State v. Joan L. Stetzer

COURT OF APPEALS
DECISION NOTICE
DATED AND FILED This opinion is subject to further editing. If
published, the official version will appear in
the bound volume of the Official Reports.
March 27, 2024
A party may file with the Supreme Court a
Samuel A. Christensen petition to review an adverse decision by the
Clerk of Court of Appeals Court of Appeals. See WIS. STAT. § 808.10
and RULE 809.62.

Appeal No. 2023AP874-CR Cir. Ct. No. 2017CM1014

STATE OF WISCONSIN IN COURT OF APPEALS
DISTRICT II

STATE OF WISCONSIN,

PLAINTIFF-RESPONDENT,

V.

JOAN L. STETZER,

DEFENDANT-APPELLANT.

APPEAL from a judgment of the circuit court for Waukesha County:
PAUL BUGENHAGEN, JR., Judge. Affirmed.

¶1 LAZAR, J.1 Joan L. Stetzer appeals from a judgment of conviction
for violating WIS. STAT. § 346.63(1)(b), operating a vehicle with a prohibited

1
This appeal is decided by one judge pursuant to WIS. STAT. § 752.31(2)(c) (2021-22).
All references to the Wisconsin Statutes are to the 2021-22 version unless otherwise noted.
No. 2023AP874-CR

alcohol concentration (“PAC”) (second offense). She argues that the trial court
misapplied the law with respect to her defense of coercion, which was based on
her being a battered spouse coerced to drive with a PAC to flee assault by her
husband. For the following reasons, this court concludes the trial court correctly
applied the law and affirms.

BACKGROUND

¶2 Stetzer stipulated that her blood alcohol concentration was above the
legal limit for driving when she was arrested at around 2:13 a.m. on May 24, 2017.
She waived her right to a jury trial and requested a court trial instead. The trial
court concluded that her defense of coercion did not apply even it accepted all
facts presented by Stetzer “as true up to the time that [she] leaves the driveway.”
Those facts, gleaned from Stetzer’s own testimony as well as that of her husband
and an expert witness on domestic violence, are as follows.

¶3 As a child, Stetzer witnessed (and was a victim of) domestic
violence (specifically her father’s physical abuse of her mother) in her home. She
grew up and become a physician, married a man named Bill in 1989, and lived
with him and their four children (ages twelve to nineteen) in a home in Pewaukee
at the relevant time. In early 2015, Stetzer discovered that Bill had been
unfaithful. Fights regarding his infidelity led to numerous instances of Bill
physically (as well as emotionally and sexually) abusing Stetzer in the years that
followed.

¶4 In the first instance of physical abuse, in January 2015, Bill threw
Stetzer into a fireplace, causing injury to her hip. In March of that year, he threw
her down multiple times, screaming and yelling at her. In July 2015, Bill started
yelling at Stetzer at a restaurant; she walked home, and he followed in his car

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No. 2023AP874-CR

while yelling at her and calling her offensive names. In August 2015, Bill shoved
Stetzer into an open cupboard door causing her to scratch her face. Roughly a
year later, in the summer of 2016, Stetzer was living at the couple’s lake property
in Merton when she stopped by the Pewaukee house to get some clothes. Bill
shoved her several times, causing her to “face plant[]” in the driveway. Finally,
Stetzer recounted an incident in the fall of 2016 during which Bill used his hands
to twist her neck ninety degrees, again causing pain and injury.

¶5 On the night leading up to the arrest underlying this case, May 23,
2017, Stetzer had several glasses of wine in the course of making and eating
dinner. Another argument between Bill and Stetzer about Bill’s affairs erupted
after dinner. Bill “went irate” and used a “lot of profanity again.” According to
Stetzer, Bill pushed her several times before “[g]etting in [her] space, grabbing
[her] arm, [and] pushing [her] shoulders.” Bill then left the house.

¶6 Bill returned several hours later, at around 1:00 a.m. on May 24,
because he learned (from a call from his daughter as well as a text message from
Stetzer) that Stetzer had thrown all his clothes outside on the patio where they
were becoming soaked in the rain. Stetzer, who was asleep in pajamas, woke up
from the sound of the door slamming and Bill “yelling and screaming and
swearing.” In the ensuing confrontation, Bill screamed at her to pick up his
clothes and said, “I’m going to take you out if you don’t do it.” After shoving her
several times toward the door leading out to the patio, he pushed her down a
stairway to get her out of his way. Stetzer fell down seven or eight stairs and
experienced pain in her shoulder, chest, neck, and hip. She got up, walked up the
stairs, and then “drank two large pour glasses of wine” rather than going to the
emergency room, which she did not want to do “because [she] was embarrassed
and humiliated.”

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No. 2023AP874-CR

¶7 At that point, Bill threatened to call the police. Stetzer walked
outside and stood in the rain with no phone, driver’s license, or shoes. Eventually,
she went back into the kitchen, where Bill told her to “get the hell out” while
running at her “with his fist closed and a look that [she had] never … seen on his
face.” He grabbed a heavy pot and chased her into the garage, where he threw the
pot at her. Stetzer got into her truck. The keys were in the visor inside of the
truck. She locked the doors and started the truck. At that point, she had her son’s
cell phone with her (which she had grabbed from the kitchen when she went back
inside after standing in the rain), though she testified that it was passcode locked.
Bill was pounding on the windows of the truck, saying, “I’m going to take you out
you fucking bitch.”

¶8 Doctor Darald Hanusa, an expert on domestic violence who had
been hired by the defense and who had conducted a six-hour interview of Stetzer,
testified that this moment—“where [Stetzer was] in her car and he’s banging on
the window”—“presents a classic dilemma for her” in that she had to choose
between staying and possibly “being injured” and taking the “risk to drive a car to
flee to safety.” She knew she had consumed alcohol and agreed that it was not “a
good idea to be driving.” But, as Hanusa opined, women with a history of abuse
often experience intense fear that can provoke a “fight, flight, or freeze” reaction.
Stetzer explained that she “didn’t feel [she] had another alternative” but to drive
away. She drove away. Initially, she “didn’t even know” where she was going;
she was “just trying to escape.” She testified that her Pewaukee house was in “a
pretty rural area” without many neighbors. She decided to go to her lake house in
Merton, approximately a fifteen-minute drive away.

¶9 When she was approximately halfway to the lake house, Stetzer
passed a squad car on the side of the highway. She stated that she “thought about”

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No. 2023AP874-CR

stopping there and asking for help, but that she had “called the police on two …
occasions when being physically abused,” and that each time, “Bill lied and [she]
got arrested.” She did not stop for help because she thought the police wouldn’t
believe her. The officer that she passed stopped her shortly afterward and,
eventually, Stetzer was taken to a hospital and arrested for driving with a PAC.2

¶10 The State conceded that Stetzer met her burden of production for a
coercion defense—in other words, that she satisfied the “relatively low” threshold
of putting forth “some evidence” of each component of the defense. See State v.
Schmidt, 2012 WI App 113, ¶34, 344 Wis. 2d 336, 824 N.W.2d 839; State v.
Peters, 2002 WI App 243, ¶27 n.4, 258 Wis. 2d 148, 653 N.W.2d 300. In closing,
the State acknowledged Stetzer’s history of domestic abuse. It then pointed out
that when she left her home on May 24, after her husband chased her with a pot,
she had a phone with her that—despite being passcode locked—could have been
used to place an emergency call. It also noted additional options available to
Stetzer besides driving all the way to Merton with a PAC, one being going to an
open hotel in Pewaukee and another being stopping at the police car she saw. The
State questioned whether it was reasonable to believe that driving to the lake
house was Stetzer’s only option for escape.3

2
Stetzer was also charged with disorderly conduct, domestic abuse. The trial court later
granted the State’s motion to dismiss this charge.
3
The State also called into question whether Stetzer was credible in asserting that she
feared imminent death or great bodily harm such that leaving her house was necessary, pointing
out that “after the most violent incident during [the night in question]”—that being Stetzer’s
husband pushing her down the stairs—Stetzer did not “leave then and there” but rather “decide[d]
to drink two glasses of wine” in addition to what she had already consumed.

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No. 2023AP874-CR

¶11 Stetzer’s counsel used his closing argument to remind the court that
it was “the State’s burden to disprove [the coercion defense] beyond a reasonable
doubt” and that “[t]he standard is what a person of ordinary intelligence and
prudence would have believed in the defendant’s position under the circumstances
that existed at the time of the alleged offense … when the decision was made to
unfortunately drive under the influence.” Counsel emphasized Hanusa’s
testimony that victims like Stetzer tend to be secretive about their abuse because
of the embarrassment they can encounter in seeking help and treatment and argued
that “the only safe place she knew at that time of the day [was] the home in
Merton.”

¶12 After a brief recess, the trial court explained its conclusion that the
defense of coercion did not apply. This conclusion was based on “the timing
issue” the court saw with the facts as presented by Stetzer. “[T]ak[ing] everything
as true up to the time that Dr. Stetzer leaves the driveway,” the court stated, and
“accepting all the circumstances that were going on at that point,” including “that
definitely she had to get out of there, that there was a fear of great bodily harm or
death,” the court found that “once she’s out of the driveway she has more
options.” It continued:

Beyond a reasonable doubt she passed a police
officer…. [S]he was clearly driving. She passed a police
officer. She’s in a city she knows. So beyond a reasonable
doubt she knows there’s other means of safety around other
than going to the lake house ….

Of much importance in my consideration, the law
doesn’t ask me to determine if her actions were reasonable.
I could find that she was acting reasonably in trying to go
to that lake. The law requires that this is the only means of
prevention. It may have been reasonable for her to think
well this is a safe thing for me to do because this has
worked in the past, and that’s where this becomes difficult
on me as a person, but I can’t rule just upon my own

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No. 2023AP874-CR

personal beliefs. I can’t take sympathy and say I don’t
want Dr. Stetzer to be in this position because it’s unfair.
She shouldn’t have been in that position.

The law carves out defenses. In this case it’s a very
specific defense, and it only provides for a violation of the
law when it was the only means of preventing that great
bodily harm. Since her actions once she’s out of that
driveway and driving was not the only means of preventing
great bodily harm, I find that the defense[’]s beyond a
reasonable doubt not available.

As part of my reasoning, there has to be an end point to
the defense…. Public policy wouldn’t support that [a]
person could keep on driving indefinitely, that you could
get in the car and say well I have to drive to—from
Wisconsin to Tennessee because I need to be so far away
from that situation. So her actions were reasonable. I don’t
discount that. The law however provides that it has to be
the only means of preventing great bodily harm or
imminent death. I can’t find that so that is the decision.

¶13 Stetzer’s argument on appeal is that the trial court erred when it
“misapplied the law by relieving the State of its burden to prove that [she] was not
acting lawfully under the defense of coercion.” Stetzer concedes that the court
correctly stated “that the State had the burden of proving beyond a reasonable
doubt that [Stetzer] was not acting lawfully under the defense,” and thus at least
professed to be applying the correct legal standard. She asserts, however, that the
court incorrectly stated that “[t]he law … provides that it has to be the only means
of preventing great bodily harm or imminent death” rather than evaluating
“whether the actor reasonably believes that the actions are the only means of
preventing great bodily harm or death.”

DISCUSSION

¶14 This court reviews the question of whether the trial court applied the
correct legal standard de novo. State v. Magett, 2014 WI 67, ¶27, 355 Wis. 2d
617, 850 N.W.2d 42. Statutory interpretation is also reviewed de novo. State v.

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No. 2023AP874-CR

Marks, 2022 WI App 20, ¶18, 402 Wis. 2d 285, 975 N.W.2d 238, review denied,
2022 WI 104, 997 N.W.2d 389.

¶15 The defense of coercion is codified in WIS. STAT. § 939.46(1), which
provides in relevant part that:

A threat by a person other than the actor’s coconspirator
which causes the actor reasonably to believe that his or her
act is the only means of preventing imminent death or great
bodily harm to the actor or another and which causes him
or her so to act is a defense to a prosecution for any crime
based on that act.

¶16 Again, the parties agree that the trial court correctly articulated the
defense and correctly stated that it was the State’s burden to prove, beyond a
reasonable doubt, that the elements of this defense were not met. One such
element is “[a] finding, under the objective-reasonable [person] test, with regard to
the reasonableness of the actor’s beliefs that [she] is threatened with immediate
death or great bodily harm with no possible escape other than the commission of a
criminal act.” State v. Amundson, 69 Wis. 2d 554, 568, 230 N.W.2d 775 (1975),
overruled on other grounds by State v. Wayerski, 2019 WI 11, 385 Wis. 2d 344,
922 N.W.2d 468. Thus, the defense requires both a reasonable belief that the actor
is in imminent danger of death or physical harm and a reasonable belief that the
otherwise illegal action is the actor’s only means of escape. Id.; see also State v.
Ventrice, No. 2001AP1494-CR, unpublished slip op. ¶10 (WI App Dec. 28, 2001)
(listing elements of coercion defense).4

4
Unpublished cases may not be cited for precedential value, but may be cited for
persuasive value. See WIS. STAT. RULE 809.23(3)(a), (b).

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No. 2023AP874-CR

¶17 “Coercion is highly analogous to the privilege of self-defense.”
Amundson, 69 Wis. 2d at 568. Like self-defense and defense of others, it requires
that the commission of the criminal act not go on longer than reasonably necessary
to escape imminent death or great bodily harm. See, e.g., State v. Nollie, 2002 WI
4, ¶26, 249 Wis. 2d 538, 638 N.W.2d 280 (defendant claiming self-defense to
crime of felon in possession of a firearm must show that the weapon was not
possessed “longer than reasonably necessary”); State v. Jones, 147 Wis. 2d 806,
815, 434 N.W.2d 380 (1989) (key question in determining whether defense-of-
others jury instruction was warranted was whether the danger had passed when the
otherwise criminal act occurred).

¶18 Our unpublished opinion in State v. Yenter, No. 2017AP2253,
unpublished slip op. ¶13 (WI App Nov. 29, 2018), aptly dealt with facts somewhat
similar to Stetzer’s and concluded that the coercion defense was not available
because “even assuming that a reasonable person in [defendant]’s position would
have initially believed that driving himself was the only way to avoid bodily harm,
the offer of proof did not demonstrate that [his] only reasonable option continued
to be that he must drive all the way to his house.” In Yenter, the defendant
appealing a DUI conviction asserted that he was fleeing a party in a rural area
where a physical altercation put him in fear of his life and that getting to his
house—sixteen miles away—was the safest way to avoid danger. Id., ¶¶8-11.
The court determined that no reasonable factfinder could find that it was
reasonable for the defendant to believe that driving all the way to his house was
the only way to avoid death or bodily harm, noting that the defendant could have
called the police, stopped at a closer-by public place or farmhouse, or had a sober
passenger take over driving before the point at which he was stopped (about
fifteen miles from the party). Id., ¶¶11, 14, 17.

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No. 2023AP874-CR

¶19 While the Yenter court concluded the coercion defense was
unavailable as a matter of law, id., ¶17, the trial court here allowed Stetzer to
assert the defense and shifted the burden to the State to disprove its elements at the
conclusion of the trial (a trial in which a defense expert also testified). Stetzer
does not acknowledge or address the court’s explicit factual finding that, at the
point when she passed a police car on the side of the road about halfway between
her home in Pewaukee and her lake house in Merton—which took approximately
eight minutes to drive—“beyond a reasonable doubt she knows there’s other
means of safety around other than [continuing on and] going to the lake house.”
The court’s rejection of the coercion defense rested on this factual finding: the
State had proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Stetzer did not have a reasonable
belief, at least at that point, that driving another eight or so minutes to the lake
house was her only option for avoiding imminent death or bodily harm.

¶20 There is no inconsistency between this factual finding and the trial
court’s additional statement that it “could find that she was acting reasonably in
trying to go to that lake.” In context, this statement obviously means that the court
could have determined that driving to the lake house was one of several reasonable
plans for escaping her husband—one that Stetzer used successfully in the past,
when she was presumably driving there unimpaired. That does nothing to negate
the fact that the codified coercion defense requires a reasonable belief, at every
moment that the defendant is asserting she was coerced to engage in otherwise
criminal conduct, that the otherwise criminal conduct is the only way to prevent
death or bodily harm. See WIS. STAT. § 939.46(1). Again, the court found as a
factual matter that Stetzer did not possess this reasonable belief at least as of when
she passed the squad car. As the court noted, the question is one of timing: even

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No. 2023AP874-CR

if it was reasonable to drive out of her driveway, as she continued to drive, that
reasonableness of continuing to drive diminished the further she drove.

¶21 Nor is this is a case of the trial court committing legal error by
improperly narrowing the objective component of the defense (the reasonableness
of the belief) contrary to the well-established principle that a belief may be
reasonable even if it turns out to be incorrect, as Stetzer argues in her reply brief.
It is true that, as stated in the Wisconsin jury instruction on coercion, “[a] belief
may be reasonable even though mistaken.” WIS JI—CRIMINAL 790; see also
Miller v. State, 139 Wis. 57, 76, 119 N.W. 850 (1909) (holding that a person in
imminent danger of losing his life or receiving some injury is justified in acting to
avert such danger upon “honest, reasonable apprehension” even “[i]f it turns out
that there was no such danger in fact”). But the court did not state or suggest that,
at the point when Stetzer had driven miles from her Pewaukee house and passed
the police car, she had a reasonable yet mistaken belief that fleeing to her lake
house was the only means of avoiding imminent death or harm. It stated, rather,
that even if the initial plan to escape to the lake house was reasonable, at the point
when Stetzer passed the squad car, “beyond a reasonable doubt she knows there’s
other means of safety around other than going to the lake house.” (Emphasis
added.)

¶22 Again, this is a factual finding, and one this court could not overturn
even if Stetzer had argued that it was clearly erroneous, which she did not. See
State v. Owens, 148 Wis. 2d 922, 933, 436 N.W.2d 869 (1989) (“The defendant’s
state of mind or belief is an historical fact and is reviewed by the clearly erroneous
or against the great weight and clear preponderance of the evidence standard.”).
The finding that Stetzer did not reasonably believe that her only option at that
point in time was to continue driving with a PAC is supported by evidence that she

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No. 2023AP874-CR

“thought about” stopping when she passed the police car, that she knew there was
an open hotel on her way to Merton, and that she had a phone with her (albeit
“pass coded”).

¶23 Indeed, Stetzer’s evidence regarding her beliefs (and their
reasonableness in light of her circumstances) was largely directed to her initial
decision to drive after drinking in order to escape her husband. She testified that
she “didn’t feel [she] had another alternative” to driving because she had to “get
the hell out of there.” Accepting (as the trial court did) that driving was the
correct answer to the “classic dilemma” that Stetzer’s expert said she faced “at the
point where [Stetzer is] in her car and he’s banging on the window,”5 the evidence
in the Record does not show that Stetzer continued to hold a reasonable belief that,
once she was out of her husband’s immediate vicinity, driving on to Merton was
“the only means of preventing imminent death or great bodily harm.” See WIS.
STAT. § 939.46(1).

¶24 Stetzer admitted that she considered stopping when she saw the
police car and explained why she chose not to when she testified: “I thought
should I stop, and I thought no, I’m not going to stop, I have called the police on
two other occasions when being physically abused. Bill lied and I got arrested.”
Her expert’s testimony was that “[e]mbarrassment is a huge factor for wom[e]n
who are abused” that, along with their desire to prevent the abuser from getting

5
The expert also opined that Stetzer suffered from battered woman syndrome, “an
extension of [post traumatic stress disorder]” that can lead sufferers to experience a “fight, flight,
or freeze situation.” He elaborated that “the fear factor is probably the primary motivator that
drives a victim’s decision.” The expert agreed that he was hired to shed light on “why [Stetzer]
left the house.” As Stetzer’s counsel argued, her previous abuse informed her decision to flee.
The trial court’s decision, however, was not based on the initial decision to flee but rather the
decision to continue driving when other options for preventing physical harm became available.

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No. 2023AP874-CR

into trouble in hopes that the relationship will work, can lead them to avoid
seeking help from law enforcement. None of this evidence, or any other evidence
in the Record, suggests that Stetzer’s history of abuse or “adverse relationship
with the police” (as her expert put it) led to a reasonable belief that she would still
be at risk of “imminent death or great bodily harm” in the police’s presence. The
narrow statutory defense of coercion requires that her otherwise unlawful act
(driving with a PAC) be the only means of preventing “imminent fear of death or
bodily harm.” See WIS. STAT. § 939.46(1). Stetzer does not argue that an
otherwise unlawful act to prevent embarrassment or legal consequences would
satisfy this element. While this court acknowledges that such concerns may be
legitimate and serious, the law provides that the coercion “is a defense limited to
the most severe form of inducement.” See Amundson, 69 Wis. 2d at 568.

CONCLUSION

¶25 After hearing extensive testimony on domestic violence in general
and the particulars of the abuse suffered by Stetzer, the trial court clearly
empathized with Stetzer (as does this court) and found that she was in an “awful”
and “unfair” position on May 24, 2017. Accepting that Stetzer was justified in her
initial action of driving with a PAC to escape her husband’s assault, the trial court
found as a factual matter that beyond a reasonable doubt, at least at the point that
Stetzer passed a police car, she no longer held a reasonable belief that continuing
to drive with a PAC was the only way to avoid imminent death or bodily injury.
Because the trial court did not commit legal error in its application of the law, the
judgment is affirmed.

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No. 2023AP874-CR

By the Court.—Judgment affirmed.

This opinion will not be published. See WIS. STAT.
RULE 809.23(1)(b)4.

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