Associated Press
MILWAUKEE — A Wisconsin man once found guilty in his wife’s death after prosecutors said he poisoned her with antifreeze could go free after a bail hearing that’s set for Wednesday afternoon.
Mark Jensen’s expected appearance comes after an appeals court recently upheld a federal judge’s decision to overturn his 2008 conviction, setting up a retrial in Kenosha County.
The three-judge panel of the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said late last year that a handwritten note from Jensen’s wife, Julie, which said “if anything happens to me, he would be my first suspect,” was improperly accepted into evidence. The decision stated that the letter, written two weeks before Julie Jensen’s 1998 death in Pleasant Prairie, violated Mark Jensen’s constitutional right to face his accusers.
It wasn’t clear whether Jensen, who was sentenced to life in prison, would be able to afford to post bail. Attorney Craig Albee, of the federal public defender’s office, said in an email that he will appear in court with Jensen, along with a lawyer from the state public defender’s office.
Julie Jensen’s body was found in the home she shared with her husband and their two sons. Her death, initially considered a suicide, started a case that took more than nine years to go to trial.
The defense said Julie Jensen was depressed and killed herself after framing her husband.
Prosecutors said Jensen killed his wife to make room for his mistress and that he searched the Internet for ways to make her death look like a suicide.
Copyright 2016 The Associated Press