Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01380/USCOURTS-ca7-14-01380-0/pdf.json

Nature of Suit Code: 530
Nature of Suit: Prisoner Petitions - Habeas Corpus
Cause of Action: 

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In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Seventh Circuit ____________________

No. 14-1380

MARK D. JENSEN,

Petitioner-Appellee,

v.

MARC CLEMENTS,

Respondent-Appellant.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court for the

Eastern District of Wisconsin.

No. 11 CV 00803 — William C. Griesbach, Chief Judge.

____________________

ARGUED OCTOBER 30, 2014 — DECIDED SEPTEMBER 8, 2015

____________________

Before WILLIAMS, TINDER, and HAMILTON, Circuit Judges.

WILLIAMS, Circuit Judge. Julie Jensen’s handwritten letter

to the police was “a make or break issue,” an “essential 

component of the State’s case,” and of “extraordinary value” 

to “the central issue in this case.” Those are not the court’s 

words, but the words of the State, as it fought for the admission of the letter before it placed Mark Jensen on trial for his 

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wife Julie’s murder. The State maintained at trial that Jensen 

killed his wife and framed it to look like suicide. Jensen’s defense was that his wife, depressed, and unhappy in marriage, committed suicide and made it look like her husband 

had killed her. A key piece of evidence at trial was Julie’s 

handwritten letter to the police, written two weeks before 

her death, in which she wrote that she would never take her 

life and that her husband should be the suspect if anything 

should happen to her. 

As a later-decided United States Supreme Court case, 

Giles v. California, 554 U.S. 353 (2008), made clear, this letter 

and other accusatory statements she made to police in the 

weeks before her death regarding her husband should never 

have been introduced at trial. The Wisconsin appellate court 

found the error in admission to be harmless. Jensen now 

seeks a writ of habeas corpus, which he may only receive if 

the Wisconsin appellate court’s adjudication of the claim 

“resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an 

unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, 

as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States,” 

or “resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable 

determination of the facts in light of evidence presented in 

the State court proceeding.” 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d). We agree 

with the district court that the Wisconsin appellate court’s 

harmless error determination reflects an unreasonable application of the Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967), harmless error standard. The erroneous admission of Julie’s letter 

and statements to the police had a substantial and injurious 

influence or effect in determining the jury’s verdict. So we

affirm the district court’s grant of Jensen’s petition for a writ 

of habeas corpus. 

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No. 14-1380 3

I. BACKGROUND

Two weeks before her death, Julie Jensen gave a sealed 

envelope to her neighbors, Tadeusz and Margaret Wojt, and 

told them that if anything happened to her, they should give 

the envelope to the police. The day of Julie’s death, the Wojts 

did just that. The envelope contained a handwritten letter

with Julie’s signature that read:

Pleasant Prairie Police Department, Ron Kosman or

Detective Ratzburg,

I took this picture [and] am writing this on Saturday 11-

21-98 at 7 AM. This “list” was in my husband’s business daily planner—not meant for me to see, I don’t 

know what it means, but if anything happens to me, he 

would be my first suspect. Our relationship has deteriorated to the polite superficial. I know he’s never forgiven me for the brief affair I had with that creep seven 

years ago. Mark lives for work [and] the kids; he’s an 

avid surfer of the Internet 

Anyway, I do not smoke or drink. My mother was an 

alcoholic, so I limit my drinking to one or two a week. 

Mark wants me to drink more—with him in the evenings. I don’t. I would never take my life because of my 

kids—they are everything to me! I regularly take Tylenol [and] multi-vitamins; occasionally take OTC stuff 

for colds, Zantac, or Immodium; have one prescription 

for migraine tablets, which Mark use[s] more than I.

I pray I’m wrong [and] nothing happens ... but I am 

suspicious of Mark’s behaviors [and] fear for my early 

demise. However, I will not leave David [and] Douglas. 

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My life’s greatest love, accomplishment and wish: “My 

3 D’s”—Daddy (Mark), David, Douglas.

Julie had made other similarly accusatory statements to 

the police in the weeks before her death as well. She left two 

voicemails for Officer Ron Kosman, stating in the second 

that she thought her husband was trying to kill her. (She left 

this message on a voicemail despite Officer Kosman’s message on his voicemail that he was out of the office on a hunting trip and would not check messages until his return.) Officer Kosman then visited Julie, and she told him she had 

given a letter to the Wojts along with a roll of film with photographs she had taken of Jensen’s day planner, evidently to 

include the “list” in his planner referenced in her letter. She 

retrieved the film and gave it to Officer Kosman, but the police were unable to connect the photographs of the pages of 

Jensen’s day planner to anything connected to the case. Julie 

also told Officer Kosman that if she were to be found dead, 

she did not commit suicide, and Jensen was her first suspect. 

She made statements to others as well including the Wojts 

and her son’s teacher that she worried her husband was going to kill her. 

Julie was found dead in the home she shared with her 

husband and their two sons on December 3, 1998. The first 

autopsy did not reveal a cause of death, and the case was initially treated as a suicide. A search of the Jensens’ home 

computer yielded internet searches for suicide and poisoning, including a search at 7:40 am on December 3 for “ethylene glycol poisoning.” Ethylene glycol, commonly known 

as antifreeze, was found in Julie’s system. But the toxicologist (Dr. Christopher Long)’s initial characterization was

badly off. He described the 3,940 micrograms per milliliter of 

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ethylene glycol in the 660 ml of her gastric contents as a

“large concentration of ethylene glycol.” His report reached 

the conclusion that Julie’s death was not a suicide, and he 

reached this conclusion by relying on factors including that 

Julie’s stomach contained significant amounts of ethylene 

glycol, showing that her death occurred at or near the time 

of administration; she would have been too weak to drink 

the amount of ethylene glycol in her stomach without assistance; and she would have been too weak to hide the ethylene glycol container after her final dose. But in reality, the 

660 ml of her stomach contents contained only a half teaspoon of ethylene glycol, or .083 ounces, so it was not a 

“large concentration.” Dr. Long’s mistake destroyed the 

foundation of his opinion that Julie’s death was not a suicide, i.e., that she could not have consumed that large a 

quantity of ethylene glycol on her own. The computer search 

also revealed numerous emails between Jensen and a woman with whom he was having an affair.

In March 2002, over three years after Julie’s death, Jensen was charged with first-degree intentional homicide. Dr. 

Mark Chambliss, the doctor who conducted an autopsy, said 

at trial for the first time that the cause of death was asphyxia 

by smothering, and a medical examiner concluded that the 

cause of death was ethylene glycol poisoning with probable 

terminal asphyxia. From the beginning, the parties contested 

the admissibility of Julie’s letter and her statements to Officer Kosman in the weeks before her death. The State conceded that the voicemails Julie left for Officer Kosman were 

inadmissible hearsay. The Wisconsin state trial court ruled 

that Julie’s letter was admissible in its entirety. After the Supreme Court decided Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 

(2004), Jensen moved for reconsideration. The trial court 

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granted Jensen’s motion for reconsideration, ruling that Julie’s letter and statements to Officer Kosman were testimonial and therefore not admissible under Crawford because the 

declarant was unable to testify at trial and there was no prior 

opportunity for cross examination. The court also rejected 

the State’s argument that the letter and Julie’s statements 

were admissible under the doctrine of forfeiture by wrongdoing. 

The State appealed the trial court’s order and petitioned 

for bypass directly to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. On February 23, 2007, the Wisconsin Supreme Court agreed that the 

letter and statements to police were testimonial, but it also 

ruled that the trial court erred in its analysis of whether the 

statements were admissible under the forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine. State v. Jensen, 727 N.W.2d 518, 536-37 (Wis. 

2007) (“Jensen I”). The Wisconsin Supreme Court adopted “a 

broad forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine, and conclude[d] 

that if the State can prove by a preponderance of the evidence that the accused caused the absence of the witness, the 

forfeiture by wrongdoing doctrine will apply to the confrontation rights of the defendant.” Id. at 536. The court remanded for a hearing to determine the application of the doctrine 

in Jensen’s case. Id. at 537.

On remand, after a ten-day hearing, the trial court 

found by a preponderance of the evidence that Jensen killed 

Julie, causing her absence from trial, and so Jensen had forfeited his right to confrontation with respect to the letter.1 As 

 1 There are serious reasons to question this finding, however. For example, the medical examiner Dr. Mary Mainland testified for the State 

during the forfeiture hearing that murder was likely, and she testified 

that Julie would have been too weak the day before she died to use the 

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a result, the letter and Julie’s statements to Officer Kosman

were admissible at trial. 

The resulting six-week trial began more than nine years 

after Julie’s death. The State introduced evidence concerning 

Julie’s statements and actions in the days, weeks, and 

months before her death, including her handwritten letter 

and statements to Officer Kosman. The State also introduced 

evidence that Jensen was having an affair and that he was 

bitter about a brief affair Julie had seven years earlier. Two 

of Jensen’s former co-workers testified that he had made incriminating statements to them. The State contended that 

Jensen had made plans to murder his wife to have a future 

with his mistress, wanted to avoid a messy divorce, and had 

searched on the internet for ways to make Julie’s death look 

like a suicide. The State also argued that Julie was a devoted 

mother who would not have committed suicide. The State 

maintained that Julie could not have ingested ethylene glycol by herself and that Jensen had suffocated her after she 

showed signs of recovering from poison he had given her. 

Surprisingly, this suffocation theory arose for the very 

first time at the trial more than nine years after Julie’s death, 

when it came up for the first time during Dr. Chambliss’s 

redirect examination. Dr. Chambliss had performed an autopsy, and his report had not identified a cause of death. But 

during redirect examination, the prosecutor showed Dr. 

Chambliss photographs of Julie at the scene that appeared to 

show Julie with an unnaturally bent nose. The prosecutor 

 

telephone. But at trial Dr. Mainland admitted that she had been “mistaken” in her testimony during the forfeiture hearing because Julie did in 

fact use the phone that day and had a telephone conversation with Mrs. 

Wojt. 

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posed a hypothetical question to Dr. Chambliss. It asked him 

to, among other things, “consider the manner in which the 

face appears to be smashed into the pillow” and to consider

information from Jensen’s cellblock mate Aaron Dillard 

(whose significant credibility concerns we will discuss later) 

that Jensen “had shoved her face into the pillow and suffocated her.” When the prosecutor asked whether Dr. 

Chambliss had an opinion as to the cause of death in those 

circumstances, Dr. Chambliss responded with the opinion, 

for the first time, that the immediate cause of death would 

be smothering. Yet the autopsy report did not report any 

damage to Julie’s nose, and witnesses at the scene had not 

observed anything unusual about her nose. As for Dr. Mainland, she had testified at the forfeiture hearing that Julie died 

from ethylene-glycol poisoning. Then five months later, at 

trial, she too testified that Julie had been suffocated, based 

on details from Dillard. 

The defense account at trial was much different. It took 

the position that Julie, depressed, had committed suicide by 

poisoning herself but had made it look as though her husband, from whom she was distant, had killed her. The defense maintained that Julie was discouraging others from 

worrying about her absence so they would not come to her 

assistance. Julie had not been restrained or otherwise incapacitated from seeking help, and ethylene glycol was a fairly 

slow-acting poison, so the defense contended that Julie’s 

failure to seek help was more consistent with suicide than 

with murder.

The defense evidence included testimony from the 

Jensens’ family doctor, who told the jury that during an appointment two days before her death, Julie “seemed deCase: 14-1380 Document: 48 Filed: 09/08/2015 Pages: 39
No. 14-1380 9

pressed and distraught and almost frantic, actually.” The jury heard Julie had a fifteen-minute conversation with her 

neighbor, Mrs. Wojt, the day before her death in which she 

told Mrs. Wojt not to worry if she did not see Julie outside 

that day because she was not feeling well due to her medication. Julie also made a similar statement to her sister-in-law 

three days earlier that she would be ill on December 2 because she expected to be put on medication by her doctor. 

The defense also highlighted that although Julie had made 

multiple statements saying she feared her husband was trying to kill her, she did not call anyone or otherwise seek help 

when she began to feel ill.

After thirty hours of deliberation, the jury convicted 

Jensen of first-degree intentional homicide. Four months later, the United States Supreme Court decided Giles v. California, 554 U.S. 353 (2008), which adopted a narrower interpretation of the Confrontation Clause than had the Wisconsin 

Supreme Court in Jensen I. On the direct appeal of his conviction, Jensen argued that Giles made clear that Julie’s 

handwritten letter and statements to the police were erroneously admitted. 

In a December 29, 2010 ruling, the Wisconsin Appellate 

Court “assume[d] that the disputed testimonial evidence 

was erroneously admitted” in light of Giles but found that 

any error was harmless, and it affirmed Jensen’s conviction. 

State v. Jensen, 794 N.W.2d 482, 493 (Wis. App. Ct. 2010) 

(”Jensen II”). The Wisconsin Supreme Court denied Jensen’s 

petition for review. Jensen then filed a petition for a writ of 

habeas corpus in federal district court. The district court 

granted Jensen’s petition, and the warden appeals.

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II. ANALYSIS

Jensen’s habeas petition is premised on his contention 

that the admission of Julie’s handwritten letter and her accusatory statements to the police in the weeks before her death 

violated his right to confrontation under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The Sixth Amendment provides that “[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right ... to be confronted with the witnesses against him.” Ordinarily, a witness who makes testimonial statements against a defendant will be available at 

trial for cross examination, and if not available then the witness’s earlier testimony will only be introduced at trial if the 

defendant had an earlier opportunity to cross examine the 

witness. See Crawford, 541 U.S. at 68. 

The state trial court concluded that an exception to the 

right of confrontation was present here because Jensen had 

committed a wrongful act (murder) that made the witness 

unavailable to testify at trial. But the Supreme Court subsequently held in Giles that the forfeiture by wrongdoing exception to the Confrontation Clause in the United States 

Constitution applies only when the defendant engaged in 

conduct designed to prevent the witness from testifying.

Giles, 554 U.S. at 359; see also id. at 367 (“Every commentator 

we are aware of has concluded the requirement of intent 

‘means that the exception applies only if the defendant has 

in mind the particular purpose of making the witness unavailable.’”) (citation omitted). In other words, testimonial 

hearsay statements for which no other exception applies 

should be excluded if “the evidence suggested that the defendant had caused a person to be absent, but had not done 

so to prevent the person from testifying—as in the typical 

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murder cases involving accusatorial statements by the victim.” Id. at 361. The warden makes no argument that the letter and statements were admissible under Giles. Indeed, the

State’s theory at trial was that Jensen killed his wife not to 

prevent her from testifying, but because he wanted her dead. 

Under Giles, the admission of Julie’s letter and statements to 

the police, none of which were dying declarations, violated 

the Confrontation Clause and was federal Constitutional error. The warden does, however, argue that Jensen cannot 

benefit from Giles as a procedural matter, and we turn to that 

argument now.

A. Giles Decided Before Claim Adjudicated on the 

Merits by State Court

The parties dispute which Wisconsin state court decision 

constitutes the relevant decision for Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1986 (“AEDPA”) purposes. Under 

AEDPA, habeas relief 

shall not be granted with respect to any claim that was 

adjudicated on the merits in State court proceedings unless the adjudication of the claim

(1) resulted in a decision that was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States; or 

(2) resulted in a decision that was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts in light of the 

evidence presented in the State court proceeding.

28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1) (emphasis added). Jensen argues that 

the Wisconsin appellate court’s post-Giles decision is the last 

state-court decision adjudicating his claim on the merits, and 

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he maintains our review under AEDPA is therefore of the 

state appellate court decision. 

The warden, however, argues that the last state court adjudication of the merits of Jensen’s Confrontation Clause 

claim was the trial court’s 2007 decision concluding that the

disputed evidence was admissible under the forfeiture by 

wrongdoing exception. Because the Supreme Court did not 

decide Giles until 2008, the warden contends there is no decision contrary to clearly established Supreme Court case law 

at the time, and so Jensen’s petition for habeas relief fails. 

The state appellate court assumed that the disputed testimonial evidence was erroneously admitted under Giles but 

found that any error was harmless, and the warden maintains the state appellate court did not adjudicate the claim 

“on the merits” because the decision was made on harmlesserror grounds. Jensen II, 794 N.W.2d at 493. 

If the warden is correct that the trial court decision is the 

relevant decision in this case, Jensen’s habeas request fails

because it is premised on Giles, which the Supreme Court 

had not decided at the time of the trial court ruling. See Cullen v. Pinholster, 131 S. Ct. 1388, 1399 (2011) (measuring statecourt decisions against the Supreme Court precedents as of 

the time the state court renders its decision); Knowles v. Mirzayance, 556 U.S. 111, 122 (2009) (stating it is not an unreasonable application of clearly established federal law “for a 

state court to decline to apply a specific legal rule that has 

not been squarely established by this Court.”).

The United States Supreme Court’s recent decision in 

Davis v. Ayala, 135 S. Ct. 2187 (2015), guides us here. There,

neither the criminal defendant nor his lawyer was given the 

opportunity to be present during the hearings on his chalCase: 14-1380 Document: 48 Filed: 09/08/2015 Pages: 39
No. 14-1380 13

lenges to the prosecutor’s use of peremptory challenges to 

exclude minority jurors, and he maintained that the ex parte 

hearings violated his federal Constitutional rights. Id. at 

2194-95. The California Supreme Court ruled that any error 

was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt. Id. at 2195 (citing 

People v. Ayala, 6 P.3d 193, 204 (Cal. 2000)). The United States 

Supreme Court granted a petition for a writ of certiorari, and 

one of the questions was “[w]hether a state court’s rejection 

of a claim of federal constitutional error on the ground that 

any error, if one occurred, was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt is an ‘adjudicat[ion] on the merits’ within the 

meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d), so that a federal court may 

set aside the resulting final state conviction only if the defendant can satisfy the restrictive standards imposed by that 

provision.” Brief for Petitioner at i, Chappell v. Ayala, 135 S. 

Ct. 401 (2014) (No. 13-1428), 2014 WL 2335007, at *i; see Chappell v. Ayala, 135 S. Ct. 401 (Oct. 20, 2014) (granting petition 

for writ of certiorari).

In its resulting decision, the Court stated that “[t]here is 

no dispute that the California Supreme Court held that any 

federal error was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under 

Chapman [v. California, 386 U.S. 18 (1967)].” Ayala, 135 S. Ct. 

at 2198. The Court then ruled that “this decision undoubtedly constitutes an adjudication of Ayala’s constitutional claim 

’on the merits.’” Id.

That a state court holding of harmless error beyond a 

reasonable doubt constitutes the adjudication of a claim on 

the merits for AEDPA purposes makes sense. The Court has 

previously explained that “as used in this context, the word 

‘merits’ is defined as ‘[t]he intrinsic rights and wrongs of a case

as determined by matters of substance, in distinction from 

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matters of form.” Johnson v. Williams, 133 S. Ct. 1088, 1097

(2013) (quoting Webster’s New International Dictionary 540 

(2d ed. 1954)). In contrast, an adjudication on matters “extraneous” to the particular claim, “such as competence of the 

tribunal or the like,” or on “procedural details” or “technicalities,” would not be a decision “on the merits.” Id. A 

harmless-error determination is a substantive determination, 

not merely one of form.

In his brief written before Ayala, the warden pointed to 

Greene v. Fisher, 132 S. Ct. 38, 43 (2011). In Greene, the parties 

agreed that the last state court adjudication on the merits of 

a federal Confrontation Clause claim took place on direct 

appeal to the Pennsylvania Superior Court. Id. at 45. The 

United States Supreme Court decision on which the defendant wished to rely, Gray v. Maryland, 523 U.S. 185 (1998), did 

not issue until three months later. The Greene Court ruled 

that although Gray was issued while the defendant’s petition 

for leave to appeal to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was 

pending, and that court initially granted the petition (though 

later dismissed it as improvidently granted), Gray was not 

“clearly established Federal law” under AEDPA because it 

had not been issued at the time of the last state-court adjudication on the merits. Id. No harmless-error determination 

was at issue in Greene, and Greene does not inform the analysis of whether a harmless-error determination is an adjudication on the merits.

Under Ayala, though, it is clear that the Wisconsin appellate court decision is the last “adjudication on the merits” for 

AEDPA purposes in Jensen’s case. Therefore, Giles had been 

decided by the time of the last adjudication of the claim on 

the merits, and Julie’s letter and the statements to Officer 

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Kosman at issue were admitted in violation of Jensen’s 

rights under the United States Constitution, as shown by 

clearly established Supreme Court precedent at the time of 

the Wisconsin appellate court decision.

B. Error Had Substantial and Injurious Effect in Determining Jury’s Verdict

We must now assess whether the Wisconsin appellate 

court’s decision that any federal constitutional error was 

harmless was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established federal law as determined by 

the United States Supreme Court, or was based on an unreasonable determination of the facts. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(d)(1), (2).

Jensen maintains it was, and the district court agreed. 

“The test for whether a federal constitutional error was 

harmless depends on the procedural posture of the case.” 

Ayala, 135 S. Ct. at 2197. When a case is on direct appeal, the 

standard for harmless error is that articulated in Chapman:

“‘[B]efore a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, 

the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless 

beyond a reasonable doubt.’” Ayala, 135 S. Ct. at 2197 (quoting Chapman, 386 U.S. at 24). 

However, because the conviction here originated in 

state court, this case is a collateral proceeding governed by 

AEDPA. Our case law had given some contrary signals as to 

the applicability of the Supreme Court’s decisions in Chapman and Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993), in cases 

where the state-court ruling was based on harmless error. 

Compare, e.g., Kamlager v. Pollard, 715 F.3d 1010, 1016 (7th Cir. 

2013) and Brown v. Rednour, 637 F.3d 761, 766 (7th Cir. 2011) 

with, e.g., Jones v. Basinger, 635 F.3d 1030, 1052 n.8 (7th Cir. 

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2011) (recognizing that “any error sufficiently harmful to satisfy the Brecht ‘actual prejudice’ standard could be deemed 

harmless only by unreasonably applying Chapman.”).

The Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ayala clarified 

the standard of review. For habeas petitioners like Jensen, 

where the state court ruled that an error in admission was a

harmless error, the petitioners are 

“not entitled to habeas relief based on trial error unless 

they can establish that it resulted in ‘actual prejudice.’” 

Brecht, 507 U.S. at 637 (quoting United States v. Lane, 474 

U.S. 438, 449 (1986)). Under this test, relief is proper only if the federal court has “grave doubt about whether a 

trial error of federal law had ‘substantial and injurious 

effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.’”

O’Neal v. McAninch, 513 U.S. 432, 436 (1995). 

Ayala, 135 S. Ct. at 2197-98. 

So the Supreme Court has made clear that Jensen must 

meet the Brecht standard. But Ayala also makes clear that this 

requirement does not mean that the Wisconsin appellate 

court’s harmless error determination lacks significance. See 

Ayala, 135 S. Ct. at 2198. Rather, the “Brecht standard ‘subsumes’ the requirements that § 2254(d) imposes when a federal habeas petitioner contests a state court’s determination 

that a constitutional error was harmless under Chapman.” Id. 

(citing Fry v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 120 (2007)). While a federal 

court adjudicating a habeas petition does not need to “’formal[ly]’ apply both Brecht and ‘AEDPA/Chapman,’ AEDPA 

nevertheless ‘sets forth a precondition to the grant of habeas 

relief.’” Ayala, 135 S. Ct. at 2198.

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Jensen maintains that the Brecht standard is satisfied here 

and that the Wisconsin court’s finding that the error was 

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt was not just wrong, but 

also unreasonable. Cf. Ayala, 135 S. Ct. at 2199 (stating that 

when reviewing state court’s determination that error was 

harmless under Chapman, federal court cannot grant habeas 

relief unless harmlessness determination itself was unreasonable). He also argues that the Wisconsin court unreasonably applied clearly established Supreme Court law by applying the wrong test, failing to consider his evidence in defense, and erroneously determining that key points of evidence were undisputed. 

We begin with the test for harmless error. Time and 

again, the Supreme Court has emphasized that a harmlesserror inquiry is not the same as a review for whether there 

was sufficient evidence at trial to support a verdict. Nearly 

seventy years ago, in Kotteakos v. United States, 328 U.S. 750 

(1946), the Supreme Court explained as it conducted harmless-error review of jury’s decision: 

And the question is, not were they right in their judgment, regardless of the error or its effect upon the verdict. It is rather what effect the error had or reasonably 

may be taken to have had on the jury’s decision....The 

inquiry cannot be merely whether there was enough to 

support the result, apart from the phase affected by the 

error. It is rather, even so, whether the error itself had 

substantial influence.

Id. at 764-65. The Supreme Court has reinforced this principle over and over. For example, in Satterwhite v. Texas, 486 

U.S. 249 (1988), the Court considered a death sentence where 

the state appellate court found contested testimony harmless 

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on the basis that the properly admitted evidence would have 

been sufficient to support a jury decision. Id. at 258. The Supreme Court reversed, explaining, “[t]he question, however, 

is not whether the legally admitted evidence was sufficient 

to support the death sentence, which we assume it was, but 

rather whether the State has proved ‘beyond a reasonable 

doubt that the error complained of did not contribute to the 

verdict obtained.’” Id. at 258-59 (quoting Chapman, 386 U.S. 

at 24). Finding this standard satisfied, the Court reversed the 

state court’s judgment. Id. at 260; see also Sullivan v. Louisiana, 

508 U.S. 275, 279 (1993) (“The inquiry, in other words, is not 

whether, in a trial that occurred without the error, a guilty 

verdict would surely have been rendered, but whether the 

guilty verdict actually rendered in this trial was surely unattributable to the error.”); Fahy v. State of Conn., 375 U.S. 85, 86 

(1963) (“We find that the erroneous admission of this unconstitutionally obtained evidence at this petitioner’s trial was 

prejudicial; therefore, the error was not harmless, and the 

conviction must be reversed. We are not concerned here 

with whether there was sufficient evidence on which the petitioner could have been convicted without the evidence 

complained of.”). 

Despite this long line of cases establishing the test for 

harmless error, the Wisconsin appellate court’s reasoning 

reads as though it is conducting an evaluation of whether 

there was sufficient evidence to support the verdict, not 

whether the error in admitting Julie’s letter and statements 

to police affected the jury’s verdict. Cf. Kotteakos, 328 U.S. at 

764-65. Near the beginning of its analysis, the state appellate 

court stated, “Here, we will not attempt to catalog all the untainted evidence the State presented; however, we will 

summarize some of the compelling pieces in order to illusCase: 14-1380 Document: 48 Filed: 09/08/2015 Pages: 39
No. 14-1380 19

trate that the record is replete with reason to uphold the jury’s verdict, even if the assumedly tainted evidence is disregarded.” Jensen II, 794 N.W.2d at 493. The court then went 

through five categories of evidence presented by the State—

computer evidence, motive evidence, Jensen’s incriminating 

statements, medical evidence, and miscellaneous evidence.

Id. at 493-94. The court said this was evidence from which “a 

rational jury could alone conclude beyond a reasonable 

doubt” that Jensen murdered his wife. Id. at 494. But a

statement of what a “rational jury could conclude” is not a 

statement of a harmless-error inquiry; it is instead the question presented when a direct appeal asks whether there is 

sufficient evidence to support a verdict. See State v. Kimbrough, 630 N.W.2d 752, 756 (Wis. 2001). That is not the question here.

The state appellate court next said it would examine the 

admitted testimonial evidence to determine whether any error in admitting it was harmless. Id. at 495. It looked at Julie’s letter and found other properly admitted evidence in 

the record that the appellate court said made similar points 

as to those made in the letter, or to corroborate statements in 

the letter. For example, the court stated that a sentence in Julie’s letter stating that “if anything happens to me, he would 

be my first suspect” was assumed inadmissible evidence. It 

then discussed what it termed “[ad]missible duplicative/corroborative evidence in the record.” Id. at 495. The

court pointed to Mr. Wojt’s testimony that about a month 

before her death, Julie told him she suspected Jensen was 

trying to poison her or drive her nuts to take the children 

from her. Id. at 496. Mr. Wojt also recounted that Julie said 

Jensen would go to work and leave his computer on with a 

screen displaying a website about poisoning. Id. The court 

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also pointed to her son’s teacher’s testimony recounting Julie’s statement, “I think my husband is going to kill me” as 

well as Jensen’s sister’s testimony that Julie told her in the 

fall of 1998 that she thought Jensen might be planning to kill 

her. Id.

The court concluded its discussion comparing the individual statements in the letter to other evidence in the record 

by stating, “The State’s additional evidence, compared to Julie’s letter, illustrates that virtually all relevant information 

in Julie’s letter was duplicated by admissible nontestimonial 

evidence from other sources. The rest of the record reflects 

that the jury heard overwhelming evidence of murder, and 

upon this record, it could rationally have concluded beyond 

a reasonable doubt that Jensen murdered Julie. The same is 

true regarding Julie’s testimonial statements to Kosman; that 

is, virtually everything related in Julie’s statements to 

Kosman was duplicated by admissible evidence from other 

sources.” Jensen II, 794 N.W.2d at 498. This analysis from the 

Wisconsin appellate court demonstrates that it is conducting 

a review for whether there is sufficient evidence to support a 

verdict, a review that looks at all the evidence in the light 

most favorable to the conviction, and where the inquiry is 

only whether the jury could have convicted. See Kimbrough, 

630 N.W.2d at 756. That is very different than the harmless 

error test under clearly established Supreme Court law. 

And these statements do not just seem to be slips of the 

pen. The state appellate court decision contains a very detailed discussion of the State’s evidence. But its discussion

does not engage with the defense evidence that goes against 

the evidence discussed by the court. The Supreme Court has 

said, however, that when a court “evaluat[es] the strength of 

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No. 14-1380 21

only one party’s evidence, no logical conclusion can be 

reached regarding the strength of contrary evidence offered 

by the other side to rebut or cast doubt.” Holmes v. South 

Carolina, 547 U.S. 319, 331 (2006).

To be clear, if the question was whether there was sufficient evidence to convict Jensen, the answer would be “yes.” 

But the harmless error test does not focus just on the sufficiency of other evidence. The question as we conduct the

Brecht analysis is whether we are in “’grave doubt about 

whether a trial error of federal law had “substantial and injurious effect or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.”’”

Ayala, 135 S. Ct. at 2198 (quoting O’Neal, 513 U.S. at 436 (emphasis added)). So we must look at the influence the improperly admitted handwritten letter and accusatory statements to the police had on the verdict. In this analysis “we 

look to ‘a host of factors,’ such as ‘the importance of the witness’ testimony in the prosecution’s case, whether the testimony was cumulative, the presence or absence of evidence 

corroborating or contradicting the testimony of the witness 

on material points, the extent of cross-examination otherwise 

permitted, and, of course, the overall strength of the prosecution’s case.’” Jones, 635 F.3d at 1052 (quoting Delaware v. 

Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 684 (1986)). 

The letter, a handwritten letter, penned just two weeks 

before her death, was unlike anything else in evidence. It 

came straight from Julie, shortly before her death. (At least 

according to the State—there was some question at trial as to 

its authenticity.) And it played a key role in the trial from the 

outset. The jury first heard about the letter early in the 

State’s opening statement, when it read the letter in its entirety out loud for the jury to hear. The State used Julie’s 

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own words from the letter and her statements to Officer 

Kosman in its opening statement to underscore its themes of 

fear, motive, and absence of intent to take her own life. In 

light of the pretrial ruling that the letter would be allowed 

into evidence, the defense addressed the letter in its opening 

as well, even presenting it as a large exhibit. Defense counsel 

accurately in its opening statement told the jury that “[w]e’ll 

come back to the letter many times during this case, and 

you’ll have to decide whether it’s a blueprint for framing her 

husband or legitimate.”

The letter was also the last thing the State left in the jury’s mind before it deliberated Jensen’s fate, as the State’s

end to its rebuttal closing argument focused on the letter. (It 

had also highlighted the letter and Julie’s statements to the 

police in other parts of its closing argument.) In its final arguments to the jury the State stressed that the letter contained Julie’s own thoughts: “So here was her unexpressed 

thoughts. She wrote them down, and she hid them away .... 

Hid them away until a time when she could resolve this terrible dilemma she was in ....” The State also emphasized 

here that the jury should believe the letter because it contained Julie’s own words: “It was a thought which was only 

to be expressed upon her death, because she wanted the 

world to know the truth. She wanted you to know the 

truth.” The State told the jury to believe the letter because 

Julie would not have lied: “At the time she wrote those 

words Julie had no motive to lie. She was hoping and she 

was praying nobody would ever see these words.” The State, 

in its final words, left the jury with words from the letter: 

“She hoped, she prayed that would not happen. But as she 

indicated, however, I will not leave David and Douglas, my 

life’s greatest love, accomplishment and wish. That’s why 

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No. 14-1380 23

she stayed. Dr. Spiro doesn’t understand that. Well, there’s a 

lot of things that Dr. Spiro doesn’t understand. The important thing is that you do. Thank you.”

The prosecution’s choice to end its closing arguments 

with the letter reflects its importance in the prosecution’s 

case. The letter was a unique piece of evidence. No other 

piece of evidence had the emotional and dramatic impact as 

did this “letter from the grave.” While some of the statements in the letter also came out through other witnesses at 

trial, only the letter contained words straight from Julie. And

what words they were. Julie’s handwritten letter said her 

husband would be her first suspect if anything were to happen to her, along with emotionally compelling statements 

that she would never take her life or leave her children. The 

themes in the letter that Julie identified—she was caught up 

in an unhappy marriage, Jensen was still bitter about her affair, it was just Jensen who used the internet, she would 

never take her life because she loved her children too much, 

she feared Jensen was plotting her murder—were the same 

themes that the State developed throughout trial. Cf. United 

States v. Brown, 490 F.2d 758, 781 (D.C. Cir. 1973) (“The 

statement presented all the classic hearsay dangers and 

abuses. Here was that voice from the grave casting an incriminating shadow on the defendant ... The damaging evidence stands impregnable—irretrievably lodged in the jurors’ minds.”).

Recognizing the significance of the letter, the prosecutor 

did not merely ask one witness to discuss the letter’s contents; rather, it displayed the handwritten letter itself on the 

screen and asked the jury to read it. Twelve witnesses testified about the letter, including five experts. Notably, state 

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medical experts Dr. Mainland and Dr. Long relied on the letter to support their medical opinions that Julie’s death was a 

homicide. Dr. Long testified that the letter and Julie’s other 

statements to police regarding fearing for her life from her 

husband were two of the reasons for his conclusion that Julie’s death was a homicide. And Dr. Mainland testified that 

“every sentence in the letter influenced” her, and that the 

sentence in the letter that Julie would not take her own life 

because of her children was especially influential in her 

opinion that the death was a homicide. The police and the 

Wojts also testified about the letter. The letter was also 

shown to Jensen during a video-recorded interrogation, and 

the State emphasized Jensen’s reaction to the letter in its 

closing. The letter also came up during the jury deliberations—the jury’s second note in its thirty hours of deliberations requested the letter.

Indeed, the importance of the letter in the State’s case 

was emphasized over and over by the State as it repeatedly 

fought to get the letter admitted. In pretrial litigation, the 

State called the letter an “essential component of the State’s 

case,” “highly relevant to the central issues of this case: suicide, motive, and fear,” and of “extraordinary value.” It also 

called the letter’s admissibility “a make or break issue” from 

the State’s perspective. While the Wisconsin appellate court 

found the improperly admitted evidence added “nothing 

significant beyond the properly admitted nontestimonial 

statements,” Jensen II, 794 N.W.2d at 499, in addition to all 

that we discussed, the State’s own words reflect the importance of the letter to its case and the unreasonable nature 

of the appellate court’s finding of harmless error.

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No. 14-1380 25

In assessing whether the improperly admitted evidence 

had a substantial and injurious effect on the verdict, we are 

concerned with the overall strength of the prosecution’s 

case, not merely the evidence in its favor. Jones, 635 F.3d at 

1032. Although the state appellate court discussed the State’s 

evidence at length, it did not engage with the defense evidence. As the district court observed, “A reader of the court 

of appeals’ opinion would conclude that Jensen called no 

witnesses, introduced no evidence, never questioned the 

credibility of any witness, and never even elicited helpful 

testimony from a prosecution witness.” But that is far from 

what actually happened during the six-week trial. 

While the Wisconsin appellate court referred to “untainted and undisputed gripping evidence against Jensen,” Jensen 

II, 794 N.W.2d at 494, the “undisputed” evidence in the case 

was all circumstantial and subject to more than one interpretation. Even the computer evidence, which the appellate 

court called the most incriminating evidence against Jensen, 

was not conclusive. The State presented evidence of searches 

for various means of death (poisoning, botulism, pipe 

bombs, and mercury fulminate, and one visited website explained how to reverse the polarity of a swimming pool, 

which the Jensens had), testimony from her son’s teacher 

that Julie and her son had both said Julie did not know how 

to use a computer, and testimony that there was no internet 

use on the home computer in November 1998 from Monday 

through Friday between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m., while Jensen was 

at work, nor was there internet use during days when he 

was at a conference out of town.

But no evidence precluded a jury from finding that Julie 

did at least some of the internet searches, including those for 

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ethylene glycol poisoning. In addition to the pro-prosecution 

evidence discussed by the appellate court, the jury also 

heard from Julie’s best friend, who testified that Julie used 

the computer to conduct research and for household 

bookkeeping. Julie’s resume stated that she had performed 

“on-line security order entry” while working at Dean Witter. 

She had also obtained a Series Seven broker’s license that 

allowed her to place and accept stock trades. That evidence 

was consistent with Jensen’s statement to investigators 

denying any knowledge of the internet searches for poison 

and stating that Julie also used the internet and accessed the 

computer. Moreover, that the home computer’s internet 

search history was deleted is equally consistent with both 

Julie trying to hide evidence of her suicide and with Jensen 

trying to hide evidence of murder. And no searches for poisons were found on Jensen’s work computer, which one 

might have expected if he were the person doing that search 

on the home computer.

This case was no slam dunk. The evidence was all circumstantial. And there was significant evidence in support 

of Jensen’s theory that Julie had taken her life, evidence not 

discussed at all by the Wisconsin appellate court. For example, she had visited her doctor, Dr. Richard Borman, two 

days before her death. Dr. Borman testified that she was 

“highly upset” and “seemed depressed and distraught and 

almost frantic, actually.” The jury heard that Dr. Borman 

prescribed the anti-depressant Paxil, which can worsen a 

depressed person’s symptoms. Julie became ill the day after 

she saw Dr. Borman, starting in the early hours of the day, 

and by mid-morning Jensen had gone to see Dr. Borman. 

Jensen expressed concern that Julie was suffering from Paxil’s side effects including sleeplessness, and Dr. Borman preCase: 14-1380 Document: 48 Filed: 09/08/2015 Pages: 39
No. 14-1380 27

scribed a sleep aid. It was while Jensen was away seeing Dr. 

Borman that Julie phoned Mrs. Wojt to say not to worry if 

she did not see Julie outside that day, another significant 

piece of evidence that supported the defense’s suicide theory. A jury could infer that once Jensen left for the doctor, Julie put her suicide plan into action, including calling Mrs. 

Wojt and going on the computer to search for ethylene glycol poisoning. (There was an internet search for ethylene 

glycol poisoning at 9:45 am that day, when the defense said 

Jensen was away seeing Dr. Borman.)

Nor did the state appellate court discuss the significant 

credibility problems of seven-time convict Aaron Dillard, 

Jensen’s one-time cellblock mate whom the trial judge called 

the “top liar I’ve ever had in court.” Dillard, testifying at trial 

while awaiting his own sentencing, testified that Jensen admitted to him in prison that he had poisoned Julie and later 

suffocated her by pushing her face into a pillow. The medical professionals who opined for the very first time at trial 

that Julie was suffocated (Dr. Chambliss and Dr. Mainland)

relied on Dillard’s account for the suffocation details. Dillard 

had in his cell a transcript of the lead detective’s interrogation of Jensen, and the trial judge recognized there was testimony from which the jury could conclude that Dillard was 

in and out of Jensen’s cell. Although the State argued that 

Jensen had confessed to his cellblock mate Dillard, if the 

transcript was in Jensen’s cell, that could have been the way 

Dillard obtained the details. 

The state appellate court also did not discuss the testimony of Dr. Herzl Spiro, who examined Julie’s mental 

health records and interviewed persons close to her. He testified that Julie was suffering from a major depressive disorCase: 14-1380 Document: 48 Filed: 09/08/2015 Pages: 39
28 No. 14-1380

der that was complicated by anxiety and agitation with possible delusional features, and he concluded that she posed a 

significant suicide risk and that it was more likely that Julie’s 

ingestion of antifreeze was the result of suicidal intent rather 

than homicide or accident.

The state appellate court noted the testimony from Edward Klug who said that during a late-night gripe session 

with Jensen about their wives, Jensen said that if one wanted 

to get rid of his wife, there were websites instructing how to 

kill her with undetectable poison. But the court did not discuss the fact that Klug had not come forward with this account until nine years after Julie’s death, despite the large 

amount of publicity surrounding the case. The state appellate court was concerned only with the evidence in the prosecution’s favor, while the proper concern is with the overall 

strength of the prosecution’s case. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 

684; Jones, 635 F.3d at 1032.2

 

2 The dissent suggests that it is somehow irrelevant that the Wisconsin appellate court’s lengthy opinion ignored extensive evidence. But in 

Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86 (2011), to which the dissent points, there 

was no state court opinion that explained the reasons for denying relief. 

Id. at 98. Here, however, the state court gave a detailed account of the

“arguments or theories [that] supported ... the state court’s decision,”

and that account matters to our analysis. Id. at 102; see Brady v. Pfister, 711 

F.3d 818, 826 (7th Cir. 2013) (explaining that even after Richter, federal 

courts must evaluate whether § 2254(d) satisfied in light of state court’s 

explanation); cf. Kubsch v. Neal, 2015 WL 4747942, at *17-19 (7th Cir. Aug. 

12, 2015) (discussing review where state court rationale is incomplete). 

The actual arguments and theories supporting the state appellate court’s 

decision convince us that its error was “well understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Richter, 562 U.S. at 103. 

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No. 14-1380 29

We conclude that after consideration of the correct 

standard of review, the improperly admitted letter and accusatory statements resulted in actual prejudice to Jensen. We

recognize that “an unreasonable application of federal law is 

different from an incorrect application of federal law.” Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 86 (2011). But the state appellate 

court’s ruling was not simply incorrect. The state trial judge 

recognized this when he called the letter’s admittance “grave 

constitutional error” when he foresaw the Giles ruling. That 

the jury improperly heard Julie’s voice from the grave in the 

way it did means there is no doubt that Jensen’s rights under 

the federal Confrontation Clause were violated. Any reasonable jurist using the proper standard would have to find 

“grave doubt” about whether that violation is harmless. The 

error in admission had a substantial and injurious effect or 

influence in determining the jury’s verdict; it was one “well 

understood and comprehended in existing law beyond any 

possibility for fairminded disagreement.” Richter, 562 U.S. at 

103. Because Jensen satisfies the Brecht standard, he necessarily satisfies the AEDPA standard of an unreasonable application of the Chapman harmless error standard. See Ayala, 

135 S. Ct. at 138; Fry, 551 U.S. at 120. As a result, we agree 

with the district court that Jensen’s petition must be granted.

III. CONCLUSION

The judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.

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30 No. 14-1380

TINDER, Circuit Judge, dissenting. The admission of Julie’s 

letter and testimonial statements to Officer Kosman violated 

Jensen’s confrontation rights, but the Wisconsin Court of 

Appeals affirmed his conviction, holding that the error was 

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt under Chapman v. California, 386 U.S. 18, 24 (1967). Fairminded jurists could disagree with that holding. Indeed, my colleagues in the majority, who epitomize fair-mindedness, disagree, and make a 

strong case for doing so. But I submit that fairminded jurists 

could also agree with the Wisconsin Court of Appeals. And 

because we owe great deference to the state court’s decision, 

we are not in a position to choose between two fairminded 

alternatives. I would uphold the decision of the Wisconsin 

Court of Appeals as a reasonable application of Chapman. 

Therefore, I respectfully dissent.

In Brecht v. Abrahamson, 507 U.S. 619 (1993), the Supreme 

Court established the harmless-error standard that applies 

“in determining whether habeas relief must be granted because of constitutional error of the trial type.” Id. at 638. The 

test is “whether the error had substantial and injurious effect 

or influence in determining the jury’s verdict.” Id. at 637 

(quotation omitted). In other words, there must be “actual 

prejudice.” Id. (quotation omitted).

Three years after [the Court] decided Brecht, 

Congress passed, and the President signed, the 

Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act 

of 1996 (AEDPA), under which a habeas petition may not be granted unless the state court’s 

adjudication “resulted in a decision that was 

contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application of, clearly established Federal law, as 

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No. 14-1380 31

determined by the Supreme Court of the United States ....” 

Fry v. Pliler, 551 U.S. 112, 119 (2007) (quoting 28 U.S.C. § 

2254(d)(1)).

The Court recently held that when a state prisoner “seeks 

federal habeas corpus relief, he must meet the Brecht standard, but that does not mean ... that a state court’s harmlessness determination has no significance under Brecht.” Davis 

v. Ayala, 135 S.Ct. 2187, 2198 (2015). Rather, “[w]hen a Chapman decision is reviewed under AEDPA, ‘a federal court 

may not award habeas relief under § 2254 unless the harmlessness determination itself was unreasonable.’” Id. at 2199 

(quoting Fry, 551 U.S. at 119). “And a state-court decision is 

not unreasonable if ‘fairminded jurists could disagree on 

[its] correctness.’” Id. (quoting Harrington v. Richter, 562 U.S. 

86, 101 (2011)) (internal quotation marks omitted). Thus, to 

prevail, a petitioner “must show that the state court’s decision to reject his claim ‘was so lacking in justification that

there was an error well understood and comprehended in 

existing law beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.’” Id. (quoting Richter, 562 U.S. at 103).

As assumed by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals, the admission of Julie’s letter and testimonial statements to Officer 

Kosman violated the Confrontation Clause. However, to obtain habeas relief, Jensen “must show that he was actually 

prejudiced by this [violation], a standard that he necessarily 

cannot satisfy if a fairminded jurist could agree with the 

[state court’s] decision that the [violation] met the Chapman

standard of harmlessness.” Id.

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The Wisconsin Court of Appeals examined Julie’s letter 

line by line, and it explained in great detail how all of Julie’s 

statements in the letter were duplicative of other, admissible 

evidence. State v. Jensen (Jensen II), 794 N.W.2d 482, 495–98 

(2010). It did the same with Julie’s testimonial statements to 

Officer Kosman. Id. at 498–99. For example, Jensen’s sister, 

Laura Koster, testified that Julie told her that she thought 

Jensen might be planning to kill her. Koster also testified that 

Julie showed her a photo of a list from Jensen’s day planner 

and something that “looked like a syringe.”

Tadeusz Wojt, Julie’s neighbor, testified that during the 

three weeks prior to Julie’s death, Julie was upset and 

“scared she was go[ing] to die,” because Julie feared that 

Jensen was trying to poison her by “put[ting] something in 

the wine” Jensen insisted Julie drink. Wojt also testified that 

Julie told him that she did not think she would make it 

through one particular weekend because she had found suspicious notes written by her husband and she had seen a 

computer page about poisoning that Jensen had left open on 

the home computer. Wojt testified that Julie repeatedly told 

him about marital problems she and Jensen were having. 

Therese DeFazio, Julie’s son’s teacher, testified that a 

week before her death, Julie told DeFazio that she thought 

Jensen was trying to kill her and “was going to make it look 

like a suicide.” DeFazio said Julie told her about a list written by Jensen that included “syringes ... and drugs and items 

like that,” and Julie feared that Jensen was going to try to 

give her an overdose of drugs by putting them in her food or 

drink. DeFazio testified that Julie said that Jensen “never 

forgave her” for the affair she had eight years earlier. DeFazio also testified that in August 1998 she asked Julie to help 

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No. 14-1380 33

in the computer lab with the children, and Julie said, “[O]h, I 

can’t do that, I don’t even know how to turn one on.” DeFazio testified that Julie’s son told DeFazio that he was teaching his mother how to use a computer because “she didn’t 

know how.” DeFazio testified that Julie said she gave her 

neighbor a note, “saying that if my husband ever kills me 

please believe that I did not commit suicide, I would never 

do that because I love my children and I wouldn’t do that to 

my children.”

Dr. Richard Borman, Julie’s physician, testified that two 

days before her death, Julie denied being suicidal and said

she loved her children “more than anything and they were 

the most important thing in the world to her,” and she did 

not want to lose them. Dr. Borman said Julie alluded to an 

affair that she had in the past and said she believed that Jensen had “never really forgiven” her for it.

Jensen’s friend and co-worker, David Nehring, testified 

that soon after he met Jensen, sometime around 1990 or 1991, 

Jensen told him about Julie’s brief affair. Nehring testified

that eight years after telling him about the affair, Jensen’s 

anger had not diminished. He said that “[Jensen] remained 

upset about [the affair] and distressed over it for as long as I 

knew him.” Nehring described Jensen’s computer skills as 

“above average,” and testified that during the month before 

Julie’s death, Jensen conducted Internet searches on drug interactions “on a very frequent basis.” Nehring testified that 

Jensen said he was trying to get Julie to relax by offering her

glasses of wine at night, but she was resisting his efforts. 

Nehring also testified that a day after Nehring told Jensen he 

was surprised the police had not seized Jensen’s work computer as part of the investigation into Julie’s death, Jensen 

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reported that his work computer “had been fried and he’d 

have to get a new one.”

The State presented evidence indicating that Jensen repeatedly placed pornographic photos around the house for 

Julie to find and that Jensen knew Julie believed her former 

paramour was planting them. Jensen denied knowing the 

origin of the pornographic photos, but he told the investigating officer, Detective Paul Ratzburg, that he began saving 

the photos and using them to upset Julie when “something 

would happen” that caused him to “get pissed off.” Detective Ratzburg said Jensen explained that sometimes Jensen

would leave the photos out for Julie to find and other times 

he would bring them out, show them to Julie and tell her 

that he “found these in the shed.” Detective Ratzburg testified that Jensen admitted that their marriage was never the 

same after Julie’s affair.

Detective Ratzburg also testified that Jensen told him that 

on the morning of Julie’s death, Julie “could hardly sit up,” 

she “was not able to get out of bed,” and she “was not able 

to move around and function.” Jensen said he propped Julie 

up in bed at 7:30 a.m., and he did not leave home that morning until 8:00 or 9:00 a.m. This timetable is significant because of computer evidence that, at 7:40 a.m. on the day of 

Julie’s death, a search for “ethylene glycol poisoning” was 

conducted on the Jensen home computer and then the user 

double-deleted that morning’s Internet history. Computer 

evidence also revealed that, two months earlier, the Jensen 

home computer was used to search for methods of poisoning on the same day Jensen and his then-paramour exchanged emails planning their future together.

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In short, there were multiple sources of admissible evidence duplicating (or corroborating) every relevant aspect of 

Julie’s erroneously admitted testimonial statements. In particular, Julie’s letter and statements to Officer Kosman were 

not the only times Julie told her story; during the same time 

period, she told variations of the same story to multiple 

people. This contributed to what the Wisconsin Court of 

Appeals described as “the staggering weight of the untainted evidence and cumulatively sound evidence presented by 

the State,” which led the court to conclude that “the State 

has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that any error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” Jensen 

II, 794 N.W.2d at 504.

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals recognized that “[t]his 

case was not a classic whodunit.” Id. at 493. Instead, the jury 

was asked to choose between two dark and premeditated 

alternatives—either Jensen murdered Julie and framed it to 

look like suicide, or Julie committed suicide and framed Jensen for murder. One unique aspect of this case is that each of 

Julie’s testimonial statements, as well as much of the duplicative admissible evidence, could be interpreted to support 

either alternative. (Given the wealth of duplicative admissible evidence, it seems safe to assume the jury will be presented with the same stark choice if there is a retrial.) It reasonably could be said that the inclusion or exclusion of Julie’s letter and testimonial statements to Officer Kosman 

would not significantly alter the jury’s choice or the considerations underlying that choice, no matter the rhetoric employed by the State’s lawyers in pretrial filings or the parties’ 

use of the letter as a framing device during trial.

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In part because so much of the evidence could be viewed 

as supporting either of the two competing theories, the prosecution’s case was not a slam dunk, as discussed by the majority. And as also noted by the majority, there might be reason to believe that Julie’s letter was especially forceful evidence (even though its authenticity was questioned) and that 

members of the jury would have given less weight to Julie’s 

oft-repeated fears and accusations if all they had were her 

oral statements to her neighbor, her son’s teacher, and Jensen’s sister, as well as the corroborating computer and medical evidence, evidence of Jensen’s incriminating statements 

and motive, and evidence of Julie’s lack of suicidal intent 

and devotion to her children. But it might also be reasonable 

to think that without the letter and testimonial statements to 

Officer Kosman, the jury would have been less inclined to 

believe Jensen’s theory that Julie committed suicide and 

framed him for murder, because anyone concocting such a 

scheme likely would have memorialized their accusations in 

writing and taken steps to ensure they came to the attention 

of the police. In other words, in this unique situation—where 

the evidence at issue supported each side’s theory—the state 

court could reasonably decide that despite the significant 

role Julie’s testimonial statements played in the trial, those 

statements did not play a significant role in deciding the jury’s verdict. 

The majority faults the Wisconsin Court of Appeals for 

ignoring evidence supporting the defense theory. It is worth 

pointing out that the Wisconsin court stated that it “review[ed] the extensive record.” Jensen II, 794 N.W.2d at 504. 

But “of greater moment is the Supreme Court’s ruling in 

Harrington [v. Richter] that even a state court ‘opinion’ consisting of the single word ‘affirmed’ is entitled to the full 

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deference that the habeas corpus statute demands be given 

determinations by state courts. The Supreme Court’s ruling 

precludes our inferring error from the Wisconsin court’s 

failure to discuss particular pieces of evidence.” Price v. 

Thurmer, 637 F.3d 831, 839 (7th Cir. 2011) (citing Richter, 562 

U.S. at 98–99). 

The majority reads the Wisconsin Court of Appeals’s decision as employing a sufficiency-of-the-evidence test, rather 

than a harmlessness test. If that was true, it would be an unreasonable application of Chapman, and to be fair, there are a 

few statements in the state court’s opinion to support this 

reading. But in each case, the court reiterated its finding of 

harmlessness based on “the staggering weight of the untainted evidence and cumulatively sound evidence presented by the State.” Jensen II, 794 N.W.2d at 504. For example, 

after cataloging some of the state’s corroborating evidence, 

the court stated:

With the above illustrative summary of the 

other, untainted and undisputed gripping evidence against Jensen—from which a rational 

jury could alone conclude beyond a reasonable 

doubt that Jensen cruelly planned and plotted 

and, in fact, carried out the murder of his wife 

Julie—we move on to examine the admitted testimonial evidence for a determination as to whether 

the assumed error in admitting it was harmless or 

reversible. As already noted, we conclude that 

the State has met its burden of proving admission of the testimonial evidence was harmless 

beyond a reasonable doubt. The State deftly 

dissects the challenged testimonial evidence 

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and is able to point to admissible duplicative 

and corroborative evidence in the record.

Id. at 494–95 (emphasis added). This passage makes clear 

that while the Wisconsin Court of Appeals found the nontestimonial evidence against Jensen sufficient to support the 

jury’s verdict, this was not the basis of its harmlessness finding. Instead, the court “move[d] on” to conclude that the 

admission of Julie’s testimonial statements was harmless because the statements were duplicative of other, untainted 

corroborative evidence. Cf. Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 

673, 684 (1986) (“Whether such an error is harmless in a particular case depends upon a host of factors.... These factors 

include ... whether the testimony was cumulative, [and] the 

presence or absence of evidence corroborating or contradicting the testimony of the witness on material points....”). As 

the Wisconsin court stated in concluding its harmlessness 

analysis, “[t]he sine qua non is that the testimonial statements provided nothing significant beyond the properly 

admitted nontestimonial statements.” Jensen II, 794 N.W.2d 

at 499. And as the court reiterated in concluding its opinion: 

“the State has proven beyond a reasonable doubt that any 

error complained of did not contribute to the verdict obtained.” Id. at 504; cf. Chapman, 386 U.S. at 24 (“[B]efore a 

federal constitutional error can be held harmless [on direct 

appeal], the court must be able to declare a belief that it was 

harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.”).

The Wisconsin Court of Appeals concluded that “even 

assuming the testimonial evidence of Julie’s letter and Julie’s 

statements to Kosman were inadmissible under the rules of 

evidence and the Sixth Amendment Confrontation Clause, 

we deem any error in admission harmless.” Jensen II, 794 

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N.W.2d at 499. Based on the duplicative nature of Julie’s testimonial statements and the overall strength of the prosecution’s case (even considering the defense evidence discussed 

by the majority), I am not convinced that the state court’s 

decision “‘was so lacking in justification that there was an 

error well understood and comprehended in existing law 

beyond any possibility for fairminded disagreement.’” Ayala, 

135 S.Ct. at 2199 (quoting Richter, 562 U.S. at 103); cf. id. at 

2198 (“There must be more than a ‘reasonable possibility’

that the error was harmful. The Brecht standard reflects the 

view that a ‘State is not to be put to th[e] arduous task [of 

retrying a defendant] based on mere speculation that the defendant was prejudiced by trial error; the court must find 

that the defendant was actually prejudiced by the error.’”) 

(quoting Brecht, 507 U.S. at 637; Calderon v. Coleman, 525 U.S. 

141, 146 (1998)). I would find that the decision of the Wisconsin Court of Appeals represented a reasonable application of controlling precedent. Accordingly, I would reverse 

the grant of habeas relief.

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