This post originally appeared at https://www.bootsandsabers.com/2025/04/29/prison-warden-gets-away-with-homicide/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=prison-warden-gets-away-with-homicide

I’m certainly not a softy when it comes to crooks but making someone die of dehydration is beyond inhumane. This warden should be in jail for the rest of his life. Yet another example of our two-tier justice system.

In a move that is sure to have political repercussions, Dodge County District Attorney Andrea Will, an appointee of Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, has slashed felony misconduct charges against former Waupun Correctional Institution Warden Randall Hepp to a misdemeanor, letting him off with a $500 fine for his role in the death of inmate Donald Maier.

The plea deal, finalized Monday in Dodge County Circuit Court, is the latest chapter in Governor Evers’ Wisconsin Department of Corrections’ ongoing saga of mismanagement and dodged accountability.

Hepp, who conveniently announced his retirement just days before charges were filed in June 2024, was initially accused of felony misconduct in office, a charge that could have landed him three-and-a-half years in prison and a $10,000 fine. The allegations stemmed from the deaths of two inmates at Waupun, Wisconsin’s oldest maximum-security prison: Cameron Williams, who died of a stroke in October 2023, and Maier, who succumbed to dehydration and malnutrition in February 2024 after guards shut off his cell’s water supply. Court documents paint a grim picture: Williams, ignored after begging for hospital care, collapsed and crawled to his cell, his body undiscovered for at least 12 hours. Maier’s death, ruled a homicide by the Dodge County Medical Examiner, was a slow torture of starvation and thirst, with staff failing to provide meals or water.

Yet, according to a report by WLUK, Will justified the reduced charge by claiming Hepp was “well respected” within Evers’ Department of Corrections and unaware his guards were flouting policy Hepp pleaded no contest, and Judge Martin Devries, an appointee of former Republican Governor Scott Walker, ordered the $500 fine and court costs, requiring Hepp to pay within 48 hours and submit a DNA sample. Maier’s mother, Jeanette, called the sentence a “slap on the wrist,” lamenting that her son was “treated worse than a caged animal.”