Case Story: Fighting to Free an Innocent Man

Usually, we represent people who have been charged with crimes. They have not been convicted of these crimes, however, meaning we are the ones fighting to prevent them from being found guilty and going to jail or prison.

That is called trial work.

But there is another type of criminal defense work. And that happens after someone has been charged, tried, and convicted of a crime.

We call this post-conviction work.

Now you might be asking yourself, if the person has been tried and convicted, what else is there to do? Well, sometimes, the answer is a lot.

And that’s because more often than people in this field like to admit, mistakes are made during a person’s original case.

We all know of these stories—Steven Avery from the Netflix series Making a Murderer, the Central Park Five, and countless others.

These cases are about how the person’s original charge, trial, and conviction were flawed. Or wrong. Or messed up in some way. And so the post-conviction work is figuring out how to bring these issues to light and get a chance to correct them. To right the wrong and end the injustice of punishing someone who doesn’t deserve to be punished.

That’s what this case is about.

Our client, Werner Rummer, was convicted of murdering a man nearly 30 years ago. But here’s the rub: he’s denied any involvement in the murder since it happened.

Despite this, he was charged, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison.

After exhausting all his ways of appealing the case, in a last-ditch effort, Werner’s family contacted us to see if there was anything we could do to help.

We agreed to review the case, and when we did, it became clear to us that Werner was in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Since then, we’ve been working tirelessly—along with the wonderful folks at the Great North Innocence Project—to get Werner released, or at a minimum for his case to be re-reviewed.

While we haven’t achieved either yet, we still think it’s important to tell his story and all that we are doing to try to right this egregious wrong.

Because while we are normally trial lawyers, sometimes the unjust facts of a case require you to get out of your comfort zone and be post-conviction lawyers, too.

The Charge, Conviction, and Sentence

As discussed below, since the Fargo Forum recently published an eight-part series on Werner’s case, we won’t rehash too many details here.

But the short story is that Werner was charged, tried, and convicted of killing a man named Gilbert Fassett. From the very beginning, Werner denied any involvement in Fassett’s murder. He admitted to being with Fassett the last night he was seen alive, but that was it.

And for almost 10 years, Werner wasn’t charged with Fassett’s murder.

That’s not to say, however, that Werner was an angel. He was far from it, something he readily admits. And this string of bad behavior landed him in various jails and prisons throughout North Dakota.

It was there where the state believes it caught its big break.

While incarcerated, numerous “snitches” claimed that Werner admitted killing Fassett. Using this “evidence,” as well as other questionable evidence related to the car Werner was driving the night Fassett went missing and the decomposition of Fassett’s body, law enforcement arrested Werner and charged him with murder.

Again, as is the common thread in this story, Werner denied any involvement in Fassett’s death.

Because of this, Werner declined an offer for a 6-year sentence and insisted on trial. He didn’t kill Fassett, after all, so taking a deal (and admitting to doing something he didn’t do) wasn’t an option.

Well, Werner kept his pride but lost his freedom, as he was convicted by a jury in Devils Lake, North Dakota in 1995 and sentenced to life in prison.

So began the saga of Werner’s wrongful conviction.

The Appeals

Werner immediately began trying to appeal his conviction. First, he appealed directly to the North Dakota Supreme Court, claiming various mistakes occurred at his trial. 

This appeal was denied in 1996.

After that, Werner’s only option left was his own post-conviction relief. In theory, a lawyer should have helped him, but unfortunately, it's rare to find a lawyer who (1) is willing to take on a post-conviction case, and (2) knows what the hell they’re doing.

And for Werner, he learned that the hard way. 

Despite writing to lawyers across the country, Werner couldn’t find a single one to help him. So with no other choice, he went it alone. He spent years working through the evidence of his case, piecing together all that went wrong.

Now for a non-lawyer, Werner did a decent job. But in the world of post-conviction relief, pretty good isn’t nearly enough. 

You have to be amazing. 

And since he wasn’t a lawyer, and had no formal training in how best to present his post-conviction challenge, his efforts simply weren’t enough, and the North Dakota Supreme Court denied his second appeal in 2006.

It seemed like this was the end of the line as far as proving his innocence and getting his conviction overturned.

The Parole Decision and Rescission

Often, once a person exhausts all their appeal options, they redirect their focus from overturning their conviction to getting out on parole. The idea being if you can’t win on appeal, you work to get released early on parole.

But there’s usually a pretty big catch: you have to admit you committed the crime you were convicted of. And for most people, if it means release, they’ll admit whatever needs to be admitted.

Not Werner.

Once again, the through-line of this story is that Werner claims he didn’t murder Fassett, and so he will never admit to doing so, no matter how good the deal being offered.

Just like he said no to a 6-year sentence right before his original trial in 1995.

So, for the same reason, it seemed like Werner would never be paroled from prison.

It might seem crazy that Werner would hold to his convictions like this. At this point, who cares? He’s been in prison for more than a decade, he’s got no more appeals, and so his only shot at ever seeing the outside of a prison cell is to admit he killed Fassett.

Who cares? It doesn’t matter, just admit it, right?

Wrong.

Werner has never viewed it that way. He has never taken the “easy” way out. He has remained 100% adamant that he did not kill Fassett and thus will never admit it under any circumstances.

Honorable? Yes.

Heartbreaking? That, too.

So Werner just sat and did his time. Months turned into years, and years into decades. And before you knew it, Werner had served 25 years in prison for a crime he swore he didn’t commit.

Then came a surprising parole hearing in May 2022.

For Werner, he assumed the worst. After all, he maintained his innocence, and one of the hallmarks of parole is admitting your crime. So he went into the hearing thinking it would be a short and sweet denial.

But shockingly, the opposite happened. Despite not admitting that he killed Gilbert Fassett, the North Dakota Parole Board granted Werner parole by a 3-0 vote.

This seemed to be the justice Werner had been waiting for. He was to get out. Finally. Without having to compromise his morals by admitting to a crime he didn’t commit.

And so he got ready for his “out date” of November 10, 2022. 

He got rid of his life in prison—his TV, his gaming devices, his commissary. Everything. His rationale was simple: he was leaving, and when he left, he was turning the page and starting fresh. Nothing from his old life, all new.

Then, once again, the unthinkable happened.

Mere days before his slated release, the North Dakota Parole Board rescinded its parole decision—which, bizarrely, North Dakota law allows. Meaning Werner wasn’t leaving. He wasn’t going anywhere.

Instead, his nightmare continued.

Our Involvement

This is when Werner’s family contacted us. Not to try do post-conviction work, but to try figure out this whole “get paroled then get parole rescinded” issue.

We agreed because it seemed so patently unfair.

And when we looked into it, it was the only conclusion to draw.

In short, after Werner was paroled, the state’s attorney’s office that tried and convicted Werner wrote a letter to the North Dakota Parole Board and told them lies about Werner.

They claim they’re true, but have provided absolutely no evidence to back up the claims.

It was a whisper campaign, not one based on fact or reality.

And sadly, it worked. It spooked the parole board enough to make them reverse course and rescind their decision.

Even though they had concluded that Werner was not dangerous. And even though the state’s attorney had offered Werner a 6-year sentence back in 1995, meaning Werner would have been out in 2001—some 20 years earlier.

None of it made sense. So we got to work trying to figure out how to help Werner.

We started by asking the parole board to reinstate its decision. And despite many productive conversations and meetings, the parole board would not budge.

The only promise it made was to reevaluate Werner’s case at his next parole hearing in 2025. And while that was something, it wasn’t enough, as that would be more time in prison for an innocent man who has already served 20 more years that the state originally wanted from him.

So with no power to take the parole board to court, we did the only thing we could: we went to the media.

Fargo Forum’s Investigative Series

Working with veteran reporter Pat Springer, we partnered with the Fargo Forum and helped them write an eight-part series about Werner’s case. 

The series takes a bit of a different approach than this story, but it’s excellent journalism. The whole series can be read here (note: it does require a subscription to the newspaper), so we won’t rehash it in this story.

Suffice it to say this: the people at the Fargo Forum believe the same thing that we do—that Werner’s case has more questions than answers and that a fresh review of the case is needed. 

How do we know that? 

Because in what can only be described as an act of true journalistic courage, the newspaper’s editorial board called for it. The editorial is here, but because it is so important to Werner’s case and the possibility of his release, it’s also embedded below: