Did the Minnesota Board of Pardons conduct its due diligence when it granted Jeremy A. Giefer a "pardon extraordinary" in 2008? (Giefer's name is misspelled on page 4 of the report, but a call to the BOP's office on Wednesday confirmed the correct spelling).
Giefer's arrest reveals a troubling past of dubious behavior--while raising eyebrows on the pardon during Pawlenty's watch. Pawlenty is a member of the three person board.
According to the Mankato Free Press, the Vernon Center resident was arrested earlier this month on multiple charges:
Jeremy Alan Giefer, 36, faces five counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, five counts of second-degree criminal sexual conduct, one count of third-degree criminal sexual conduct and one count of incest. All are felonies.
Court documents show the victim came forward with the allegations in November, a few weeks after she says Giefer sexually assaulted her. She told authorities the abuse started when she was 9 and continued for years until reported to authorities in October.
The Free Press article reports:
When questioned, Giefer denied almost all of the girl’s allegations. Instead, he admitted that on a few occasions his contact with the girl could be characterized as inappropriate.
However, the local Fox affiliate broadcast shared more details that challenge Giefer's understanding of "inappropriate" and "sexual":
According to court papers, Giefer did admit to police that in several instances he had touched the victim's breasts and genitalia, as well as kissing her neck while wrestling with her in her bed, but that it was not sexual.
In bed? Kissing? Touching breasts and genitalia? Not sexual? Seriously?
A past statutory rape conviction
Not the first time Giefer made the news as he struggled to define the appropriate. A Nexis search reveals that in 1994, the Star Tribune reported in "Man gets jail for sex with girlfriend, 14" :
A 20-year-old scrap iron worker from southern Minnesota was sentenced Tuesday to 45 days in jail for having consensual sex a year ago with a 14-year-old girl, who wanted the case dismissed.
But the prosecutor who brought the charge, often called statutory rape, says society has a stake in such cases because it often assumes the burden of supporting children of underage mothers. The 14-year-old, now 15, gave birth to a daughter last November. . . .
Giefer said yesterday that he was being unfairly singled out for having sex with an underage girl when he chose to stay and support her and the child rather than take off like other men have done. He said the county should pay for child support while he is in jail.[emphasis added]
. . . The baby's mother is a junior at a Mankato alternative high school and lives with her parents. Giefer said he met her through a mutual friend when she was a 14-year-old freshman and he was two days shy of his 19th birthday. A school official reported her pregnancy to police.
Giefer and his girlfriend vow to marry.
"I don't think the case should have ever started," said Giefer's girlfriend. "He's still with me."
She said, "When I was 9 or 10, I had a diary that said when I was 14 I'd have a baby."
Why so young?
"I have no idea," she said. "I figured I'd be able to take care of a child no matter what age I was."
[Pat Doyle, "Man gets jail for sex with girlfriend, 14", Minneapolis Star Tribune, June 1, 1994, Metro edition, 3B, retrieved Nexis All-News November 28, 2010]
After having sex with a 14-year-old, Giefer thought he was being "unfairly" singled out? And clearly, the girl's reliance on her predictions in a diary didn't reveal a maturity beyond her years. The couple did wed and remain married.
An unusual case for a pardon extraordinary?
According to the Minnesota Board of Pardons report, this is the conviction for which Giefer received a "pardon extraordinary" in 2008 from Pawlenty and the board. He was the only person convicted of criminal sexual conduct in the third degree to receive a pardon of any sort that year.
A BOP employee who answered Wednesday's phone query about the typo and access to the records stated that "the governor would never allow" a sex offender to be pardoned. After she checked the file, she expressed surprise at reading of the action in light of her understanding of Pawlenty's stance on sex offenders.
According to the 2008 BOP report to the legislature, a Pardon Extraordinary is:
a statutorilycreated relief granted to applicants who have served their sentence. When a pardon extraordinary is granted, the court is directed to issue an order setting aside the conviction, and the applicant is no longer required to report the conviction except in specific limited circumstances. The conviction remains on the applicant’s criminal record, but the fact of a pardon extraordinary is also recorded.
During Thursday’s hearing, Brad Peyton mentioned that Giefer has no criminal record and therefore should have bail set lower than $1 million. But in court documents, Giefer is quoted saying, “I was charged 18 years ago and am not that kind of person.”
He, in fact, was charged with criminal sexual conduct in what is commonly referred to as “statutory rape” or sexual activity with a minor. He has since been pardoned on that case, however, and it cannot be part of the current proceedings.
While Giefer clings to a positive self-image that would warm the heart of the most jejeune follower of the self-esteem movement, I find it troubling that he doesn't seem to have grown much more self-knowledge since he spoke to the press in 1994. What sort of remorse and accountability did he express to Pawlenty and the board in 2008?
Assistant county attorney: "the victim is going to be under incredible pressure to recant”
The Free Press reports that he had contacted his female relative--his alleged victim--from jail:
In court, however, Assistant Blue Earth County Attorney Brian Rovney told the judge that Giefer had contacted the girl from jail.
Rovney wouldn’t comment on the nature of the conversation, but during a discussion about bail, Rovney told the judge, “We believe if he’s released, the victim is going to be under incredible pressure to recant.”
Judge George Harrelson ultimately set bail at $1 million. If Giefer agrees to have no contact with the alleged victim and submit to GPS monitoring, his bail would be reduced to $250,000.
Gieger is no longer listed on the Blue Earth County Jail custody roster, and a source in rural Blue Earth County suggested to Bluestem that this meant his family had made Giefer's bail.
The same source said that relatives of the alleged assailant were claiming in Vernon Center that the girl had made up the complaint, after Giefer disciplined her by grounding her and taking away her cell phone, and that Giefer was arrested two hours after he disciplined the child.
I feel that that account doesn't square well with the reporting in the media, as it is clear that the girl had to first contact a mandated reporter and that law enforcement spent some time investigating the claims before arresting Giefer. Instead, the rumor suggests that the victim will be under a lot of pressure to recant, as the assistant county attorney noted in court.
A report by Channel 12, sister station to the Fox affiliate cited above, also suggests that the family wants this story to go away:
Complicating the matter further, Giefer's family members have contacted News 12, telling us that the alleged victim in the case has told authorities and family members that she made up the whole story as a way to exact revenge. The Blue Earth County Attorney denies that conversation ever took place.
How will a 16-year-old girl respond to such tale-bearing by family members, especially now that area media has turned its glance to other stories? Obviously, the family--and the accused offender--know where she is.
While Giefer no longer has a criminal court record, he is no stranger to the court system. In 2009, he was ordered to pay support to Sarah Ann Marie Kruse (Case No. 07-FA-09-1906). A source tells Bluestem that Kruse was a neighbor of Giefer and his wife, Susan, but now lives in a nearby community.
Giefer was charged and convicted of disorderly conduct, a petty misdemeanor, in 2006 in Blue Earth County (Case No. 07-VB-06-627).
I'll be looking at this case more in the coming week. The Blue Earth County courts were closed both Thursday and Friday, and the Board of Pardons representative I spoke with on a snowy Wednesday afternoon noted that while the BOP files are open to the public, review of them, as well as a chance to talk to the surpervisor of the board would have to wait until after the holiday. A tipster has also alerted me to another court case that is rumored to be related to Gieger's behavior, as well as other possible wrinkles in the pardon itself.
Stay tuned.
Photos: Above:Jeremy and Susan Gieger. Source: City of Vernon Center web site. Below: Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty. Source: Comedy Central.
Oh. My. Goodness.
This reminds me forcibly of the Jon Grunseth pool party gone wrong, which Grunseth's mistress Tamara Taylor hinted may have been the tip of a very sleazy iceberg.
Posted by: Phoenix Woman | Nov 28, 2010 at 07:22 PM
Have sex offenders ever been a priority with Pawlenty?
Pawlenty initially let out both Dru Sjodein and the Groene's family killers.
http://www.pawlentyunplugged.com/... :In January, 2003, Governor-elect Pawlenty said that with the state facing a budget deficit, the corrections budget would be on the table for cuts, like every other area.3 True to his word, in his 2004-05 biennial budget recommendation, the Governor proposed "significant budget reductions" in such core services as sex offender evaluation and sex offender notification.4
In May, 2003, Dr. Anita Schlank, head of the Minnesota Sex Offender Program, resigned after being told that the program was growing at an "unsustainable rate" and being directed to draw up a list of 40 civilly committed sex offenders to place in community housing in order to save money.5 Governor Pawlenty’s Human Services Commissioner initially called Schlank’s claim outrageous, but later recanted after another employee corroborated Schlank.6
In December, 2003, the Pawlenty Administration was severely criticized for releasing Alfonso Rodriguez from prison, rather than referring him for civil commitment as a sexual psychopath, where he would have been confined in a secure mental hospital. Rodriguez, a convicted sex offender, allegedly kidnapped and murdered Dru Sjodin. It was recently noted that referrals to the sex offender program have surged since Dru Sjodin’s murder.7 This is because the Pawlenty Administration had been allowing dangerous sex offenders like Rodriguez to leave prison without being properly referred for civil commitment prior to the Sjodin murder.
Posted by: janine | Nov 29, 2010 at 02:07 PM
If you dig a little deeper, you will find that Mr. Giefer has even more children than the ones reported here! And his wife knows all about them. Some family.
Posted by: Anonymous | Nov 30, 2010 at 12:41 PM
What Anonymous says appears to have some merit. For instance, the support payment mentioned in the post is said to be for a child Giefer conceived with another woman.
Other word-of-mouth reports are coming in from very reliable sources in the Vernon Center area. They make me wonder how much due diligence the pardon board did back then to think this man was a paragon of married domestic virtue.
Posted by: Sally Jo Sorensen | Nov 30, 2010 at 12:52 PM
Please leave his other children out of the newspapers!!!!!! Do you not understand this man and his wife are sick and by you people broadcasting the fact that there are other children are putting other minors at risk? Did you think about that? Well you better, I moved to get my daughter away and now people like you are making her life a trajedy.
Posted by: sarah | Nov 30, 2010 at 02:32 PM
No child victims or children have been named on this blog or in the media.
Posted by: Sally Jo Sorensen | Nov 30, 2010 at 02:43 PM
His original crime was actually first degree crim sex vs third because she was under 16 and he was more than 48 months older than she. As such he should have gone to prison vs jail.
Posted by: RY | Dec 01, 2010 at 07:29 PM
The governor does not get all the blame re civil commits. The county attny in the county that convicts has the option of pursuing civil commitment which maybe should have been pursued by the county attny(s) in the Rodriguez case. The catch is that the county that gets the offender committed pays the costs of housing at St. Peter. Can you say several hundred dollars a day?
Posted by: RY | Dec 01, 2010 at 07:36 PM
Is there a petition somewhere to protest this guy posting bond? He should never been allowed out of jail after reading everything here. Is there a general lack of understanding of sociopathy and sex offenders? The MSM needs to blow the lid off this Peyton Place before Pawlenty's peeps try to squash it, though I could care less about it being ammunition against Pawlenty anymore...
Posted by: Schweitzer Theresa | Dec 02, 2010 at 01:21 AM
The predator is back in jail tonight.....not sure why, but he is. Booked 12/3/10 at 12:15 p.m. Check out the link:
http://www.co.blue-earth.mn.us/jail/custodylistBlueEarth.rpt.html
Posted by: vc resident | Dec 03, 2010 at 11:27 PM