Help Perry with legal fees

Perry needs our help with his legal fees. He has been waiting for over 10 years and now is the time to make this happen! The funds raised will be used to pay for an appeal to the 20 year sentence that Perry received. Your support would give him hope and could be the answer to our prayers! Check back for more details about the night that changed many lives...

Names have been changed:

The conviction was "2nd degree intentional homicide" on the basis of (what they call in Wisconsin) "imperfect self-defense."

The incident occurred in June 2009 in Madison, WI.

I had brought home a date, Kim, to my apartment that I shared with my ex-girlfriend who still wanted to be roommates even after the break up, Dana. Dana was out getting hammered at a bar as usual, and I didn't expect her back at any time that night.

Kim and I were sitting on the couch and Dana and a woman she just met, Karisa, came into the apartment. Karisa was all smiles and so was Dana until she saw Kim at which point she started getting belligerent and chucked some dvds at me. Then her and Karisa left.

A while later, Kim and I started getting frisky. While I was completely naked and Kim half naked, Dana and Karisa come barging in with two huge dudes that I had never met before. They were way bigger than I was, and I am 6' 3" inches and was 230 lbs. solid at the time! Karisa rushes up to Kim and attacks her. I try to get in between the two of them and the biggest one, Karl, tries to grab me. Keep in mind that I am still naked. I slip by saying that I was grabbing clothes as I knew my nudity may have just ruined their plans, whatever they were. Also, I didn't want to start a royal rumble inside the house. So I get by, while Kim is getting the back of her head beaten in at that time by Karisa. I get into my room and throw on some shorts and grab a 9mm hand gun that I had available, and no sooner do I grab it that Karl rushes into my room. So I pull the slide back and tell him to "Get the fu#k out of my house!" They all run off and leave as it seemed and I was thinking that it was all over. Not quite.

I went back into the living room to check on Kim, only to find that she is gone. Dana was laying there on the floor, sh%t faced, and when I ask her where Kim went she just slurs a bunch of nonsense. I walk out the front door to see if Kim is out there and if she is okay, and Dana, who had followed me to the door, slams it and locks me out. So now I am standing in the hallway barefoot with shorts on and a gun in my hand. Thinking "Wow, this is just great!"

I can see Kim down the hallway in the lower stairwell area and she is asking if she can come back in. As I am walking towards her I am telling her that I can't get in because the door is locked and she should get to her car. She was saying something about how she can't when I noticed that the three Karsa, Karl, and the third guy, Terry, are standing in front of the stairs blocking Kim's exit.

So I raise up the weapon some and said to them that it's over and they need to let her leave peacefully. So they back up and let her pass. The stairwell area is quite big and as I had walked towards Kim, Karl gets past me back and goes towards my apartment door while Terry was yelling threats, racial comments and obscenities at me seeming to be trying to rush at me (which was very distracting) while Karisa was holding him back. When I noticed Karl trying to batter down my door with his shoulder, I run back to my door to stop him and Terry follows me back there. So now it's me and the two of them in front of my apartment door. Terry starts jumping around Karl who was in pounce position pops up. I fire off a few rounds and Terry runs off. Karl freezes and I tell him to get his ass out of there and he finally goes. So I was thinking it was over now and I was trying to get back in my apartment to call the police and couldn't. So I went up the stairs to go around back expecting them to be long gone, but rather I see through the glass door and full size windows, Terry laying down on the grass with Karisa holding him screaming. Now I am in complete shock and exit the side door to go around back to call the cops. I went through the side door to go into my apartment through my patio door.

During trial the DAs were able to convince the jury that I had no business going into the hall to ensure Kim's safety and that I should have ran from my assailants (away from my home) rather that to stand firm and defend myself and my home while Karl was trying to get back inside. The police report indicates that when they interviewed Karisa, she said Terry was yelling "pull a gun on me and that is the last thing you will ever do, white boy". That was clearly a threat to me and it seemed he was coming at me. My fear was that he would get my gun and use my weapon against me. When I finally felt no option but to pull the trigger, he must have finally realized he needed to get out of there and turned to run. Unfortunately, the bullet hit him as he was turning around. The whole group had been drinking, entered my home, attacked my date, threatened me, and all I could do was react in a split-second without knowing what was coming next. Also, when Kim testified at my trial, she said that she feared for her life when the group would not let her leave and go to her car. I am not sure what would have happened to her had I not come out of my apartment to check on her. I would not have been able to live with that knowing that she was completely innocent in this whole situation.

So here I am making the best of the situation. It is sad that someone lost their life. In all honesty I know deep down that if things had played out differently, it could have been me in the grave instead of him. I was pushed to do something I didn't want to do and there were deadly results. For that, I received a 20 year sentence. I would like to appeal the sentence, but it is very expensive to obtain a good lawyer to handle the case.