2-10-21 state supreme court denies brantner homicide conviction appeal

The state Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal  of the homicide conviction of an over the road trucker from Kenosha in the death of a Sturdevant teenager in Fond du Lac County.   The state high court declined,  without comment, Dennis Brantner’s appeal to vacate his second degree reckless homicide conviction in the 1990 death of Berit Beck.  Brantner argued his conviction should be vacated because evidence presented during his trial was insufficient and the court erred in not dismissing the case.   Brantner said his conviction was a violation of the double jeopardy clause.  Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney says the court’s decision not to take the case is bittersweet.  “This has been quite the long journey with Berit being killed in 1990 and now we’re in 2021 where hopefully we have some finality for the Beck family,”  Toney told WFDL news.  Toney says there are no good outcomes in these types of cases.  “Certainly it doesn’t move on when a family loses a child in such a sad way but I’m hoping this does give some finality on the judicial side of things.”   Beck disappeared after stopping at the Forest Mall in 1990.  Her body was found about a month later in a roadside ditch near Waupun.  Brantner was arrested more than two decades later after investigators were able to match his fingerprints to prints found in Beck’s van.