The Free Press, Mankato, MN

Local News

June 25, 2009

Zabawa restitution review underway

State Supreme Court reviewing conviction

By Dan Nienaber

WASECA — A judge will consider how much restitution 27-year-old Michael Stanley Zabawa will pay to his victim and others while spending the rest of his life in prison.

A Supreme Court review of Zabawa’s convictions, required by state law in first-degree murder cases, is also in motion.

Zabawa was sentenced to 18 years in prison in March for attempting to kill Hilary Kruger while she slept in her rural Waseca County home on Feb. 3, 2007. When Zabawa is finished serving that sentence, he will serve two consecutive life sentences for killing Kruger’s husband, Tracy, and their 13-year-old son, Alec, during the same early-morning intrusion.

Zabawa, like other prisoners, earns about 50 cents per hour while working.

His automatic appeal to the Supreme Court is also in motion.

The Kruger family and others requested a total of more than $91,000 in restitution during a hearing before District Court Judge Joseph Bueltel in Waseca Thursday. The family’s restitution requests, totaling about $22,000, are mainly to recover lost wages while dealing with the tragedy, said Waseca County Attorney Paul Dressler. Hilary Kruger, while struggling to survive, spent months in a hospital and a recovery center.

Others seeking restitution include the Minnesota Crime Victims Reparations Board, the Waseca Police Department and American Family Insurance, Dressler said. The reparations board and Police Department provided funding to the family to help cover a wide variety of expenses.

Susan Andrews, an assistant state public defender who is now representing him, filed a notice of a Supreme Court appeal on June 10. A Supreme Court hearing has not been scheduled.

Andrews’ notice included requests for transcripts from Zabawa’s trial, sentencing, a Jan. 5 pretrial hearing and two hearings that took place months before the trial started with jury selection on Feb. 23.

During the Jan. 5 hearing, prosecutors revealed Zabawa’s drunken driving arrest in November 2006 provided what they believed was a key motive for the shootings two months later.

During an omnibus on Sept. 13 and 14, 2007, Bueltel reviewed evidence collected by investigators, including bloody clothing found at the Matawan mobile home where Zabawa was living. Defense attorneys were questioning whether evidence found during a search of the house was admissible. Bueltel ruled it was.

Bueltel considered a request to delay the trial, backed by both prosecutors and defense attorneys, during a hearing on Aug. 12, 2008. The trial had been scheduled to start in early February.

The family asked to have the trial delayed two weeks to avoid a conflict with the Kruger Memorial Vintage Snowmobile Race and Ride, now held in Tracy and Alec Kruger’s honor, which had already been scheduled for Feb. 9. Bueltel granted the request.

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