APPLETON, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — A woman was convicted Friday in connection with a Kaukauna murder, avoiding a trial that had been scheduled for Monday.
Tanya Stammer, 31, pleaded guilty to second-degree intentional homicide for the death of Brian Porsche at a home on W. Division Street on March 30, 2021.
Co-defendant Dontae Payne returns to court Aug. 23 for a motions hearing.
In court Friday, Stammer said entering the plea was the right thing to do to take responsibility for her actions. She identified Payne as the shooter, but acknowledged she had been trying to protect him.
The reduction in the charge from first-degree intentional homicide means instead of mandatory life prison term, Stammer faces up to 60 years in prison when sentenced Oct. 4.
The second-degree intentional homicide count means she was convicted of being a party to causing Porsche’s death, but that there were mitigating circumstances at the time.
Stammer’s defense team had been considering offering the affirmative defense that she should be acquitted because she was a victim of sex trafficking the time of the murder.
Stammer’s offering of what’s known as an “affirmative defense” would have been the first of this type in the region since a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision in 2022. The court ruled that a 2008 state law that absolves trafficking victims of criminal liability for any offenses committed as a direct result of being trafficked extends to first-degree intentional homicide. However, but defendants have to offer evidence the crime — in this case, murder — was connected to being a victim of trafficking.
According to the criminal complaint, Payne and Stammer targeted Porsche. The two then tried to make the scene look like a robbery, and tossed his phone and keys into Lake Winnebago.
