DARLINGTON — A fight that spanned half a decade and made it all the way to the Wisconsin Supreme Court on appeal came to an end in Lafayette County Circuit Court with a compromise between a Gratiot resident and two wardens of the state Department of Natural Resources.
In court July 18, Robert Stietz, 70, pleaded no contest to an amended misdemeanor charge of obstructing an officer through use of a dangerous weapon. A Class H felony charge of intentionally pointing a firearm at an officer was dismissed.
Green County Judge Thomas Vale accepted the joint plea agreement and sentenced Stietz to time served.
He was sentenced in May 2014 by Green County Judge James Beer to one year in state prison and three years of extended supervision for the charge of intentionally pointing a firearm at a law enforcement officer followed by two years of probation for resisting or obstructing an officer.
The charges stem from an incident between Stietz and DNR Wardens Nick Webster and Joe Frost in November 2012 when guns were drawn between the two parties and a scuffle on Stietz’s property ended with the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Office being called.
Frost and Webster disagreed with the factual basis for the plea agreement, which outlined a 15-minute standoff.
Webster delivered an emotional victim statement, which recounted the events from that day. Frost wrote in his own statement that he saw Webster save Stietz’s life during the altercation.
When guns were drawn, Frost wrote that Webster “ignored all his training at that moment and did not pull the trigger when he should have,” adding that he “will never question why Nick made that decision” while acknowledging that he “would not have shown the same restraint.”
“Whatever caused Nick not to shoot Mr. Stietz and stop the threat is what saved Mr. Stietz’s life that day,” Frost wrote in the statement.
The wardens were patrolling the Lamont area on Nov. 25 close to the time of the end of hunting hours when they came upon a vehicle they discovered to be owned by Robert Stietz that contained several hunting items. No one was in the immediate area, so the wardens began to patrol the parcel of land and entered Stietz’s property. They eventually came upon a person carrying a rifle, not wearing any blaze orange, who turned out to be Robert Stietz.
Both wardens asked to see Stietz’s rifle. Webster remembers at one point having “the barrel of Stietz’s loaded rifle pointed directly at my face from a distance of about 18 inches” after Stietz struck Frost with the butt stock of the rifle, causing Frost, Stietz and Webster to struggle over it.
Stietz then began to draw his loaded revolver from his right hip as Webster directed him to not.
“I re-live this event over and over in my mind almost every day,” Webster said.
The night after the altercation ended, Webster said he had asked himself why he didn’t pull the trigger. He admitted he had started to, pulling the sear pin back twice, but something told him he didn’t have to, he said.
“After five and a half years of thinking about it, wanting to learn from it and wanting to teach others to make them safer, to this day I cannot explain it any better than that,” Webster said as part of his statement. “It’s hard seeing the toll this has taken on my family and friends. The choices Stietz made that night will undoubtedly affect us all in one way or another for the remainder of our lives.”
Webster said that as weapons were drawn and pointed at one another he felt that he could die at any second.
“I didn’t want my family, kids and wife to have to go through that,” Webster said. “I knew if that happened, that my family could lose our home and my kids would grow up without me.”
A few minutes into the standoff, Webster got on his portable radio and called the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department to let them know they were being held at gun point.
Webster said the situation was not quickly resolved. He said pleas by both wardens and sheriff’s deputies to Stietz to put the handgun on the ground lasted nearly an hour.
At his jury trial in March 2014, Robert Stietz told a different version of the events that took place on that November day than what the two wardens had reported, both in their initial reports and on the stand during the trial.
Stietz said he had traveled to his land in Lamont that day to search for trespassers which had recently been a problem, especially since it was around deer hunting season. He said he encountered two people dressed in orange who he did not recognize on his property.
Stietz claimed when he first saw the two men he heard some mumbling that mentioned “Green County” and “warden,” but he could not make out the remainder of what they two had said as it was not very loud.
They then asked Stietz if he had seen any deer, to which he replied seven, and told the two men he was looking for trespassers. Stietz reported at that point, one of the wardens appeared to become agitated.
Stietz said he refused to hand his weapon to one of the wardens when asked. At that point, Stietz said one of the wardens grabbed onto the front of his coat and told the other warden to grab the gun.
According to Stietz, there was a tussle over the rifle between himself and both of the wardens before he lost grip on the rifle and the two wardens fought over the gun before stumbling to the ground.
Stietz reported that he then saw Webster tugging at his holster and thought the man was going to shoot, so he drew his own gun at the same time. He said Webster told him to put his gun down. Stietz replied that he would put down his handgun if the warden first dropped his.
“The wardens drew on me first,” Stietz said. “I wasn’t doing nothing wrong.”
Stietz said he was relieved when he heard Webster call for back up, because he didn’t know for sure that they were really wardens until that point. He said he was never given any credentials. When Lafayette County Deputy Brett Broge arrived, Stietz said he felt relief, but would still not completely drop the gun because the wardens would still not lower theirs.
“When the sheriffs got there, I felt there would be witnesses, and felt a lot more safer,” Stietz said.