Driver seeks new trial in fatal wrong-way crash

WEYAUWEGA – A Neenah man convicted of killing four siblings in a 2023 wrong-way crash on U.S. Highway 10 in Weyauwega is seeking to withdraw his pleas and secure a new trial, arguing that the warrant authorizing his blood draw was never actually signed by a judge.

Scott Farmer, now 50, filed a post-conviction motion on July 6, arguing that he received ineffective assistance of counsel because his original trial attorneys failed to notice the missing signature and did not move to suppress the blood-alcohol evidence central to his operating while intoxicated (OWI) and homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle convictions.

The Dec. 16, 2023, head-on collision near County Highway X claimed the lives of four siblings originally from Ecuador: Daniel Gonzalez, 25; Fabian Gonzalez, 23; Lilian Gonzalez, 14; and Daniela Gonzalez, 9.

Court records say that at 10:55 p.m. on the night of the crash, Judge Troy Nielsen took sworn telephone testimony from Deputy Justin Malueg while Farmer was being sedated and intubated at ThedaCare Medical Center. The judge verbally instructed the deputy: “I will authorize Deputy Malueg to go ahead and sign my name to the search warrant, so that he can execute it at this time.”

Under Wisconsin’s “duplicate original” warrant procedure, a judge may authorize a warrant over the phone. The officer seeking the warrant must read the warrant request verbatim to the judge. If the judge approves it, the officer signs the judge’s name on a duplicate copy of the warrant, signs their own name, and the judge must “immediately” sign the original warrant and record when it was issued.

Farmer argues that Wisconsin statute strictly defines a search warrant as “an order signed by a judge,” and the rules mandate that the judge must personally sign the original warrant and enter the exact time of issuance. The defense alleges that the warrant’s contents were never read aloud and no original warrant bearing the judge’s signature was ever produced.

“No judge signed when the call ended, when the transcript was certified two days later, or at any point before the case resolved,” the appeal states.

The missing signature is a “wholesale failure in the constitutionally required process,” documents say, rendering the warrant void from the start and making the resulting blood draw an unconstitutional warrantless search.

The deputy who executed the search warrant, Malueg, is no longer with the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Department. He said by phone last week that his actions were standard procedure and noted that under the county’s process, a judge concurrently signs a copy of the warrant.

“To my knowledge, the proper policy and procedure of the Waupaca County Sheriff’s Office had been followed, just like in several OWI search warrant applications completed and granted prior to this case,” Malueg said.

Farmer pleaded no contest to four counts of homicide by intoxicated use of a vehicle and one count of fifth offense OWI. He was sentenced in Nov. 2024 to 37 years in prison.

Farmer’s 0.346% blood alcohol concentration (BAC) was more than four times Wisconsin’s legal limit for driving and more than 17 times Farmer’s legal limit of 0.02% for drivers with three or more prior Operating While Intoxicated (OWI) convictions. Farmer had four previous OWI convictions at the time of the crash.

The appeal states that if the evidence had been properly challenged and suppressed, Farmer would have rejected a plea deal and taken the case to trial. Without the blood test, prosecutors would have had to rely on the “subjective observations of a severely injured, sedated and intubated man to prove impairment, symptoms that a jury could reasonably attribute to head-on collision trauma rather than alcohol,” according to the appeal.