06/04/2025
I don’t often get to talk specifically about the cases I deal with; however, this is a case which has been in the news and from which I have authorization from my client to share some thoughts with you.
Over the past year, I’ve had the honor of representing Julie Valadez. While I have spent the past twenty years working to address the inequities of the justice system towards survivors of domestic violence and their children, this case has challenged me in every aspect and at every turn. Now, it’s taken a dangerous and even more horrific turn.
To give you a brief summary of Julie’s case – which is hard – let’s start with this. Everyone agrees that Julie was a victim of domestic violence perpetrated by her ex-husband. The court which granted custody to her ex-husband found this. Her ex-husband admitted it.
Julie is now in jail on a half a million dollar cash bond.
Wisconsin, where Julie’s case is taking place, has a statute which says that custody cannot be granted to an abuser unless certain conditions are met. Those conditions were not met, but the court granted custody to him anyway. Julie filed an appeal. A year and a half later, the court of appeals agreed with Julie and said that Ricardo was not eligible to be granted custody. (This was one of four – four! – appeals that Julie has prevailed on.)
At which point, you’re probably thinking, Julie got custody and went back to raising her kids. If only.
The case was transferred to a new judge. He said the first judge, who had made the ruling granting Julie’s ex-husband custody, was an intelligent man. He decided to leave well enough alone, and granted custody to Julie’s abusive ex-husband again.
Around this time, Julie became concerned that her safety in Wisconsin was imperiled, and moved to Canada. After her move, her 15-year-old son ran away from the home where he was living with the man who – in case we’ve forgotten – was found to be a domestic abuser. He stated he was suffering abuse. He told Julie he was planning to come to Canada. She told him not to. He did anyway.
At which point, everyone went, “Wow, this child is so desperate he ran to Canada, we should reevaluate what we’re doing!”, right?
No. They charged Julie, as well as the woman who drove Julie’s son to the airport and another person, with felony “custodial interference.”
I should note at this point that Julie has had essentially no contact with her other children. At all. In years.
I got involved last year with the goal of getting the case back on track. It’s been a bumpy ride. I attended a hearing in Wisconsin in November, only to learn four days later that the record of the hearing no longer existed. We filed a request with the Court of Appeals to get them to require compliance with the previous appellate decision Julie won. The Court of Appeals sat on it for months, before denying it in April. We are currently reviewing our options for dealing with this decision.
At this point, Julie decided she needed to come back to Wisconsin to be able to address the charges and take care of her children, which is the most important thing in the world to her.
She did this despite the fact she had a very promising case to be declared a refugee in Canada.
She did this despite the fact she was likely to be arrested as soon as she crossed the border.
She did this despite the fact the easier route would have been to stay in Canada. Because, for Julie, it wouldn’t have been easier, because she’s not with her kids.
There were no direct flights from where Julie was staying to Milwaukee, the closest airport. So she flew to Seattle. Upon arrival in Seattle, she was detained by the border guards. They noted she had a warrant. Julie pointed out that she had a ticket to travel to Milwaukee to deal with this warrant, and a court hearing scheduled for the following day. The border guards said that made sense to them, and they called the arresting agency to see if they were okay with Julie proceeding on to Milwaukee to address her charges.
And when they reached the Walworth County Sheriff’s Department, they said, “Of course! There’s a hearing scheduled tomorrow, so we wouldn’t want to delay that. Plus, if she’s willing to travel to Milwaukee on her own dime, that’ll save our taxpayers a boatload of money because otherwise we’ll have to transfer her. And she’s got a ticket to come to Milwaukee, so we know she’s legit.” Right?
Nope. This was never about being afraid Julie would flee. (In fact, I’d wager they were hoping Julie wouldn’t come back, and they could just keep using these charges as a way to keep her out of Wisconsin.) They wanted Julie detained and held. So, off she went to the King County (Washington) Jail. The hearing that was to take place was delayed, because Julie was unable to get to Walworth County.
The next day, Julie suffered a heart attack. She was placed in the hospital, and then returned to the jail.
A couple of days later, she was brought before a King County, Washington, judge, where the judge said, “This is ridiculous. This woman is sick, she flew back to face the charges, and we’re detaining her here in Washington which is not making her case go any faster. Let’s release her and send her on to Milwaukee,” right?
Actually, yes. That is what happened. An outsider looking at this said, “This is ridiculous. Get on a plane and go deal with your charges, as you’d planned to do.”
So, Julie flew back to Wisconsin to show up to court. The judge, in setting bail, must give reasonable conditions designed to (1) assure the Defendant shows up (2) protect members of the community from serious harm, and (3) prevent intimidation of witnesses.
Well, let’s think about that. Is Julie going to show up? She left Canada, where she was reasonably unlikely to have been deported, to come deal with the charges.
Is Julie going to cause serious harm to the community? No. In fact, you may recall, she was found to be a victim of domestic violence.
And intimidation of witnesses? Julie Valadez is a strong person but probably also one of the least likely to intimidate a witness I’ve ever met.
Which is why, I suppose, they gave her a bond of a half a million dollars.
I’ve seen a lot in twenty years of this job. A lot of cruel, heartless and frankly inexplicable decisions. But putting Julie Valadez in jail on a half a million dollars’ bond? This is beyond reprehensible. (And the judge who set it actually denied the prosecutor’s request for a one million dollar bail.) Julie is where she is today because she refused to sit down and shut up when the system wronged her.
This is not an easy time for anyone right now – there’s a lot of uncertainty out there. So I get that everyone has there thing. But if you have a minute to help out a domestic violence survivor who acted as any mother would have acted, here are a few things you can do:
(1) Read the article attached (and another article from ProPublica I’m going to post in the comments which gives you a better idea of the first several years of this case) so you have more background on Julie’s case.
(2) Share this widely with your network; the more people know about how badly our system treats domestic violence survivors, the better it is.
(3) Donate to Julie’s GoFundMe.
(4) Finally, if you’re still feeling salty, give Walworth County District Attorney Zeke Wiedenfeld’s office a call at 262-741-7198, and ask why in the world they think domestic violence survivors should be jailed on a half a million dollars bond.
by Luz Sosa
