APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — A woman charged in connection with a Kaukauna murder should not be allowed to argue she was a coerced victim of a human trafficking, the district attorney said in a motion filed Thursday, calling that claim “patently incredible and contrary to the evidence.”
Dontae Payne and Tanya Stammer are charged with first-degree intentional homicide and armed robbery for the death of Brian Porsche at a home on W. Division Street on March 30, 2021.
No trial date has been set for Payne, who returns to court Feb. 3, while Stammer is scheduled to stand trial next July. She returns to court next week for a motions hearing.
Stammer’s offering of what’s known as an “affirmative defense” appears to be the first of this type in the region since a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision in July. The court ruled that a 2008 state law that absolves trafficking victims of criminal liability for any offenses committed as a direct result of being trafficked extends to first-degree intentional homicide. However, but defendants have to offer evidence the crime — in this case, murder — was connected to being a victim of trafficking.
Her defense team submitted a motion earlier this month seeking permission to pursue that defense.
But in her 13-page reply brief submitted Thursday, Outagamie County District Attorney Melinda Tempelis says the murder wasn’t a direct result of sex trafficking, but rather “a result of a desire for revenge, robbery and a passion for killing.”
“The evidence in this case — based on statements and texts by the defendant — establishes that the defendant planned to kill the victim and that the commercial sex act was a pretext for gaining access to the victim. The killing was not the direct result of sex trafficking but was the result of “other events, circumstances, or considerations apart from the trafficking violation”. In this case, sex trafficking was used as a convenient pretext for a pre-planned murder, a thrill killing and robbery,” Tempelis argued. “The State believes the evidence cited by the defense does not support the defense of coercion. The defendant was not a victim of human trafficking but was a predator stalking prey. The intent of the defendant to kill the victim and rob him was established by her well before she went to his home. She used commercial sex as a pretext to get into the home. She went to his house voluntarily. She went armed. She robbed him. He begged for his life and she killed him.”
According to the criminal complaint, Payne and Stammer targeted Porsche. The two then tried to make the scene look like a robbery, and tossed his phone and keys into Lake Winnebago.
