AWOL juror leads to mistrial in lawyer threats case
The case against a man charged with making death threats against two prominent Milwaukee lawyers ended in a mistrial Wednesday after a juror failed to return to continue deliberations that began Tuesday.
It marked a strange end to a strange case.
It began Monday when Franklyn Gimbel and David Gruber, men accustomed to the rough-and-tumble of public life and litigation, testified that even they found the messages that got through their firm's websites alarming.
Whoever sent the anonymous, unhinged, anti-Semitic rants threatened to kill Gimbel and to have Gruber's adult son murdered. Detectives explained how they traced the messages, sent a year and a half apart, back to a computer owned by James C. Faustmann and one he appeared to use.
Faustmann, 42, of Brookfield, went to trial on two counts of using a computerized communications system to threaten someone with physical harm, and one count of bail jumping.
Read more: http://www.jsonline.com/story/news/blogs/proof-and-hearsay/2017/01/25/awol-juror-leads-mistrial-lawyer-threats-case/97036986/
