Lawyer is charged with contempt after allegedly lying to client to persuade him to take a plea deal
A Wisconsin defense lawyer accused of lying to a client to persuade him to accept a plea deal is now facing a misdemeanor contempt case.
Attorney Michael Petersen, 32, allegedly told the unidentified client and his father last year that the client should plead guilty to attempted armed robbery, because the prosecutor had agreed that the charge would later be changed to attempted theft, the Post-Crescent reports.
When the client accepted the plea deal but the charge didn’t change, he complained to his father, who took the matter up with Petersen.
The complaint says Petersen sent an email to the father attaching an email from the prosecutor agreeing to the reduced charge, scheduled a hearing and then had the dad pick up a copy of a court order amending the charge.
However, when the father went to the Outagamie County clerk of court’s office with the order, the complaint says, it wasn’t in the file, and the judge who purportedly signed the order knew nothing about it. Likewise, the prosecutor denied sending the email agreeing to the reduced charge or making the agreement.
Petersen originally told an investigator he didn’t know how the judge’s signature got on the draft order he prepared. Then, in a Nov. 3 letter to the judge, he said he might inadvertently have duplicated the jurist’s signature on the order when photocopying another document, the complaint says.
In December, the investigator received a handwritten letter from Petersen, copied to the judge and the clerk, the Post-Crescent reports. It allegedly said that the attorney had “phonied a document,” which was “stupid and dishonest,” in an effort to resolve the father’s complaint.
Attorney Craig Mastantuono is representing Petersen in the contempt case. “No matter what the outcome, what he is accused of is entirely inconsistent with his background and his work,” he told the newspaper.
