if this was federal or state, but the president doesn’t have pardon power over the state, only the federal government.
Can the a state governor pardon her?
Yes, Tony Evers could pardon her if he chooses.
Unfortunately inside Wisconsin it would likely be career suicide with an adverse impact on the general election.
Yeah I can’t speak to that, but I believe it.
False
It was just a shot in the dark, I have no idea about the laws preventing or allowing such a thing. I thought he could tie it in to boost support, but apparently it’s a non-issue
That’s ok. I do wish that for every time someone runs a political ad, someone else would run messaging about how this stuff actually works, because it isn’t really well covered.
Heh, “journalism”
Ill reserve the rest of my opinion but two in the head is cleaner than an abuser of that magnitude earned for themselves, feels like at that point you’re basically just preventing any more victims they would have made. Cops have walked away free men after worse executions for worse reasons.
That poor girl, this world is so disgustingly unfair.
Now with that said, it is not your place to obtain whatever you may think is “justice”. We have no need or want for vigilantism, all that creates is more opportunities for mistakes to happen and innocents hurt.
Was it vigilantism? Did you read up on the case? Do you ever stop to think, why is it so easy for these fuckers to sex traffic girls? How they typically manage to get away with it for so long, against so many different women? You know, it’s ALMOST like the system is set up to make it easier for them to commit the crime than it is for the girls to find a safe way out. Weird, huh?
Now with that said, it is not your place to obtain whatever you may think is “justice”. We have no need or want for vigilantism, all that creates is more opportunities for mistakes to happen and innocents hurt.
Yes it is your place. If the law doesn’t account for that and unjustly puts you behind bars, the problem is with the law.
This case is an easy one. The problem is folks seeking justice for slights that aren’t so heinous and the whole drawing the line thing.
I’m totally on board with her killing the dude, if I was on the jury I’d have ignored the charge from the judge 100%. There should be a “what you did is illegal and you are guilty, but no jail for you” kinda deal.
That’s jury nullification. And every district does it’s best to make sure juries never hear about it. Some have even outlawed it. But it’s a natural consequence of the jury system. If you can’t nullify the charges as a jury then you aren’t a jury, you’re a rubber stamp.
It’s a jury’s job to find a defendant guilty or not guilty of a given charge.
When a jury starts considering whether they feel a charge is fair, they’re pretty much just making up the law. At that point you don’t need a court and a jury you could just have a bunch of people deciding the defendants fate based on the vibe.
When you say they “don’t want jurors to know”, they simply want jurors who understand their role in finding a defendant guilty or not guilty. Thinking that nullification is a possible outcome is tantamount to a refusal to fulfil the role of a juror.
That is them finding not guilty. It’s called nullification because the jury instructions are usually something stupid like, “if you believe he did the act you must vote guilty.”
Which just isn’t true. The entire purpose of juries is to avoid miscarriage of justice by law. Otherwise you can just outlaw a skin color and juries are forced to rubber stamp that.
It just doesn’t hold up in practice or theory.
The entire purpose of juries is to avoid miscarriage of justice by law.
This is patently false. Juries have a very clear role, to consider the charges against a defendant and weigh the evidence supporting those charges and conclude whether the charges are likely to be true beyond any reasonable doubt.
There is no step whereby jurors must consider the likely penalties arising from the charges and whether or not those penalties seem fair given the context - that is very clearly the role of a judge.
Otherwise you can just outlaw a skin color and juries are forced to rubber stamp that.
Correct. There’s a democratic process for creating laws. If a government creates a law making having a given skin color a criminal act, then the role of a jury in such a case would be to find the defendant guilty. In this absurd hypothetical example, there are a myriad of better options to avoid this eventuality, such as not electing a government that would create such a law.
So you’re down for authoritarian democracy. Good to know. Of course you’d want a rubber stamp jury. But our founders instituted juries the way they did specifically because parliament passed and enforced unjust laws. To say they must convict on the most absurd of laws flies in the face of our entire history.
The problem is folks seeking justice for slights that aren’t so heinous and the whole drawing the line thing.
The problem of there being no justice to seek for would be worse. And attractiveness of using legal systems is in them being actually useful for victims.
You are talking about jury nullification.
That’s not vigilantism. That’s escape. We’re locking this woman up for escaping her situation.
She’d already escaped. She was free of him. Then she got a gun, hunted him down, and shot him.
This is why she couldn’t claim self defense or a battered woman defense - she’d already escaped.
So glad you’re just taking the prosecution’s word as fact. Her defense was that she was literally in the process of being raped.
Another uninformed and angry commenter getting upvoted by this awesome community.
Did you read the article? It sounds like she had escaped. Maybe her persecutor had psychological control over her but not physical, that makes it vigilantism.
The facts of the case are barely present in the public sphere because she was denied her self defense argument in court. It’s entirely possible Volar had tracked down escaped women before and entirely possible she was in the process of escaping others working with him. Literally the only thing the prosecution said is that she traveled between cities.
And if this was vigilantism, why hasn’t she gotten the same treatment as Kyle Rittenhouse? It’s the same state but when she travels with a gun, gets in a fight and ends it she’s not allowed the self defence argument he had?
Obviously Chrystul is aware of all the facts and she decided that her actions didn’t meet the legal definition of self defence.
They literally denied her the defense.
So Chrystul is aware of all the facts and understands that her actions didn’t meet the legal definition of self defence ?
According to the system. That did give that defence to the guy who traveled to a protest to shoot people.
I need that F to doubt button.
gets in a fight
No fight here.
Not according to her attorneys.
