The Jury Asked What Medical Care Means. Then It Convicted Timothy Hauschultz on Four of Six Counts

Ethan Hauschultz was seven. For seven court days a jury in Manitowoc County sat with one question the whole Buried Beneath the Snow Trial kept circling: who answers for a punishment another person carried out? Ethan died of hypothermia in April 2018 after two hours of carrying a log through wet snow and mud. The fourteen-year-old left in charge of him that afternoon buried him in snow and is in prison for it. The man on trial, Timothy Hauschultz, Ethan's great-uncle and court-appointed guardian, was not home.

On Wednesday, October 21, 2026, at about 4:40 in the afternoon Central time, the jury answered. It answered six times, once for each count, and the answers did not all point the same way. Guilty on count one, neglecting a child with death as the consequence. Not guilty on count two, contributing to the teenager's delinquency with Ethan's death as the consequence. Guilty on count three, the abuse of Ethan. Guilty on count four, contributing to the teenager's abuse of Ethan's twin brother. Not guilty on count five, the twin's punishment on Thursday, April 19. Guilty on count six, the twin's punishment on Friday, April 20, the day Ethan died.

Then Judge Carey Reed sent Tim Hauschultz to the county jail to wait for sentencing on January 15, 2027.

That split is the story of Day 7, and I want to take it apart count by count, because how the jury divided those six answers tells you exactly which part of the State's case it accepted and which part it would not. The short version, and I will earn it below: the jury held him responsible for Ethan's death through his own failure to get Ethan the care he needed. It would not hold him responsible for the death through the order he gave the teenager. The man who was not there when Ethan went into the snow was convicted for the stretch of the afternoon when he was there.

Before I go further, the ground rules have changed, and I want to say how. Until about 4:40 Wednesday afternoon, Tim Hauschultz was presumed innocent on all six counts. He is now convicted on four of them. On the other two he is acquitted, and those acquittals are final: the State cannot appeal them or try him again on them. The four convictions can still be challenged, first in the trial court and then on appeal. Where I give an opinion in this article I will say it is mine and I will tell you what in the record it rests on. The jury's verdict is the only one that counts. I am going to tell you what I think it means, and whether the process that produced it was fair.

A Short Day in Court, a Long Day for the Jury

On the clock, Day 7 was the shortest day of the trial. There was about forty minutes of court in the whole of it. Everything that mattered happened in three short stretches, separated by hours of a closed jury-room door.

Here is where things stood when the day began. The jury got the case on Tuesday, Day 6, after the instructions and three closing arguments. By Tuesday night the twelve had spent about four and three-quarter hours deliberating and had sent out a single question, and it was about a typo. Page 14 of their packet printed count six as Thursday, April 20, and they asked whether it meant Friday. It did. April 20, 2018 was a Friday. The question tells you only that they were reading the twin's counts line by line. Then they went home.

At about 8:29 Wednesday morning Judge Reed went back on the record. The State was at its table: District Attorney Jacalyn LaBre, a second prosecutor, and the State's special agent. Tim Hauschultz sat at the other table with his lawyers, Donna Kuchler and Brad Novreske. All twelve jurors were back. The judge said he had no new instructions for them and proposed to welcome them back and send them in. Neither side wanted anything different. When the jurors came in he told them, on behalf of the lawyers, the defendant and himself, that everyone was happy to see them back, that they had all of their instructions, and that the bailiff would take them to the deliberation room. They went out at about 8:32. The courtroom went quiet.

It stayed quiet for four and a half hours.

Two Notes From the Jury Room: What Does "Necessary Medical Care" Mean?

At about 1:06 PM Central the judge went back on the record with two notes. I want to give you both of them in full, because they are the closest any of us will ever get to the inside of that room.

The first: "When transporting an individual to the hospital in a vehicle other than emergency vehicles and after rendering first aid, would that be considered 'necessary medical care'?" It was signed by the foreperson. One of the lawyers asked the judge to read it again, and he did.

The second was shorter: "What constitutes 'care'? And what constitutes 'necessary medical care'?"

Read those two questions slowly. Both go to the end of the afternoon, after the calls home. Count one asks whether Tim Hauschultz, a person responsible for Ethan's welfare, failed to give Ethan necessary care and medical care, whether that failure was negligent and seriously endangered him, and whether it was a substantial factor in his death. The State's argument on count one, more than anything else, was the hour after the phone calls. The 3:13 call that Ethan was unresponsive. No 911. Ethan carried inside, given a bath, dressed in dry clothes. A drive to the hospital in the family's own vehicle, arriving at Holy Family at about 3:52. The defense answered with the same facts from the other side: he took the wet clothes off, he warmed the boy, he wrapped him in a blanket, he drove him to the hospital himself, and fast.

The first note is the defense's version of that afternoon, almost word for word, turned into a question. First aid, then a car that is not an ambulance, then the hospital. Is that the necessary medical care the law requires? A jury does not ask that question unless somebody in the room is arguing it.

WATCH: DAY 7, PART 28 Buried Beneath the Snow Trial Judge Defines Necessary Care for Jurors Over Defense Objection

What happened next took about twenty-five minutes, with the jury still in its room, and I think it is the most important twenty-five minutes of the day after the verdict itself.

The judge reached first for the pattern jury instruction, the standard instruction Wisconsin courts use for this crime, and its footnote. The footnote quotes the statute's own definition of necessary care: care "that is vital to the needs of a child's physical, emotional, or mental health based on all of the facts and circumstances bearing on the child's need for care, including the child's age, the child's physical, mental, or emotional condition, and any special needs of the child." His first thought was to give the jury that definition, "since the legislature seems to have provided somewhat of an answer," and then he corrected himself: "Or at least the jury instructions committee has, I shouldn't say legislature."

The defense wanted nothing added. Its position was that the jury had the instructions and should rely on them. "I think we should stand stick with the pattern instructions," the defense told the judge. "That we shouldn't provide any further direction to them."

The State wanted the definition given. "I think the definition in footnote five, which is the statutory definition of necessary care, should be provided to the jury," the prosecutor said, and added that it was "not our interpretation of what the definition is," it was the statute's.

On the first note, the one about the car ride, everyone agreed the court could not answer it. That is a question about the evidence, and the evidence is the jury's. The answer that went back was the standard one: "You must rely on your collective memories of the evidence and the instructions given by the court." Both sides said yes to that.

On the second note the judge sided with the State. He said the footnote "simply states what is defined" in the statute, and "I'm inclined to give that." The defense made its objection and then asked for something narrower, and I want you to hear exactly what it asked for, because the judge gave it: "Well, if you're going to do that, we object to giving that to them, but if you're going to do that, then I'd like you to make it clear that you're giving them the definition only for necessary care, and that the court doesn't have a definition for medical care."

That is what went into the room. The statutory definition of necessary care. Then a separate line: "As to medical care, you must rely on your collective memories and the instructions given by the court." Before it went in, the defense said it once more so the record was clean: "But just so the record's clear, we don't I don't agree with giving that footnote five just for the record." The judge printed the answers, let both sides check them ("Give it the final seal of approval. Or disapproval, let me know either way"), added a quotation mark the jury had used that he had left off, and sent them back at about 1:30.

WATCH: THE JURY'S QUESTIONS Buried Beneath the Snow Trial Hauschultz Jury Asks if a Hospital Ride Counts as Medical Care

The Question the Law Left the Jury to Answer Alone

Here is where I want to stop and push on it, because this is the part of Day 7 I keep coming back to.

The jury asked the court what "necessary medical care" means. The honest answer from the court was that the law does not say. There is a statutory definition of "necessary care." There is no definition of "necessary medical care" anywhere on the record, and the judge did not invent one. He said so to the jury, in effect, at the defense's request. I think that was the right thing for him to do. A judge who makes up a definition in the middle of deliberations is writing law for one case.

But think about what that leaves. A man was on trial for a crime that carries up to twenty-five years, and one of the two things the State said he failed to provide was "medical care." Twelve people who had sat through seven days of evidence went into a room, worked for about nine hours over two days, and came out to ask what that phrase means. And the answer, correct as a matter of law, was: you decide, from your memory.

There is a second wrinkle, and nobody objected to it, so I cannot tell you it was an error. On Day 6, as read aloud in court, the judge gave count one's third element as a failure to provide "necessary care and medical care," joined by "and." The pattern instruction prints care and medical care as separate options a court can choose between. If the written instruction in the jury room also said "and," then the jury had to find both failures, which is a harder test for the State than the law requires. I have not seen the written copy. I am telling you what was read aloud.

So what did the court's answer do? The definition it gave is the statute's own words, keyed to "the child's age" and "the child's physical, mental, or emotional condition." Those words fit the State's whole case: a seven-year-old of about 62 pounds, a 44-pound log, wet clothes, two hours. Read through those words, the car ride question gets easier for the State, because the question becomes what this child, in this condition, needed. My read is that this is why the defense objected, and it kept that objection on the record twice. My view is that the judge was careful, kept to the statute, and gave the defense the limit it asked for. My question is a different one, and it is for the legislature more than for Judge Reed. When a statute can send a guardian to prison for twenty-five years for failing to provide "medical care," should the words that decide it be left for each jury to fill in from scratch?

About three and a half hours after those answers went in, the jury had its verdicts.

Six Verdicts, Read One at a Time

At about 4:35 the judge went back on the record and told the lawyers he had been informed that the jury had reached a verdict. Both sides said they were ready. Before the jurors came in, he spoke to the gallery. He thanked everyone for how they had behaved through the whole trial, said feelings often run high in cases like this one, and warned that "the court will be forced to remove anyone who is disruptive."

The jurors came in at about 4:37. The judge asked the foreperson whether the jury had reached verdicts and whether they were unanimous. Yes. The verdict forms went to the bailiff, then to the judge, who looked them over and said they "do appear to be in proper order." Then: "Mr. Hauschultz, would you please stand for the reading of the verdict? I'll read them one at a time."

WATCH: DAY 7, PART 29 Buried Beneath the Snow Trial Jury Convicts Hauschultz on Four Counts and Acquits on Two

"Count one, neglect a child consequence is death. We the jury find the defendant Timothy Hauschultz guilty of neglecting a child consequence is death as charged in count one of the amended information." That was the full charge, not the lesser one. The jury had a lesser version available, plain neglect without the death, and it did not use it.

"Count two, we the jury find the defendant Timothy Hauschultz not guilty of intentionally contribute to the delinquency of a child, resulting in death as charged in count two of the amended information."

Count three, party to a crime, physical abuse of a child, intentionally causing bodily harm: guilty. That is Ethan.

Count four, intentionally contributing to the delinquency of a child: guilty. That is the teenager's abuse of the twin on April 20.

Count five, party to a crime, physical abuse of a child: not guilty. That is the twin, April 19.

Count six, the same charge: guilty. That is the twin, April 20.

The defense asked for the jury to be polled, which means each juror is asked out loud whether the verdicts are the jury's and whether they are his or her own. The judge started with the back row and went down the line, by name. Every one of the twelve said yes.

WATCH: THE VERDICT Buried Beneath the Snow Trial Jury Finds Hauschultz Guilty in Ethan's Death and the Judge Jails Him

Then the motions, and they go fast, so here they are in plain English. The State moved for judgment on the verdicts, which is a request that the court make the jury's decision official. The defense moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdicts on counts one, three, four and six, which is a request that the judge set the guilty verdicts aside because, in the defense's view, the evidence could not support them, and for judgment on the verdicts on counts two and five, the acquittals. The judge entered judgments of conviction on one, three, four and six and judgments of acquittal on two and five, "consistent with the jury's verdict." In doing that he turned down the defense's request, without a separate word about it.

Then the warnings every new felon in Wisconsin hears. "Mr. Hauschultz, these are felony convictions." He cannot vote until his civil rights are restored, and it is unlawful for him to possess a firearm. Did he understand? He said he did.

Count One and Count Two: The Same Death, Two Different Roads

People are charged with acts, not with a death. This verdict is the clearest example of that I have seen in a long time. Ethan's death sits inside two of the six counts. The jury convicted on one and acquitted on the other, and it is not a contradiction. The two counts ask two different questions about how a man who was not home can answer for a death.

Count one, the neglect count, reaches the death through Tim Hauschultz's own conduct. The instruction, as read to the jury on Day 6, required that "the defendant's action or failure to take action" caused Ethan's death, and that it was a substantial factor in producing it. The mental state is negligence: what a reasonable guardian would know or should know seriously endangers a child. It does not ask what he intended. And the reasonable-discipline defense, the rule that lets a guardian discipline a child within limits, was read on counts two through six and not on count one.

Count two reaches the death only through the teenager. It required that "the defendant's contributing to the delinquency of" the fourteen-year-old was a substantial factor in Ethan's death. And it required intent: that he meant to encourage the teenager's crime, or knew his conduct was practically certain to cause it.

Now look at count four. Count four is the same charge as count two, contributing to the teenager's delinquency, from the same order, on the same afternoon, with the same teenager left in charge of the same two boys. The jury convicted on it. So the jury found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Tim Hauschultz intentionally encouraged or contributed to the teenager's crime against the twin, and that it was not reasonable discipline. That was the State's theory, and on that count the State won.

Count four and count two are identical except for one element. Count two adds that the contributing caused Ethan's death. That is the only thing count two asks that count four does not. The jury found the order. What it most likely could not find, beyond a reasonable doubt, was the link between the order and the death. I want to be careful here: a jury gives no reasons, and nobody can tell you for certain what twelve people thought. But when two counts differ by one element and a jury convicts on one and acquits on the other, that one element is where the record points.

And it fits the evidence. What killed Ethan was hypothermia. The act that drove it, by the State's own case, was the teenager covering him with snow for about twenty minutes, an act no witness said he was told to do. The State's own closing on count two named the issue. "The difference between the two is whether this was the actions were a substantial factor in producing the death of Ethan," the prosecutor told the jury. "The punishment and putting Damian in charge, was that a substantial factor?" Then it moved on to the abuse counts. That was about a minute of argument on the count that carried the State's core theory of the death. Count two is where the State spent the least, and count two is where it lost.

So where did the death conviction come from? From count one, and the part of count one the State pressed hardest was the hour he was home. Here is how the prosecutor closed on that count: "This defendant did not get him the care he needed as quickly as was necessary. He delayed that care, delayed getting him to the medical professionals that were needed, even when he clearly was in such a bad state when he got home." As the State laid it out: the 3:13 call, home within about ten minutes, a bath, dry clothes, a first plan to drive to a hospital farther away, and Holy Family at about 3:52. Dr. Lori Frasier told the jury fifteen to thirty minutes can make a difference with a child that cold. Dr. Hillary Petska told it that with earlier care, Ethan could have lived.

That is the turn in this verdict, and I think it is the most important thing to understand about it. The whole puzzle of this case, from Day 1, was the man who was not there. He was out running errands with his wife when Ethan went down. The State's theory was the order: he chose the punishment, chose the two hours, chose the logs and chose the teenager. The jury accepted that theory as abuse. It convicted him of the abuse of both boys on April 20 and of contributing to the teenager's crime against the twin. But for the death, the jury did not take the road through the order. It took the road through what he did, and did not do, after he walked in the door. He was not there for the act. He was there for the delay.

Where I Think the State Was Strong, and Where It Was Thin

I said in the article I wrote before the verdict that counts one and two were where the case was most open, and that the gap between "he set up the punishment" and "he is responsible for how the teenager carried it out" was the State's biggest exposure. The jury agreed with half of that and not the other half, and I want to be honest about which half.

On count two, I think the jury got it right, and I think it got it right for the reason the instruction told it to look at. The State proved an order. It did not prove, to twelve people beyond a reasonable doubt, that the order is what put Ethan in the snow. Burying a child is a very different thing from making him carry a log, and the law of cause asks whether the result was the natural and probable consequence of what the accused did. That is a fair place for a jury to stop.

On count one, I think the conviction is defensible, and I also think it rests on the thinnest link in the State's whole case. No witness told the jury that Ethan probably would have lived if someone had called 911 at 3:13. The evidence was "could have lived" and "fifteen to thirty minutes can make a difference," and an ambulance time the two sides fought over to the end. On Day 6 the prosecutor told the jury paramedics had reached that area before in three to four minutes; the defense had said there was no testimony about when an ambulance would have arrived. That is the gap the defense will take to the judge after the verdict and, if it comes to it, to the Court of Appeals. The jury's questions tell you the room was working on exactly that leg of count one. Whether it was the leg that carried the verdict, the record cannot tell us. The jurors did not have to agree on which failure, the punishment's conditions or the delay, as long as they agreed on guilt, and the definition the court gave them fits both.

The count three conviction tells you something too. Count three is the abuse of Ethan, charged as party to a crime, and the reasonable-discipline defense applied to it. To convict, the jury had to find that the State proved he did not act reasonably in the discipline of a child. It did. Whatever else you take from this verdict, twelve people looked at a 44-pound log, a 62-pound boy and two hours in the slush, and decided the law does not call that discipline.

The Twin's Counts: Thursday Was Not Proved, Friday Was

The twin's counts are the quiet part of this verdict, and they deserve a paragraph of their own, because they show the jury sorting the evidence day by day. Count five and count six charge the same crime against the same child, the physical abuse of Ethan's twin brother, as party to a crime. Count five is Thursday, April 19. Count six is Friday, April 20.

The jury acquitted on Thursday and convicted on Friday. On Friday the teenager was in charge, by his own testimony he hit and kicked the boys to keep them going, and the defense told the jury in closing that the teenager committed intentional child abuse against both boys that day. Thursday had none of that. The State's case for Thursday rested on the punishment alone, the carrying it said he ordered, and in its rebuttal that was its argument: "the act of carrying wood that was ordered" is itself child abuse. For Friday the jury accepted it, with the teenager's violence on top. For Thursday, standing alone, it did not.

Ethan's twin brother is a living child. I do not name him, and I will not.

The Last Ruling of the Trial: Counts Four and Six Stand Apart

With the jury gone, there was one argument left. On Monday the defense had argued that some of the counts punish the same act twice, which lawyers call multiplicity. A person can be charged under two statutes for one act, but not punished twice for what the law treats as one offense. The verdicts narrowed the fight to one pair: count four, contributing to the teenager's abuse of the twin on April 20, and count six, the abuse of the twin on April 20 itself.

The defense raised it. "Given the way that the verdict came in, we still have the unresolved issue as it relates to um with counts four and six in terms of the multiplicity issue." The judge had read the letter briefs. The defense added nothing. The State relied on its filings and pointed to the verdicts: on the contributing counts and the abuse counts, it said, "there actually was a not guilty on one and guilty on the other and vice versa."

Judge Reed agreed with the State. He said there are "significant differences" between the two charges, that each can be proven in ways the other cannot, and he found that "the legislature provided for these charges to be charged either separately or together and not be multiplicitous as charged in this particular case." Motion denied. At about 4:51 PM Central the trial of Timothy Hauschultz was adjourned.

Here is why that matters. Because counts four and six survive as separate convictions, the judge can sentence on each of them separately in January. The issue is preserved for appeal, and I would expect to see it again.

From Allegations to Convictions: The Remand

Between the verdicts and that last ruling came the question of where Tim Hauschultz would wait for sentencing.

The State asked for a remand, which means taking him into custody now. The defense asked that he stay out. His lawyer reminded the court that he is on GPS monitoring and has been "obviously uh responsible throughout this case, which has been pending for seven years, more than seven years."

The judge said he appreciated that. "That said, we've gone from a posture of allegations to a posture of convictions," and "for those reasons the court is going to remand" him to the custody of the Manitowoc County jail until sentencing.

I do not think that ruling is surprising, and I do not think it was unfair. A man convicted of a Class D felony that carries up to twenty-five years is in a different place than a man waiting for trial, and the judge said so in one sentence. But I want to sit with the other half of the defense's sentence for a moment: seven years. Ethan died in April 2018. The case was filed in 2019. It reached a jury in October 2026. In between, according to Fox 11's reporting, plea agreements that both sides had reached were refused by judges, and the lead charge itself was changed in November 2025, from felony murder to the neglect count he now stands convicted of. A seven-year-old's death took seven and a half years to reach twelve citizens. Whatever you think of this verdict, that is a fact about this system worth asking about, and I am going to keep asking it.

What January 15 Can Look Like

Sentencing is set for Friday, January 15, 2027, at 1:00 PM Central, before Judge Reed. The judge offered the morning of December 29 first; that was a holiday week, and January 15 was the next date that worked. He intends to order a presentence investigation, which is a report the Department of Corrections prepares on the defendant's background and circumstances before a sentence is set. The State told the court it expects victim statements and asked for about an hour. The defense suggested setting aside two.

Here is the range, read from Wisconsin's statutes as they stood in April 2018, when these crimes happened.

Count one is a Class D felony, up to twenty-five years. In Wisconsin a prison sentence is split in two: time in prison, then a period of extended supervision in the community. On count one that is up to fifteen years in prison and up to ten on supervision. Counts three, four and six are each a Class H felony, up to six years: three in prison and three on supervision.

None of the four counts carries a minimum. The judge can choose anything from probation, with up to a year in the county jail as a condition of it, to every count at its maximum, stacked end to end. Stacked, the most is forty-three years: twenty-four in prison and nineteen on supervision. Run together, the longest count controls, and the most time in prison is fifteen years. Wisconsin has no parole for these sentences and no time off for good behavior. Whatever prison term is set is served.

He gets credit for the time he has already spent in jail. By one news report he spent about three years and three months in jail before posting bond in 2022; the exact dates are in the court file, not on the record I have. The years on GPS almost certainly do not count.

For context, and only for context: the teenager who was in charge in the yard that afternoon pleaded guilty to first-degree reckless homicide and was sentenced to twenty years. In June 2026, as Fox 11 and WBAY reported, he was resentenced; the twenty years stayed and his extended supervision went from ten years to fifteen. The judge in January is not sentencing him. But when you hear the sentence, you will hear it next to that one, and so will everyone in that courtroom.

What will the defense argue? I expect it to lean on count two. The jury did not find that the order he gave caused Ethan's death, and the defense will ask the judge to sentence him for what the jury found and not for what it rejected. Whether a Wisconsin judge may weigh conduct behind an acquitted count is a question I have not seen settled on this record, and I will be watching how both sides handle it.

What the Jury Saw, and What It Did Not

A verdict tells you what the jury decided from what it was shown. It is worth asking what it was not shown. On this case there are two things I keep returning to.

The first is the child-protection file. Two months before Ethan died, by the defense's account in closing, Tim Hauschultz sat down with a social worker and described his discipline, carrying wood among it. On Day 4 the judge read the records himself and let a couple of sentences in for cross-examination. The jury convicted him of neglect and of abuse. The court system that placed these children with him, and the agency that had that conversation in February 2018, were never on trial, and nothing in this verdict answers what that system knew.

The second is the hour. The jury's own notes show it was working on whether a car ride after first aid is "necessary medical care." The record it had to answer that with was the testimony of two doctors who never examined Ethan and said he "could have lived" with earlier care, and a disagreement between the lawyers about how fast an ambulance would have come. The jury was told to rely on its memory. It did, and it convicted. I think a juror could have gone the other way on that record and been just as faithful to the instruction. That is not a criticism of these twelve people. It is the reason the instruction matters, and the reason the defense will take it up.

Where This Leaves Us

Here is my view, said as mine. The jury did the job the law gave it. It took six counts one at a time and did not hand the State a clean sweep because a child had died. It found the punishment was abuse and not discipline. It found he contributed to the teenager's crime against the twin. It would not find that his order caused Ethan's death, and on the record I watched, I think that was right. And it found that he answers for Ethan's death through the hour when Ethan's care was in his own hands. That last finding rests on the thinnest proof the State offered on any count, and it is the one I would expect the Court of Appeals to be asked about first.

I will not call this verdict justice, and I would say the same of an acquittal. Justice is the process working fairly and finishing, and this one is not finished. There is a presentence report to write, a sentencing hearing on January 15, a defense motion already on the record, and an appeal that is almost certain to follow. I will be there for all of it.

WATCH: DAY 7, NO BREAKS EDITION Buried Beneath the Snow Trial Day 7, No Breaks Edition: Questions, Then the Verdict

If you want the whole day as it happened, the No Breaks edition above has all of it, from the morning call through the jury's questions to the last ruling. The two Parts of the Case Story for Day 7 are linked above, and every Part from the openings through the verdict is on the Wisconsin v. Hauschultz coverage page. If you are new to this trial, start with the article I wrote on the first six days, then come back to this one.

Ethan was seven. A teenager is in prison for what he did in that yard. And the guardian who was not home when it happened is in the Manitowoc County jail, convicted of failing the boy in the hour after he got there.