Lawyer who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting intoxicated woman at his office gets 9 months
A Wisconsin lawyer who pleaded guilty to sexually assaulting an intoxicated woman as his office was sentenced to serve nine months in jail.
Jonathan G. Evenson of Madison also pleaded guilty to giving the woman the drug ecstasy, the Wisconsin State Journal reports. According to authorities Evenson, 38, met the woman as she was getting into a cab after celebrating her birthday at downtown Madison bars. He reportedly talked her into coming with him instead.
The woman appeared very intoxicated on area cameras, according to the article, and she could be seen running into a sign and falling over a bench. She and Evenson reportedly had sex at his office and his home. Police said that when she woke up, she didn’t remember much of what had happened.
The events took place in 2013. Evenson initially argued that there was no evidence he knew the woman was too drunk to give sexual consent. It was previously reported that the woman didn’t realize she’d had sex with Evenson until she woke up at his home the next morning, and he asked her if she was on birth control.
Prosecutors and the defense recommended that Dane County Circuit Court David Flanagan sentence Evenson to six months in jail with three years of probation. Flanagan went with a longer sentence, stating that he had a “profound need to protect the public” from Evenson. He also imposed parole restrictions on the attorney, including a ban from State Street, a popular commercial area of the city that adjoins the University of Wisconsin campus in Madison.
Evenson was also arrested in 2010, according to a prior Wisconsin State Journal article, on charges that he punched two men in the face repeatedly. He entered a no contest plea to two misdemeanor battery counts, according to the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation. The agency in 2011 found that Evenson did not provide timely written notice about the charges to itself and the Supreme Court of Wisconsin, and he received a public reprimand.
