After only around 20 minutes of deliberation, a Green Bay jury returned a guilty verdict on Wednesday, June 4, and 25-year-old Jackson Vogel was convicted of first degree intentional homicide with a hate crime enhancer for the murder of 19-year-old Micah Laureano at Green Bay Correctional Institution.

Laureano, a Black and Hispanic man from Waukesha, had been sharing a cell with Vogel for five days when he was discovered unresponsive on a routine cell check by prison guards on August 27, 2024. Shortly afterwards, Vogel admitted to strangling Laureano because he was “bored,” referring to him with slurs aimed at his race and perceived sexual orientation, and alleging that he had made a number of sexual advances toward him.

Vogel stated to police later that evening, “I wanted to kill him the first day I met him…I told a psychologist I would do this, and they still put me in a cell with him…I just wanted to have killed a person. I got my wish.”

Nevertheless, Vogel’s attorney attempted to use Laureano’s alleged sexual advances as cause to decrease his charge from a first to second degree intentional homicide, even though Vogel had a sign on his desk reading “kill all humans,” accompanied by a derogatory message aimed at Black and gay people.

Vogel, who will be sentenced on June 27, is currently serving a 20-year sentence for an attempted murder charge from 2016 for repeatedly stabbing his mother.

At the time of the murder, Laureano had been in prison for seven months of a 3-year sentence for assault and vehicle theft. But his mother, Phyllis Laureano has since filed a federal lawsuit against the Wisconsin Department of Corrections for failing to protect her son.