GREEN BAY – A Brown County court commissioner determined there is probable cause for court proceedings to continue for a man who is accused of killing his cellmate at Green Bay Correctional Institution.
Jackson Vogel, 24, of Two Rivers, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide as a hate crime in the death of 19-year-old Micah Laureano of Waukesha. He appeared in Brown County Circuit Court on Thursday for his preliminary hearing, during which a Brown County Sheriff's Office investigator testified about the homicide investigation.
After the officer's testimony and questions from attorneys, Brown County Court Commissioner Chad Resar determined Vogel will be bound over for trial. His next court appearance is an arraignment, scheduled for Oct. 15.
Prosecutors say that on Aug. 27, Vogel strangled Laureano to death while the two shared a cell in the prison's treatment center. According to the Brown County Sheriff's Office, Vogel and Laureano had been placed in the same cell only hours before Laureano's murder.
According to a criminal complaint, a correctional officer was doing a routine count of prisoners around 9:30 p.m. Aug. 27 when he found a cell door with a pink piece of paper covering the window. The officer asked the inhabitants to remove the paper from the door.
Vogel removed it, and the officer saw Laureano hanging. An amended complaint filed Sept. 26 corrected the initial complaint's report that Laureano's arms were bound together.
Laureano was pronouced dead at the scene.
At Thursday's preliminary hearing, Sgt. Justin Raska of the Brown County Sheriff's Office testified that he was the lead investigator on the case, and arrived at prison shortly after 11 p.m. Aug. 27.
Raska said he documented evidence in the cell, including strips of orange cloth and a rolled up "rope" of plastic, "like cellophane."
According to the complaint, officers also located a handwritten note with racist and homophobic slurs and the words "kill all humans" inside the cell.
Raska said he spoke with Vogel in the early morning hours of Aug. 28. He said he also reviewed body camera footage of a correctional officer who spoke with Vogel immediately after they found Laureano dead.
"He did admit to killing his cellmate," Raska said.
Raska said Vogel told him he decided he wanted to kill Laureano when Vogel met him days earlier.
According to the complaint, Vogel told Raska he killed Laureano because he was "bored."
In an autopsy the morning after Laureano's death, Leah Schuppener of the Brown County Medical Examiner's Office determined Laureano died of asphyxia due to ligature strangulation, Raska testified.
Vogel was sentenced in 2017 to 20 years in prison followed by 20 years of extended supervision for attempted homicide of a family member when he was 16 years old. Laureano was serving a three-year-sentence for concurrent cases in Waukesha and Columbia counties involving robbery and battery, according to public records.
This is the second homicide in two years at Green Bay Correctional Institution related to a hate crime investigation. In October 2022, Joshua Scolman, 40, fatally stabbed 25-year-old Timothy Nabors and attempted to kill a second person during medication distribution.
Scolman was convicted after a jury trial in April of one count of first-degree intentional homicide and one count of attempted first-degree intentional homcide, both as hate crimes. He was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of release .
It's also the latest in a string of recent deaths in Wisconsin prisons. Between June 2023 and August 2024, six prisoners at Waupun Correctional Institution died, and in June, a guard at Lincoln Hills School for Boys died in an assault by a 16-year-old boy incarcerated there. At the Waupun prison, nine staff, including the former warden, were criminally charged in connection with two of the deaths.
Contact Kelli Arseneau at 920-213-3721 or karseneau@gannett.com . Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, at @ArseneauKelli .
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Green Bay prisoner charged with killing cellmate as a hate crime bound over for trial
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