{"id":6266,"date":"2024-09-05T20:52:26","date_gmt":"2024-09-05T20:52:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=6266"},"modified":"2024-09-05T20:52:26","modified_gmt":"2024-09-05T20:52:26","slug":"the-justice-systems-stunning-betrayal-of-chrystul-kizer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/?p=6266","title":{"rendered":"The Justice System\u2019s Stunning Betrayal of Chrystul Kizer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Stacy M. Brown<\/p>\n<p>Devore Taylor doesn\u2019t hold back why she\u2019s fighting for her daughter\u2019s freedom.<\/p>\n<p>The opening words on a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/fundrazr.com\/FreeChrystulKizer?ref=ab_AtCUHBrt2LZAtCUHBrt2LZ\">fundraiser page<\/a>\u00a0started four years ago remains harrowing: \u201cHello, I am the mother of, Chrystul Kizer, who was a minor at the time of her incarceration and is currently facing charges in Kenosha, WI, because she defended herself from a known sex trafficker,\u201d Taylor wrote.<\/p>\n<p>There\u2019s been a lot of efforts to free Kizer. However, the fundraiser, which has raised more than $67,000 to date, a Facebook page urging authorities to\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/freechrystul\/\">\u201cFree Chrystul,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and a Wisconsin law that seemed to side with Kizer wasn\u2019t enough to stop a judge from sentencing the now 24-year-old to more than a decade in prison for killing the man who allegedly sex trafficked her.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n<div class=\"newspack_global_ad scaip-1 fixed-height\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-caf9af3267-0\">A Kenosha County judge added five years of extended supervision to Kizer\u2019s sentence in the 2018 death of Randall Volar, 34. She was given credit for 570 days, about one and a half years, of time served.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>According to the Wisconsin State Public Defender\u2019s office, the court denied Kizer eligibility to engage in any early release programs at the Department of Corrections; she should be freed in 2033.<\/p>\n<h2 id=\"h-chrystul-kizer-s-story\" class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Chrystul Kizer\u2019s Story\u00a0<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Kizer, who is Black, pled guilty in May to second-degree reckless murder in Volar\u2019s killing, avoiding a trial and a possible life sentence.<\/p>\n<p>Prosecutors said Kizer shot Volar at his Kenosha home in 2018, when she was 17, and that she then burned his house down and stole his BMW. Kizer was charged with multiple counts, including first-degree intentional homicide, arson, car theft and being a felon in possession of a firearm.<\/p>\n<p>Incidentally, Kenosha is the same city where Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted after killing two men at a Black Lives Matter Rally.<\/p>\n<p>Kizer told police she encountered Volar on a sex trafficking website. She said that for the year before his death, he had been mistreating her and marketing her as a prostitute. She said she shot him as he tried to touch her.<\/p>\n<p>Her attorneys argued that Kizer could not be held criminally accountable for any of it because of a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.legis.wisconsin.gov\/statutes\/statutes\/939\/iii\/46\/1m\">2008 state statute<\/a>\u00a0that exempts sex trafficking victims from \u201cany offense committed as a direct result\u201d of being trafficked. Over the last decade, most states have approved similar legislation that provides sex trafficking victims with some amount of criminal protection.<\/p>\n<p>Arguing in court pleadings that victims of trafficking feel imprisoned and occasionally feel as though they had to take matters into their own hands, anti-violence organizations swarmed to Kizer\u2019s defense. In 2022 the state Supreme Court decided Kizer could raise the defense during trial.<\/p>\n<p>However, prosecutors argued that it was impossible for Wisconsin lawmakers to have meant for safeguards to include homicide.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think about all of the people who harmed Chrystul who are walking free today. There are individual men in southeastern Wisconsin who paid to sexually abuse Chrystul. They\u2019re walking free. Only Chrystul is being held responsible,\u201d\u00a0 Claudine O\u2019Leary, an independent consultant for survivors of human trafficking with\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.rethinkresources.net\/\">Rethink Resources<\/a>\u00a0who worked with Kizer\u2019s defense team, said on the NPR show,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.wpr.org\/shows\/wisconsin-today-2\">\u201cWisconsin Today.\u201d\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n<div class=\"newspack_global_ad scaip-3 fixed-height\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-dc2e0e383b-0\"><strong>A History of Black Girls Over-Sexualized, How Kizer Navigated Life\u2019s Challenges, Traumas<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>Many observed that the case mirrors that of Cyntoia Brown, which played out over a 15-year span in Tennessee. In 2006, Brown, also Black, was convicted of aggravated robbery and first-degree murder for killing 43-year-old real estate agent Johnny Allen, whom she went home with after he picked her up for sex at a Sonic Drive-In in Nashville. Fearing that Allen was reaching for a gun, she claimed she took a revolver from her handbag and killed him.<\/p>\n<p>She then escaped with Allen\u2019s firearms and cash. She drove off in his pickup vehicle. Brown, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for the homicide, was freed from prison in 2019 after serving 15 years.<\/p>\n<p>Author of \u201cNo Visible Bruises: What We Don\u2019t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us,\u201d Rachel Louise Snyder, a New York Times contributing opinion writer, described the justice system\u2019s history of betraying Black women and girls like Kizer.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIn this world, Black girls, especially, are routinely over-sexualized by law enforcement and the judiciary,\u201d\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2024\/08\/22\/opinion\/chrystul-kizer-prison-sentence.html\">she wrote<\/a>. \u201cThe lead investigator in the case against Volar wrote of one of Valor\u2019s victims that she was \u2018prostituting herself out.\u2019 He was writing about a 15-year-old.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Snyder noted that Kizer was trying, \u201cin the best way she knew, to help her family.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-4    \">\n<div class=\"newspack_global_ad scaip-4 fixed-height\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-ca419f6974-0\">\u201cShe posted the ad on backpage.com so she could buy food and school supplies,\u201d Snyder determined. \u201cKizer didn\u2019t know that under federal law, it is illegal to solicit someone under the age of 18 for prostitution. What she did know were the layers of systemic racism embedded into her life \u2013 poverty, homelessness, abuse, hunger.\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<p>After the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling, Snyder noted that Kizer had a choice.<\/p>\n<p>She said Kizer could go to trial and risk getting a life sentence or take a plea.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHer life for his, if you didn\u2019t count how he\u2019d already hijacked hers \u2014 or take a plea deal and some lesser time to serve. She faced up to 30 years on the plea. But 30 years wasn\u2019t life, at least.\u201d She took the plea, Snyder continued.<\/p>\n<p>Snyder considered how Kizer would have felt going into a trial after all she had been through.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-5    \">\n<div class=\"newspack_global_ad scaip-5 fixed-height\">\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-45854c9b0e-0\">\u201cShe could have risked a trial, of course. But consider what the world had taught her by then: a poor Black girl with men\u2019s violence and control all around her, with a law-enforcement system that prioritized her abuser\u2019s freedom at the cost of her trauma, a world that said sometimes you were hungry and sometimes you needed school supplies, but no good comes from wanting,\u201d Snyder concluded. \u201cFor six years her case was in and out of court, all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and what did that get her? An impossible gamble. What were the odds she\u2019d prevail; in this world we\u2019ve made for her?\u201d<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Source: Published without changes from Washington Informer Newspaper<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Stacy M. Brown Devore Taylor doesn\u2019t hold back why she\u2019s fighting for her daughter\u2019s freedom. The opening<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6267,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-regular-column","category-social-justice"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6266"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6268,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6266\/revisions\/6268"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/6267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/africanamericanvoice.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}