The Tomahawk man sentenced to life in prison last January for the robbery of the Zephyr Gas Station in Tomahawk in 2008 and the stabbing murder of the clerk on duty at the time was in Lincoln County Circuit Court Wednesday seeking to withdraw his guilty plea and be resentenced.

On Oct. 13, 2009, Derek Domke, 19, pleaded guilty to the charge of first degree intentional homicide as a party to the crime in the March 22, 2008 robbery and murder of Rochelle Anderson. According to testimony at an earlier hearing by forensics experts, Anderson was beaten and repeatedly stabbed to death in one of the gas station bathrooms. The only physical evidence found at the crime scene linked Domke to the crime.

Derek Domke pleaded guilty Oct. 13, 2008 to charges of first-degree intentional homicide and armed robbery. In an interview with Tomahawk Police Chief Don Johnson and other investigators after the plea hearing, Domke implicated another man as the one who actually killed Anderson. Nobody else has ever been charged in the case, however.

Domke alleges in his motion to withdraw his plea that he was urged to accept the plea deal in the case by his trial attorney Robert Rusch and did not mention the possibility of instructing the jury of the possibility of finding him guilty of the lesser charge of felony murder. The motion also questions if Domke was mentally capable of understanding the nature of the charge and the consequences of his guilty plea.

In lengthy testimony by Rusch in the morning, Domke’s new attorney James Rebholz repeatedly tried to show that Domke was never informed of the option of giving the jury the choice of convicting him of the lesser charge. Rusch repeatedly testified that he gave Domke the option numerous times and was prepared to go to trial a week after the plea hearing if Domke had rejected the prosecution’s offer.

After lunch, Dr. Robert Marcellino, a forensic psychologist testified as to Domke’s state of mind, noting that he did not have the bi-polar disorder previously diagnosed, but rather diagnosed him as suffering from a anti-social personality disorder.

Also testifying in the afternoon was Mark Skolaski, a probation officer with the Department of Corrections who prepared the pre-sentence investigation report after interviewing Domke on four separate occasions and Johnson.

Circuit Court Judge Glenn Hartley gave the two sides in the case a couple of weeks to file their final legal papers on the motion to him to review before it is sent on to the Wisconsin Court of Appeals.

A more detailed account of the hearing will appear in the Feb. 10 print edition of the Foto News.