In 2023, the state Crime Victims Rights Board rejected an attempt by Michael M. Bell to hold the Wisconsin Department of Justice responsible for ignoring his pleas to examine what happened the night his son was killed.
In new legal papers filed this week, Russell Beckman, a retired Kenosha police detective, charges that the Wisconsin DOJ improperly worked with the Crime Victims Rights Board during its review of Bell’s claim.
Beckman contends that conversations involving a top-ranking DOJ official, an attorney working for the victims rights board and the board’s director were “illicit” and deprived Bell of a fair hearing into his complaint.
The DOJ declined comment on Beckman’s filing.
Bell’s son, Michael E. Bell, was shot and killed on Nov. 9, 2004, after a police encounter. In the years since, the elder Bell has repeatedly sought to draw attention to discrepancies in the Kenosha Police Department’s account of the incident. He argues those discrepancies call into question the police department’s narrative — including the reason that his son was shot.
The official police department account asserts that Albert Gonzales, the Kenosha police officer who shot Michael E. Bell, acted in self-defense after another officer shouted that Bell had grabbed his service weapon during an ongoing struggle.
Bell’s father has consistently argued that eyewitness testimony and physical evidence show that his son could not have grabbed the second officer’s gun. He has said that while he believes the second officer was genuinely mistaken, Gonzales was in a position to know otherwise but shot Bell in haste.
The second officer later took his own life. Gonzales, who has self-published an account of the case using fictional names for some of the people involved — including the Bells — has denied the elder Bell’s claims and stood by the Kenosha Police Department’s scenario of the incident.
For more than 15 years Michael M. Bell has urged authorities to reexamine the details of his son’s death, to no avail. Beckman has been working with Bell as a volunteer for more than a decade on those efforts.
Bell says since 2018 he has several times sought meetings with Attorney General Josh Kaul and requested information from the Wisconsin Department of Justice.
After receiving no response, Beckman, acting on Bell’s behalf, filed a complaint to the Crime Victims Rights Board in 2022, charging that by ignoring Bell’s requests Kaul had violated his rights as a crime victim. The board dismissed the complaint in 2023.
The board ruled that the alleged conduct by Kaul and the DOJ wouldn’t be considered “crimes that confer victim status” on Bell. The ruling added: “The alleged conduct is against the government and its administration, not against individual persons.”
After that ruling, Beckman obtained billing records and other materials related to Bell’s complaint before the victims rights board through open records requests. In an affidavit he filed this week, Beckman said those records showed that DOJ lawyers, the Crime Victims Rights Board’s operations director and a private attorney the board hired to provide legal counsel regarding Bell’s complaint, had conducted telephone conferences about the case in February 2023.
Another open records request turned up an email message from Mel Barnes, the chief legal counsel for Gov. Tony Evers, telling the lawyer advising the CVRB that Deputy Attorney General Eric Wilson “can provide some background” about the Bell complaint and can “connect you with the board.”
The Wisconsin law that empowers the Crime Victims Rights Board states that “actions of the board are not subject to approval or review by the attorney general.”
In his affidavit Beckman contends those conferences could be considered “illicit” in light of that law. “Wisconsin law and CVRB organization rules create a specific separation of the authority between the CVRB and the Attorney General/WI DOJ,” the affidavit states.
Beckman also charges that those conferences could constitute “improper ex parte influence from a named adverse party” — the DOJ.
Beckman says in the affidavit that because of earlier email messages he sent to DOJ in his and Bell’s effort to persuade Kaul to look into the 2004 fatal shooting and their allegations of a Kenosha police coverup, it would be “a conflict of interest” for the DOJ lawyer to confer with the CVRB lawyer.
Beckman filed the affidavit and a related document in Brown County circuit court as part of his petition for a judicial review of the Crime Victims Rights Board ruling that dismissed Bell’s complaint.
The circuit judge dismissed Beckman’s judicial review petition on the grounds that Beckman missed a filing deadline. Beckman has appealed the judge’s action, arguing that he did not miss the deadline based on the wording of the state’s online form. His appeal is in the Wisconsin Appeals Court 3rd District, where it has been for more than a year.
