A jury determined that a white Wisconsin inmate should never be released after being convicted of killing his cellmate. His crime: being Black and gay, Fox 6 News reports.
Jackson Vogel, 25, was found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide for killing 19-year-old Micah Laureano at the Green Bay Correctional Institution in 2024. Vogel admitted to investigators that he killed Laureano due to his sexual orientation and race.
The victim’s body was found hanging from the top bunk of the cell shared with Vogel by a guard Aug. 27. A criminal complaint revealed Laureano’s hands and feet were tied together with orange material. Vogel claims he knocked Laureano out, tied his hands and feet together, and then strangled him.
Vogel faces a mandatory life sentence ahead of his scheduled June 27 sentencing.
According to the Green Bay Press Gazette, it didn’t take much for Vogel to make up his mind about his disdain toward Laureano, who had only been his cellmate for five days. Laureano was serving a three-year prison sentence for assault and vehicle theft, but he served only seven months of his term. In closing arguments, Brown County Deputy District Attorney Caleb Saunders used quotes that Vogel made to officers after killing the victim. ‘I wanted to kill him the first day I met him,’” Saunders quoted.
“‘I told a psychologist I would do this, and they still put me in a cell with him. … I just wanted to have killed a person. I got my wish.”
Vogel allegedly told investigators he committed the crime due to being “bored,” and Laureano “checked all the boxes,” including race and sexual preference, referred to by Vogel using slurs.
His hateful ways were on record as he was known for making white supremacist statements and death threats before being paired in a cell with Laureano. Pieces of the same orange material were found in the cell in addition to handwritten notes reading, “Kill all humans!” and profanities toward Black people and gay people.
The rate of hate crimes toward members of the LGBTQ+ community has grown at an alarming rate. A report from UCLA’s School of Law Williams Institute found gay people experienced 106 out of 1,000 chances of experiencing violent crimes in comparison to 21 in every 1,000 people who are not members of the LGBTQ+ community. among non-LGBT persons.
Black members of the demographic had the highest rates of victimization overall, with Hispanic and white members following after.
Vogel’s defense attorneys, Ann Larson and Luke Harrison, didn’t deny that their client, serving 20 years for the attempted murder of his mother at just 16 years old, killed Laureano, but tried to prove it wasn’t intentional. The legal team claimed the victim made sexual advances toward Vogel on several occasions before Vogel strangled him in a “fight or flight” moment.
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