SHARE

By ,

EDITOR'S NOTE: The New York Times recently caught up with Iraq War veteran Eric Pizer of Madison, who has failed in his attempt to get Gov. Scott Walker to pardon him for punching a man in the face in 2004.

Boscobel — Aware of the awkwardness, the two men arranged to meet in the evening quiet of the local community center. Their only previous encounter, a decade ago, had ended with a thrown punch and a broken nose.

Both dressed as if for a Sunday service, in button-down shirts. The larger man, a piano mover by trade, sat on the floral-patterned couch, his tight haircut correctly suggesting ex-military. The thinner man, owner of a floor-covering business, sat in an easy chair, his nose slightly bent to the right.

The punch they shared had come out of who knows where, maybe Iraq, to still a long-ago liquid night. But its impact was still being felt by the former Marine, who threw the right jab just days after returning from a second deployment; the victim, who has not breathed the same since; and the governor, who chooses never to exercise an executive power of ancient provenance.

To show mercy.

The ex-Marine, Eric Pizer, seeks a pardon because he aches with remorse, and because his one-punch felony conviction means that he cannot possess or own a gun, disqualifying him from his desired career in law enforcement. He has only one smudge on his record.

"This one night," he said. "This one time."

On this one night, back in 2004, Pizer and two buddies headed in his mother's Chevy for the small city of Boscobel, birthplace of the Gideon Bible. Their sole intention: to change the subject from war to fun.

Pizer was two days back from Iraq. A straight-up Marine, he had committed to the Corps even before his high school graduation in 2000, and was at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina a year later when an officer interrupted a class on sexually transmitted diseases to share the latest from Lower Manhattan.

We got bombed, boys, the officer announced. We're going to war.

Pizer spent half of 2003 in Kuwait and Iraq, fueling tanks and trucks in a tense environment. He returned for seven more months in 2004, this time as a corporal who felt so responsible for the "newbies" on his team that he extended his tour by two months.

Now he was cutting the September cool of a southwestern Wisconsin night, bound for Boscobel to hang out with a buddy's cousin and two other women he had never met before.

The men and women drank and played cards in the cousin's garage, then headed to Snick's Fin 'n Feather to shoot some pool and drink some more. When they returned to the garage, two local men, one of them named Steven Frazier, stepped in to disrupt the free-and-easy night.

Frazier believed that an out-of-towner — not Pizer — had gotten a little too familiar with one of the women: his wife. There soon followed beer-fueled shoves and shouts about straying hands and absent wedding rings.

Pizer, 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds, and Frazier, 5-foot-10 and 140 pounds, both claim to have been trying to keep the peace. But Pizer says that he heard Frazier threaten to kill one of his buddies, saw movement and reacted with his right hand.

"I just popped him once," he said.

That pop pushed Frazier's nose nearly two inches to the right. He went to the hospital, while Pizer went to a bar nearly 30 miles away, where, he says, he all but held out his hands to be cuffed when the police found him.

Pizer finished the last three months of his Marine hitch in North Carolina, then returned to learn the sobering news that his status as a first-time offender, just back from war, was not enough to convince the prosecutor, Anthony J. Pozorski Sr., to reduce the felony battery charge to a misdemeanor.

Back then, Pizer did not fully understand the consequences of having a felony on his record. "I had never been in trouble before," he said. "I wasn't quite prepared."

The ex-Marine worked as a construction laborer before getting hired to lug Steinways and Schimmels up stairs and around corners. He completed probation and paid off the $7,165.59 in restitution. He met a woman with a child, married, fathered a son and received joint custody in the divorce.

All the while, he remained a felon.

Several years ago, Pizer contacted the prosecutor, Pozorski, to discuss the possibility of reducing his conviction to a misdemeanor. At the time, he was mulling whether to re-enlist or perhaps seek a job as a corrections officer. But nothing changed.

"I was willing to look for a way to try to help Mr. Pizer," Pozorski wrote in an email last week. "But since Mr. Pizer was not re-enlisting, he had no need to carry a gun. Since he had no need to carry a gun, I did not need to expend the state's resources on trying find a way around the law."

Pizer pushed on. Taking classes part time, he earned an associate's degree in criminal justice. He also found allies in two Madison lawyers, David R. Relles and John R. Zweig, who agreed to help him seek a pardon.

One problem: The governor of Wisconsin is Scott Walker, a possible Republican contender for president who, since taking office in 2011, has declined to exercise his power of pardon, which the Wisconsin Constitution describes as "an official act of forgiveness."

With the Pizer case emerging as a cause célébre in Wisconsin, the governor has defended his no-pardon policy, saying that he sees no reason to "undermine" the criminal justice system — no matter that pardons were frequently granted by at least the last five governors before him.

In December, Walker told a reporter from WKOW-TV in Madison that there were thousands of convicted felons "who probably have a compelling case to be made that we don't know about."

In pardon-free Wisconsin, though, "compelling" cases go unheard. The state's Pardon Advisory Board remains "inactive," according to the governor's press secretary.

Relles, a former prosecutor, and Zweig, a former prosecutor and Vietnam-era veteran, say Pizer has suffered from bad luck and poor timing. The initial case should have been tried as a misdemeanor and, if it had occurred today, would most likely have been diverted to a veterans' treatment court. Lastly, Pizer's governor does not believe in pardons.

"For some reason, forgiveness is not in vogue," Relles said.

Two years ago, Relles reached out to Frazier on behalf of Pizer, but the victim did not follow up. "I wasn't quite ready," Frazier recalled.

"Broken nose" is almost too flip a term for the damage done. Frazier says that his nose had to be broken and reset twice, but it remains a bit crooked, aches in the cold and feels constantly congested.

"Migraines pretty much daily," he said.

More time passed. Then, a few months ago, an organization called Ridge and Valley Restorative Justice asked Frazier whether he would meet with the man who broke his nose. After a month of "sorting it out," he says, he agreed to meet one February evening.

Now, in Boscobel's community center, next to the Art Deco movie theater, two nervous men in their early 30s talked at length about one night from their early 20s, while two representatives from Restorative Justice mediated.

Pizer explained that Iraq had probably wound him up. He said that he liked to make people laugh, and usually avoided fights at all cost — except on this one night. Frazier said that, well, this one night had affected his looks, his breathing and even his children.

"I don't think I said sorry more times in my entire life," Pizer said. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. It was never my intention to get into a fight that night. I never meant to."

They talked some more. Then Pizer asked for forgiveness.

About 85 miles to the east, in the Capitol in Madison, the power of forgiveness goes untapped. But here in Boscobel, Frazier studied the penitent ex-Marine before him, and then said it:

"I forgive you."

Pizer felt a release, and stuck out his right hand. It was received in a good, firm grip.