On March 19, 2014, at approximately 3:45 p.m., a woman named Vincenza called 911 in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, to report that her sister, M.L., had just telephoned her in a state of panic.
According to Vincenza, M.L. was crying and upset as she described having just been in a fight with her 48-year-old fiancé, Frank Blonda, at the auto shop owned by Blonda and M.L. Vincenza told the dispatcher that M.L. said she was bleeding from her head.
Vincenza drove to the auto shop in Oak Creek, where she found her parents, sister, and a police officer at the scene.
Officer Scott Sadowski, of the Oak Creek Police Department, had been the first to arrive at the scene. He found M.L. sitting on the floor, covering her face with a bloody towel. Blonda was not there.
After removing the bloody towel from M.L.’s face, Sadowski saw a laceration above her eyebrow, a smaller one on her nose, and swelling and redness on her face. M.L. was then taken to the hospital.
As Sadowski investigated, he found blood spatter on the floor near where M.L. had been sitting and blood pooled on the windshield of a blue Pontiac. There were green shards of glass from a beer bottle on the floor and a work stool overturned under a large blue pickup. He also noticed a phone lying on the floor with the battery and headset disconnected.
After leaving the auto shop, Sadowski went to the hospital to interview M.L. He interviewed her for 20 to 30 minutes in an attempt to figure out Blonda’s whereabouts. M.L. said she didn’t know where he was.
Police arrested Blonda on March 25, 2014.
On April 10, 2014, M.L. made several statements denying that Blonda had injured her. She gave statements to Jasmine Brisby, a victim advocate, and to Scott Lange, a private investigator hired by Blonda’s defense attorney, Craig Johnson.
In a written statement to the victim advocate, M.L. said: “Yes I was injured, however it was not him! IT WAS AN ACCIDENT THAT HAPPENED WHEN HE WAS GONE!!.” She also wrote letters to the Milwaukee County Circuit Court and to victim services.
Blonda was charged with one count of disorderly conduct and one count of substantial battery with intent to cause bodily harm, both with domestic abuse enhancements.
His trial in Milwaukee County Circuit Court began on July 16, 2014.
Before jury selection, the State told Johnson that M.L. had made exculpatory statements to a victim advocate. The statements said that M.L. and Blonda had been drinking, and that she was unsure of what exactly happened. M.L. said that she initiated the fight with Blonda, and that he did not throw anything at her.
The State did not provide the defense with these statements until the next day, July 17, 2014, and neither side used them during the trial.
M.L. did not testify or show up to trial. Vincenza testified. She said that M.L. called her, sounding panicked and crying. Vincenza said M.L. told her that she was bleeding from her head and that Blonda had thrown a phone at her during an argument. During cross-examination, Vincenza said that she did not witness the incident and did not know exactly how the phone was thrown.
Sadowski then testified that when he arrived at the auto shop, M.L. was sitting on the floor with a bloody towel over her face. He said he saw cuts above her eyebrow and on her nose, and swelling and redness on her face. He also saw blood near M.L., a disconnected phone on the floor, and broken glass that appeared to be consistent with a beer bottle.
Blonda testified as the only defense witness. He said that M.L. had entered the garage angry and emotional while he was sitting on a stool, talking on the phone, and drinking a beer. He said M.L. threw his beer bottle across the shop, grabbed the phone, and struggled with him over it.
Blonda denied that he hit M.L., or that he threw the phone at her. He said he didn’t know how she got injured. He further testified that he did not hear M.L. yelling for help because he had had enough of her that day and left the shop immediately.
On July 17, 2014, the jury convicted Blonda of substantial battery and disorderly conduct with domestic abuse enhancements.
On October 3, 2014, Blonda was sentenced to 27 months in prison for substantial battery and a two-month jail sentence, to be served consecutively, for disorderly conduct. The court stayed the sentence and placed Blonda on probation for three years.
On August 27, 2015, Blonda petitioned for post-conviction relief.
He argued that the State had failed to disclose M.L.’s two victim impact statements, which he said violated his due process rights. Additionally, he said that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel because Johnson failed to challenge the prosecution’s characterization of M.L. as a victim during the trial.
On September 3, 2015 22 , the Milwaukee County Circuit Court denied Blonda’s post-conviction motion.
Blonda appealed to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals on November 24, 2015.
Blonda argued that the prosecutor had repeatedly referred to M.L. as the “victim,” improperly suggesting Blonda was guilty, and influencing the jury’s verdict. He also alleged that the State had violated his constitutional right to exculpatory evidence, as well as his statutory right to discovery, by failing to make timely disclosures of M.L.’s statements to the victim advocate. Blonda argued that under Wisconsin’s discovery rules, he was entitled to a new trial because the evidence had not been disclosed before trial and was not provided to his defense counsel until two days after the trial had begun.
Blonda also said that Johnson failed to effectively represent him at trial by failing to challenge the credibility of Vincenza and failing to request that M.L’s exculpatory statements be presented to the court.
Blonda’s post-conviction motion identified numerous pieces of evidence that the defense failed to present to the jury. These included M.L.’s oral statements to witness advocate Jasmine Brisby, a victim impact statement, and M.L’s statement to Lange.
The motion also said M.L.’s medical history would have supported a claim that she “tripped over something lying on the floor, and landed face-first against the car.”
M.L. had arthritis, torn knee ligaments, and a fractured knee. She had undergone surgery to repair three ligaments in her knee. These conditions caused stability issues, the motion said. On the day of the incident, M.L. was wearing flip-flop sandals that did not provide stability.
Additionally, the defense had not presented photographs M.L. took of the scene on the day after the incident, or statements from two other witnesses supporting Blonda: Josephine D’Amato and M.L.’s mother, Rosa L.
Rosa had received a phone call on the day of the incident from M.L. asking if Rosa could come to the shop because she was injured. Rosa was at the shop when the police arrived and at the hospital. According to the filings, she did not recall hearing that Blonda was responsible for M.L.’s injuries.
Similarly, D’Amato heard about the incident and also came to the auto shop , but she did not recall anyone saying that Blonda was responsible.
Furthermore, the motion said that Vincenza might have had a motive to falsely testify. Potential witnesses would have testified that Vincenza was jealous of M.L., which allegedly manifested itself through her interference with M.L.’s relationships.
The motion said Rosa L. would have testified “regarding her knowledge of Vincenza’s jealousy of M.L. and dislike of the defendant based on previous incidents.” Steven Miller, Vincenza’s boyfriend at the time, would have testified about Vincenza’s jealousy and complaints about M.L.
On April 11, 2017, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals vacated Blonda’s conviction, ruling that the state had failed to disclose M.L.’s statement to the victim advocate. The court did not rule on Blonda’s other post-conviction claims.
The court held that Blonda was entitled to a new trial, which was set for June 29, 2017. On that date, Lewand told the court that the State was not prepared to proceed. Blonda’s new attorney, Cole Daniel Ruby, filed a motion to dismiss, and Judge Jeffrey A. Kremers granted the motion to dismiss without prejudice.
– Andrew Jackson Eldridge, Bryan Saul Infante, Francesca Lazzarini, Alexandra Pablo, and Ruixuan Zhan, supervised by Jennifer Vargas Villaneuva
Posting Date: 07-07-2026
