Less than two weeks after he signaled he would pursue an insanity defense, a man accused of a violent rape of a UW-Madison student last year in the city’s Downtown says he will plead guilty.
In a letter to Dane County Circuit Judge Ellen Berz filed in court Tuesday, Brandon A. Thompson’s attorney asks that her client’s next court date, scheduled for Thursday, be converted to a plea hearing or that a plea hearing be scheduled for later.
Thompson
The letter provides no reason for the change of plea and Thompson’s attorney, Emily Bell, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. District Attorney Ismael Ozanne said his office had not offered to reduce any of the charges against Thompson and “I would believe there will be a plea to the charges and the case will be set for sentencing.”
Dane County Deputy District Attorney William Brown last year called the Sept. 3, 2023, attack on the woman Thompson, 27, didn’t know “one of the most horrific sexual assaults in recent memory here in Dane County.”
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The woman, who is in her 20s, was walking home sometime after 2:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning in the 500 block of West Wilson Street when Thompson “saw red,” he told investigators, according to the criminal complaint in the case.
He later said he remembered hitting the woman repeatedly but could not be sure that he sexually assaulted her. The attack left the woman naked, covered in blood and unconscious, according to the complaint, and she was later diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury, multiple lacerations and broken teeth, a broken jaw and two swollen eyes.
At the time the charges were filed, she was “on a feeding tube and unable to provide a statement as she shows extreme signs of confusion when awake,” the complaint says, and had to be put into a medically induced coma immediately after the attack.
Thompson’s bail was set at $1 million and he’s been in the Dane County Jail since three days after the attack on charges of first-degree sexual assault causing great bodily harm, first-degree reckless injury, and strangulation and suffocation.
Bell on Oct. 1 filed a motion asking to extend the time limit Thompson had for pleading not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. The motion says Thompson’s defense had retained a psychologist who had examined Thompson but that he needed more time to complete his report, which was supposed to happen by Oct. 4. A judge in the case had previously entered a not guilty plea on Thompson’s behalf, a common procedural move in criminal cases when the defendant chooses not to enter a plea.
A hearing Thursday had originally been scheduled to take up a number of prosecution and defense motions but was rescheduled Tuesday as a plea hearing.
According to the criminal complaint:
Police interviewed a woman who said the victim arrived at her apartment around 8 p.m. Sept. 2, 2023, and left at about 2:15 a.m. the next day. The woman told police the victim was not the type of person to party or use drugs. She also didn’t respond when the woman texted her at about 2:45 a.m. to see if she’d made it home OK.
About a half-hour later, police were sent to the crime scene after getting a call from a woman who lives nearby because Thompson had called to her from outside her apartment to say he’d been taking a “high walk” and found the victim in the street and carried her behind a residence.
After the woman saw the victim’s condition, she called police, which made Thompson “antsy,” the woman later told police, as he told her he didn’t want to be around police while he was high. He left the scene before police arrived.
Videos from private and public surveillance cameras show the victim walking west from the area of Park Street and West Washington Avenue to the CVS store at Bedford Street and then onto West Main Street, where video also captured images of a man matching Thompson’s description watching her from the other side of the street after he’d parked his car at nearby Brittingham Park.
No video showing the attack was recovered, but there was some showing Thompson’s vehicle leaving the Brittingham parking lot just after 3 a.m. Sunday. Fitchburg police also pulled Thompson over at around 1:15 a.m. Sunday morning, before the assault, and police body camera footage from that interaction showed Thompson wearing the same kind of black sweatshirt and gray pants as seen on the man who parked in the Brittingham lot.
Madison police said on Sept. 6, 2023, that Thompson was arrested that day at 12:24 a.m. at a hospital where he was seeking medical treatment but declined to describe the nature of the treatment, citing medical privacy laws.
Interviewed later by detectives, Thompson admitted to being angry before the alleged attack and wanting to “hit something.” He told detectives he encountered a woman and “saw red,” “didn’t know what was going on” and that “she came across as a monster.”
“I went into a rage, when I came to, she was on the ground,” he said, according to the complaint, and while he didn’t remember raping the woman, he told police, “I could have.”
DNA left on the victim and collected from Thompson were “consistent with the profile of Brandon Thompson,” according to analysis by the State Crime Lab.
During Thompson’s bail hearing last year, Brown said investigators had learned Thompson “was simply driving down the street and saw the victim, had no prior interaction or contact with the victim, and spontaneously decided to pull his car over, most of this occurring on camera, follow her for some distance around the Downtown area, and then attack her.”
Bell said at the time that Thompson had no prior criminal record, is a college graduate and resident of Dane County, and that his defense team has “uncovered some evidence that is inconsistent with the state’s narrative.”
Thompson’s last home address was in the village of Brooklyn.
How scammers use QR codes to steal—and how you can protect yourself
How scammers use QR codes to steal—and how you can protect yourself
With great convenience comes great responsibility. QR codes have opened up a whole new world of ease for consumers and businesses. But as with any new tech, scammers are exploiting the growing market to take advantage of consumers.
Uniqode analyzed resources from the FBI and the Federal Trade Commission to compile a list of tips on staying safe when using QR codes in public.
QR codes are the now-ubiquitous, black-and-white-patterned squares that can be scanned to access a hyperlink on your phone's web browser. Now almost annually, the FBI has issued consumer warnings that criminals are leveraging QR codes to steal sensitive information.
The rise of QR codes for contactless exchanges during the COVID-19 pandemic made the technology all the more appealing for criminals, according to cybersecurity firm Trellix. More than a third of smartphone users scanned a QR code in 2022, a share expected to rise to 42.6% by 2025, according to data forecaster eMarketer. The public adoption of QR codes and their cost-saving potential for businesses has helped keep them around long after pandemic safety measures faded away.
But a little vigilance can go a long way for consumers using these web portals. One QR code scheme commonly reported is a version of package delivery scams often carried out via text message. In this case, a potential victim receives a message that appears to come from FedEx or another reputable company directing them to scan a QR code to check on the status of their package delivery. Instead of taking the user to an authentic company website, they'll get a fake one that looks legitimate. Any username and password info submitted to the fake page goes straight to the bad actors who can use it to access sensitive information.
What is quishing?
QR codes are also easy and cheap for anyone with a phone or computer to generate. The FBI reported about $150 million in losses attributable to QR code scams in the last year, sometimes referred to as "quishing."
The practice, in spirit, is the same as "phishing," where a criminal attempts to dupe their victim into revealing personal information that can be used to illicitly access sensitive platforms like banking and email accounts. In a quishing scheme, the criminal intercepts your device not with a shady email or text message but with a hyperlink to a website on your phone populated by the QR code when you scan it.
Retail payment dupes
Numerous scams have been reported in which hackers place fake, malicious QR codes on parking meters, restaurant menus, advertisements, and other common locations for digital payments. In some cases, these methods can also steal credit card information stored on the phone used to scan the code.
Whenever you scan a QR code with your phone camera, a preview of the link will usually show up on your screen. Make sure the link looks like an official, secure website a legitimate business would host. For example, the standard protocol for secure websites requires that they begin with the string "https://" with the "s" standing for "secure."
'QRLJacking'
Another form of attack commonly seen by cybersecurity firms has been dubbed QRLJacking. In this scheme, the victim receives a message containing a QR code, urging them to log in to a platform the victim already uses. When the victim logs in, they're entering their credentials into a fake version of a seemingly legitimate site, giving the attacker access to their actual account.
As a technology, QR codes allow users to move very quickly to the point of purchase. Remember to slow down and assess the situation.
If you receive an unexpected notification with an accompanying QR code via text message or email, be wary of any instructions urging you to act quickly. Cybercriminals commonly employ urgency tactics because they encourage uncertainty and rushed decisions—the psychological conditions to make it easier for the victim to make a mistake such as entering personal information into a webpage without thinking twice.
Secondhand transactions
While QR codes are convenient for businesses to use for mass transactions, the benefits don't outweigh the risks in a direct payment situation when buying things secondhand, for example.
Cybersecurity firm KeepNet reported a scam in which the victim was sent a malicious QR code during a Facebook Marketplace transaction. Be wary of these, as navigating directly to a trusted payment platform like Zelle or PayPal may make the most sense. If you're working in an industry particularly vulnerable to these scams, like finance or the energy sector, extra caution may be necessary.
The FBI recommends against downloading applications or making payments directly on sites linked to QR codes since they could potentially be malicious. Instead, navigate to the URL manually so that a payment can be made confidently on a trusted, known website, the agency recommends.
Fake scanning apps
Other scams include phony QR code scanning applications that are actually malicious software, which can allow malware to be downloaded on your phone. Note that the camera app on most leading smartphones has a QR code scanning capability built in, so there's generally no need to download an additional app.
Smartphones may be even more vulnerable to malicious phishing attempts because of the sheer amount of personal information stored on them. Hackers are constantly seeking out vulnerabilities in software to exploit and steal personal information. By keeping your software up to date, you'll ensure that you have the latest version of your phone's operating system, which is the least vulnerable to scams.
Another safeguard is multifactor authentication, which provides an additional layer of security that can thwart all types of unauthorized users, including QR scammers. This feature is available for all leading email platforms, social networks, and reputable banks. It requires the user to confirm their identity by logging in with a code or prompt on a separate device after entering the password.
A criminal trying to steal personal information through a QR code may get login information, but they won't be able to get past the multifactor authentication unless they also have access to the authenticating device.
Story editing by Alizah Salario. Additional editing by Elisa Huang. Copy editing by Tim Bruns. Photo selection by Clarese Moller.
This story originally appeared on Uniqode and was produced and distributed in partnership with Stacker Studio.
