Umentum was accused of punching Walker in the head, and Walker was accused of biting Umentum.
Eventually all charges were dismissed, but one man has a record of those charges on the state court information network, and the other man does not.
The battery charge against Walker, a prison inmate, is on record.
The felony abuse of a prisoner charge against Umentum, a prison guard at, is not.
The file containing details of the dismissed charges against Umentum was expunged by court order of Circuit Court Judge Daniel Klossner last April. Last week, another Dodge County Circuit Court judge, John Storck, decided that the original order expunging the file was "in error."
"It appears that the order should have been one to 'seal' the file, rather than 'expunge' it," he wrote in a Sept. 2 letter.
(To "expunge" would be to destroy the file, an act allowed only for juvenile offender records.)
Also removed from public view is the case synopsis, which is routinely available on the Internet, at the Wisconsin Circuit Court Access (WCCA) Web page, also called the Consolidation Court Automation Programs (CCAP). The documents recording the order to seal and the legal briefs discussing it were also sealed, but eventually released to the Wisconsin State Journal after an open records request was made, with the name of the defendant blacked out.
Walker, 27, was released from state prison in February after a peripatetic stay of several years, beginning with drug charges in 1998.
He was also convicted of a battery charge while in prison.
Now a full-time student in Milwaukee, Walker claimed in an interview the charges were dismissed and the file was sealed because of favoritism.
Umentum's lawyer, Marcus Berghahn, said the secrecy is necessary because prison guards are vulnerable to specious accusations under current law, accusations that can harm reputations and employment opportunities.
The guard's identity is readily available in other public records, including one filed with the state Claims Board, which has received Berghahn's request to have the state pay legal fees of $4,618.
Umentum was also widely identified when the charge was filed both by the news media and by his union, which solicited money to help pay his defense costs.
Berghahn argued that there is a strong public interest in sealing the court file to inhibit inmates from filing "complaints as a means to manipulate the correctional system into transferring them to another institution or as a means of retaliating against correctional officers."
In an interview, Berghahn said he had no evidence that Walker was being manipulative in this case, but "the sense I get from the guards is that it is out there, the guards are wise to this."
'Probably can't'
The state's court system says those reasons are not enough for the average person whose arrest record shows up online.
The system's Internet pages tell users in a Frequently Asked Questions section that removing records from the system is "probably" not possible, unless there is an error.
"Even if the information may be harmful to an individual's reputation or privacy, that is not enough to allow a judge to seal a court record," the court system explains.
How can a convict get a conviction removed from the online record?
The Web site answers: "You probably can't."
Used Doe law
To get charges filed, Walker used the state's John Doe law, which allows any citizen to force a court hearing by sending a letter alleging that a crime has been committed.
The law, unique to Wisconsin, has been under increasing criticism from correctional officers because, they claim, inmates use it to harass them.
"Once the charges are dismissed, the individual employee is still faced with paying off the legal bills and having criminal charges permanently listed in CCAP under their name(s)," according to a corrections union letter sent to members seeking donations to Umentum's defense fund.
As the CCAP records are entered by the individual counties, there is no tally made of the number of John Doe cases, said Tom Sheehan, a state courts spokesman, adding that the chain of events that led to the sealing of Umentum's file seal "is not a common scenario."
The special prosecutor for the John Doe case, Watertown lawyer James Fischer, did not return repeated calls requesting an interview.
Although he eventually asked that charges against the guard be dismissed, he wrote in a letter to the judge:
"I still believe that (Walker) was treated poorly by Mr. Umentum and other employees. ..."
Walker said he plans to file a civil action. Frank Van den Bosch, of Wisconsin Prison Watch, said he sees a double standard.
"I think it is a travesty that with everyone else who is charged with a crime, the record is open to review," he said.