Dylan Yang Withdraws Request For New Trial

A Wausau teenager convicted in a fatal stabbing has decided not to ask for a new trial.

Dylan Yang was 15 years old when he stabbed 13-year-old Isaiah Powell during a fight between two groups of teens.

After the sentencing in October, Yang’s attorney Harry Hertel filed a motion for a new trial, arguing Yang was poorly represented by his original attorney.

Monday morning in Marathon County Circuit Court, Yang withdrew that request.

Hertel said Yang did not want to put his family or the victim’s family through the emotional stress of another trial.

“He actually felt such a level of remorse that he concluded he needed to have punishment for what he had done, which I thought was a very mature approach to accepting responsibility,” Hertel said.

Yang’s trial drew national publicity because of its impact on the region’s Hmong community, and because he was a teenager being tried in adult court.

Hertel said had there been a second trial, he would have made the defendant’s young age an issue.

“We would have wanted to introduce expert testimony about the functioning of the juvenile brain at age 15 and how it’s not comparable to an adult’s thinking, in terms of taking risks, having impulses that they don’t control and not recognizing consequences,” Hertel said.

Yang, now 17, will continue serving his 13-year sentence at the Lincoln Hills School juvenile corrections facility in Irma.