By Dan Nienaber
MANKATO — A jailhouse scuffle could ruin a plea deal for a 21-year-old Janesville man accused of kidnapping the same woman twice.
On April 15 Justin Peder Lehrke reached a plea agreement that dismissed several kidnapping and criminal sexual conduct charges in exchange for a guilty plea for one count of felony first-degree burglary. One month later he was cited for allegedly getting into a fight with a fellow Blue Earth County Jail inmate.
While investigating that incident, it was also learned Lehrke had contacted the woman he is alleged to have kidnapped by telephone at least four times while he was in jail. Two of those calls were made before the plea agreement and two were made after.
That prompted Assistant County Attorney Michael Hanson to file a motion June 5 that would withdraw the plea agreement, which would likely have resulted in a four-year prison sentence for Lehrke. If all of the charges are reinstated, Lehrke could face a much longer prison sentence if he went to trial and was convicted.
Hanson explained his motion to District Court Judge Kurt Johnson during a hearing Friday.
“Had the state known the defendant continued to have contact with the victim all that time, I would not have made the offer I did,” Hanson said. “This defendant has shown the court he has no desire to follow the terms of this plea agreement.”
He said, as far as he knew, the victim did not tell anyone Lehrke had been contacting her from jail.
The kidnapping and sexual assault charges stem from two incidents that took place about a month apart last fall. A 20-year-old woman who knew Lehrke accused him of kidnapping her and sexually assaulting her in September, then kidnapping her again and attempting to take her to Florida in October. He had been released from jail after posting a $125,000 bond.
Lehrke was arrested Sept. 4 after Blue Earth County Sheriff’s deputies tracked his cell phone signal and found him at Wildwood County Park near St. Clair. In that incident, the victim reported he had kidnapped her and sexually assaulted her three days earlier.
The victim was also with Lehrke when he was arrested in Calvert, Ky., on Oct. 4. Again, authorities tracked cell phone signals after the victim sent text messages to relatives. A rifle, handgun, ammunition, two military knives, plastic zip ties, vodka bottles and a bottle of pills were found in the trunk of the car, which was registered to Lehrke’s grandmother.
During his arguments before Johnson, Daniel Guerrero, Lehrke’s attorney, said Friday that Hanson should not be allowed to pull out of the plea agreement. It wasn’t Lehrke’s fault the victim never told authorities about the telephone calls, he said.
Guerrero also questioned Hanson’s speculation that the victim never reported the calls because she was afraid of Lehrke. She had no reason to be afraid of Lehrke because he was in jail, Guerrero said. She could have reported the first call and Lehrke’s telephone privileges would have been taken away.
“Maybe she was protecting Mr. Lehrke,” Guerrero said. “Maybe she didn’t want him to get into trouble.”
Johnson allowed Hanson to enter recordings of the telephone calls, which all either went to voice mail or were met with no response by the victim, and a video of the jail fight as evidence for his motion.
Johnson did not allow Hanson to enter statements from 35-year-old Robert Alen Larson, the other inmate involved in the fight, and a third inmate who witnessed the incident. Those witnesses should have been brought to the hearing so Guerrero could have had an opportunity to cross examine them, Johnson said.
Larson told a deputy investigating the fight that he became angry with Lehrke because of comments he said Lehrke made about his victim, female jailers and women in general. Larson, who is in jail awaiting trial for a felony drunken driving charge, also claimed Lehrke told him he planned to kidnap his victim a third time and kill her, according to a police report.
Those comments were also cited by Hanson as a reason he is attempting to withdraw the plea agreement.
Guerrero said Lehrke never made the comments Larson described.
Lehrke, Larson and the third witness all told the investigator that the two were playing chess when Larson’s coffee spilled on Lehrke. The fight broke out after that.
The investigator’s description of the video said it shows the coffee spilling before Lehrke picked up Larson’s cup and threw it at Larson. Lehrke then lunged toward Larson and threw a punch before Larson threw several punches of his own.
After both attorneys finished their arguments for the motion, Guerrero said Lehrke was requesting a weekend furlough from jail so he could watch his mother run in the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth.
“The last time the defendant was released, he kidnapped the victim in this case,” Hanson responded. “That’s a risk that can’t be taken.”
“I agree,” Johnson said before ending the hearing.
