Nicolae Miu’s fate now in the hands of the jury

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
Updated ·8 min read
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UPDATE: Nicolae Miu found guilty in Apple River homicide, other stabbings

Jury deliberations have begun in the trial of Nicolae Miu, who claims he acted in self-defense when he fatally stabbed 17-year-old Isaac Schuman and wounded four others during a confrontation with two groups of tubers on western Wisconsin’s Apple River in 2022.

The jury of six women and six men was given the case just before 12:30 p.m., following closing arguments Wednesday in St. Croix County Circuit Court in Hudson, Wis. Deliberations began after the lunch hour and continued until just about 4:30 p.m. They will resume Thursday morning.

Over the eight days of the trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys relied heavily on a cellphone video to try to make their case.

“One of the things the defense said at the beginning of trial and in their opening was they’re glad there’s a video,” District Attorney Karl Anderson said in the state’s closing argument. “So are we.”

Shortly before 2 p.m., the jury asked to again see two cellphone videos taken by Schuman’s friend Jawahn Cockfield. One is 9 seconds long, shortly after Miu approached the tubers, the other a 3½-minute recording that shows much of the confrontation and its frantic aftermath. Just after 4 p.m., jurors requested to get another look at a portion of the longer video, right before the confrontation between Miu and Madison Coen and through the stabbings.

Miu, 54, of Prior Lake, testified Tuesday that his “fear scale” kept growing during the confrontation with two groups of tubers in Somerset on July 30, 2022. He said he feared for his life when he stabbed Schuman, of Stillwater, in the chest and seriously injured Ryhley Mattison, then 24, of Burnsville; A.J. Martin, then 22, of Elk River; and brothers Dante Carlson and Tony Carlson, both in their early 20s, of Luck, Wis. All five were stabbed once. Schuman bled to death.

Prosecutors tried to get across to jurors the confrontation began when Miu ran up to Schuman’s group while he was looking for his friend’s lost phone and that he had opportunities to walk away, despite the taunts from Schuman’s group. They said it turned violent after he became angry and either pushed Coen or punched her in the face — an alleged assault not on video — and reacted with his pocket knife.

“Nicolae was not in fear, he snapped,” Anderson said in the closing argument.

The defense tried to portray a scene in which Miu was surrounded by a drunken, angry mob who called him a “pedophile” and attacked him.

New charges added

Late Tuesday, the state added lesser charges against Miu to go along with the original charges of first-degree intentional homicide, four counts of attempted first-degree intentional homicide and one count of misdemeanor battery.

Miu now also faces second-degree intentional homicide; first- and second-degree reckless homicide; and four counts each of attempted second-degree intentional homicide, attempted first-degree reckless homicide and attempted second-degree reckless homicide.

Jurors will consider the intentional murder charge first, then stop there if they find him guilty. If not, they move to the other charges.

If convicted of the intentional murder charge, Miu could be sentenced to life in prison.

State’s closing argument

Anderson offered up a question for jurors to ask themselves: “Why didn’t he just walk away?”

“His only explanation when testifying was, ‘I stood my ground. I stood my ground.’ First of all, Wisconsin is not a stand-your-ground state,” Anderson said. “Second, that’s not true, as I’ll show you. He didn’t just stand his ground.”

Anderson acknowledged that Schuman’s group should not have been mocking Miu, calling him a “predator, raper. But their conduct did not justify what Nicolae did.”

The defense mischaracterized the incident as being 13 people against Miu, Anderson said, noting that 13 people were in the area and only two “tiny females” were close to him before it got violent.

Miu turned his back on the tubers at least twice, Anderson said, adding “you don’t turn your back on somebody if you’re afraid of them, especially if you’re so afraid you have to reach for your knife … he’s angry, not afraid.”

Although the assault on Coen was not on video, Anderson said, witnesses testified they saw her falling backward. Coen also testified that Miu hit her. “This all started when Nicolae punched Madison,” he said.

Anderson told jurors that state law says there is no duty to retreat, but “determining whether Miu’s actions, whether his use of force was reasonable to prevent or terminate the interference, you may consider whether he had the opportunity to retreat with safety, whether such retreat was feasible, and whether he knew of the opportunity.”

Anderson again noted how Miu turned his back on the group several times, facing open water. “People were yelling at him to leave, to walk away, to go,” he said. “And he didn’t. Instead, he took out his knife. That is not reasonable.”

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Jurors also have to consider whether Miu provoked the attack.

“So after he runs up on the boys as they’re tubing away, he goes and tells Maddie they ‘took my snorkel,’” Anderson said. “He’s standing there smirking at people. Takes out his knife. Either punches or pushes Maddie. That’s provocation.”

The way in which Miu stabbed Schuman shows his intent to kill, Anderson said.

“Nicolae stabbed him so hard, it cut clean through two ribs,” he said. “The wound was deeper than it was wide. He sliced Isaac’s heart. There’s no other intent when you stab somebody directly in the heart than to kill.”

Defense’s closing argument

Defense attorney Corey Chirafisi said Miu does not have to prove he acted in self-defense. The state has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Miu did not act in self-defense, “that his beliefs were unreasonable,” he said.

Chirafisi said the “drunk teenagers” testified that they could have passed Miu once he walked over to Coen, who was not part of their group. The teens “invented” that Miu said he was “looking for little girls,” Chirafisi said, noting how none of them said that in interviews with investigators.

Chirafisi said the video shows that as the teens began confronting Miu, he heads over to Coen, who “he believes to be a reasonable, rational adult.” Instead, Coen screams at Miu and “feels comfortable enough to put her hands on him for the first time and move him because, well, she’s queen of the river and she decides where people go. So she’s moving him. We know that.”

In the video, Chirafisi said, someone in the group is heard telling Miu, “’You got 10 seconds.’ It’s reasonable in our experiences as adults to take that as a threat, right?”

The video showed Miu being “knocked clean off his feet backwards into the water” by a punch to the jaw thrown by Dante Carlson, he said. And it shows that Carlson then “cracks him across the face” and Martin shoves him from behind — and Carlson “goes in for thirds and smacks Nic Miu in the face again.”

“At this point, after he’s been punched, slapped, pushed, slapped, he hasn’t stabbed anyone,” he said.

Chirafisi told jurors they have to consider Miu’s “reasonable belief that there is going to be an imminent interference with his person. … And I would submit to you, he does. He told you he did.”

Chirafisi asked jurors, when determining whether Miu believed he had to do what he did, “Why else would he do it? He either believed that or he just lost his mind, right? This 52-year-old engineer, who was married, just lost his mind that day. Those are the two options, I think, that you have on that.”

The question on intent is “mental purpose,” Chirafisi said. “Can you watch that video and say that Nic Miu’s mental purpose is to kill Isaac Schuman? Or is his mental purpose to get another person off of him. You get to decide that.”

And Chirafisi addressed the state’s added charges. “Maybe it was intentional. Well, maybe not. Maybe it was reckless. Pick a theory. Don’t let them just throw things against the wall and hope that you guys let something stick,” he said.

State’s rebuttal

Assistant District Attorney Brian Smestad delivered the state’s rebuttal, focusing on Miu’s lies that he told during his interview with Lt. Brandie Hart of the St. Croix County sheriff’s office four hours after the stabbings. Namely, when Miu told Hart that Schuman’s group tried to pull down his swim trunks early in the confrontation and when he said he didn’t have a knife and that he took the murder weapon from a tuber.

“His testimony was a disaster,” Smestad said. “He got caught in several lies on the stand.”

Smestad asked jurors to return a “just verdict of guilty and deliver justice to Isaac Schuman and everybody else who got hurt by this man.”

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