DUNN COUNTY (WQOW) - Ezra McCandless was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 50 years back in 2020. That was for the stabbing death of her ex-boyfriend Alex Woodworth in 2018 in Dunn County.
Now, she is asking for a new trial. Lawyers for McCandless say the court never heard the full story.
McCandless' appeal alleges the 2020 trial was "compromised from beginning to end." Her lawyers claim initial interviews where McCandless gave inconsistent and sometimes false statements to law enforcement were done illegally and should be excluded from a new trial.
They say she was interrogated while being held involuntarily in a psychiatric facility and was never read her Miranda Rights. The Eau Claire Police officer who conducted the interviews said that's because she wasn't being treated as a suspect yet. But the appeal claims he used coercive tactics designed to elicit a guilty response and plant memories when McCandless said she was suffering from memory loss — memory loss that the appeal claims is a result of severe PTSD.
A psychologist provided the defense with the diagnosis, citing multiple instances of sexual abuse that started when McCandless was a child and was continued just months before Woodworth's death. Most of these incidents were kept from the jury to prevent an accusation of false reporting. But now, her lawyers say the jury lacks context for the PTSD diagnosis that is essential to understanding McCandless' claim of self-defense.
That same...
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