Twice convicted of murdering his wife Julie with antifreeze, Mark Jensen is serving life without parole and seeking a third trial. His new lawyer says the 2023 defense mishandled computer evidence that may support the claim Julie made poison searches.
His first appeal challenged use of Julie’s letter to police, which the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled inadmissible hearsay. The current appeal seeks an evidentiary hearing and disputes a prosecution expert’s 2023 testimony that home-computer searches were recorded in Pacific, not Central, time. It argues this made ethylene-glycol searches appear to have occurred while Jensen was home; the motion says corrected timestamps place them while he was away. Both sides accepted Central time at the 2008 trial.
The motion says chats and files on a discovery disk show Julie used the computer while Mark was away and fabricated harassment prosecutors attributed to him. For the nicotine-poison search, Jensen’s lawyer cites Julie’s calls to Mark’s doctor and a pharmacy while he was at work, plus a Quicken backup the motion says only she used. It says the next-day switch from an inhaler to liquid nicotine supports the claim Julie used the computer; counsel says liquid nicotine can act as poison. Prosecutors cited the search, Jensen’s smoking and his nicotine-replacement prescription as evidence he was at the keyboard.
