27-05-2025
What to know about Anthony Cotton, defense attorney for Maxwell Anderson
Waukesha defense lawyer Anthony Cotton is the man who will represent accused killer Maxwell Anderson at trial in Milwaukee.
Anderson, 34, of Milwaukee, is charged with first-degree intentional homicide, mutilation of a corpse and arson in the death last April of Sade Carleena Robinson, 19.
Trial for Anderson begins May 27.
Education: Cotton was born and raised in Waukesha and went to Catholic Memorial High School before studying at University of Wisconsin in Madison. He graduated from Marquette University Law School in 2005.
Experience: He joined the firm, Kuchler & Cotton S.C., in 2005. The firm, based in Waukesha, is run by his mother, Donna Kuchler, who represented Jessy Kurczewski in 2024 in what became known as the "Eye Drops homicide trial."
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He represented Morgan Geyser, one of the defendants in the Slender Man case in Waukesha County. The 2014 case involved two 12-year-old girls, Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier, who stabbed their classmate and friend and left her for dead in a park. The girl survived the stabbing. Geyser and Weier were found not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect and ordered to a mental health institute for decades-long commitments in 2017. Weier was released in 2021, and Geyser, represented by Cotton, was approved for conditional release March 6, 2025.
Cotton was also the lawyer for Dominic Black, who faced weapons charge in November 2020 for illegally giving a rifle to Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old later acquitted of killing two people during protests in Kenosha earlier that year. Black took plea deal in order to avoid criminal conviction.
Cotton was hired by a Yale law professor during his second year of law school to investigate human rights abuses in Eritrea, East Africa. He traveled throughout Eritrea to interview civilians and prepare claims for people who had been victimized as a result of the Eritrean-Ethiopian war.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What to know about Anthony Cotton, attorney for Maxwell Anderson
