Convoluted Brian

The current election advertisements for a justice for the Wisconsin Supreme Court are rife with claims that candidate Susan Crawford is “soft on crime.” Candidate Brad Schimel has made repeated false claims about his opponent Susan Crawford. Most of these same claims are regurgitated on commercials from super pacs from outside the state.

Schimel’s campaign lead off with a claim that Crawford allowed a rapist to go free. The ad claimed that Crawford “didn’t bother filing the appeal in time” to “keep a convicted rapist behind bars.” The ad featured an altered photo of Crawford. The Schimel campaign admitted to altering an existing photo of Crawford but claimed it was OK since the campaign did not use AI and manually altered the photo instead.

The facts behind the allegation were substantially different from Shimel’s campaign ad. In 2001, Crawford was leading the Criminal Appeals Unit of the Wisconsin Department of justice when an appeal deadline to the Wisconsin Supreme Court was missed.

A person accused of second-degree sexual assault had been convicted by jury in a Waukesha County Court. His attorneys filed an appeal. The appeals court found the defense attorney was ineffective and deprived the accused of a fair trial. The conviction was overturned, and the case was remanded to the circuit court for retrial.

The Criminal Appeals Unit is tasked with criminal case appeals. The unit would normally appeal this judgement to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. But, staff working on the Wisconsin Supreme Court appeal missed the filing date. So; the case was automatically sent back to the circuit court for retrial. After the error occurred, Crawford reviewed all pending cases to ensure they were progressing in a timely manner and implemented changes to insure filing dates would be met.

When the case was returned to the original trial court, the Waukesha County district attorney decided not to retry the case and accepted a no contest plea deal that allowed the accused to remain free with probation with two years time served. Crawford had nothing to with that decision. Schimel’s claim that Susan Crawford allowed a rapist to go free is false, and he should know that.

Thus, it was staff who missed the deadline to appeal to the Supreme Court not Susan Crawford. Crawford promptly acted to prevent future missed deadlines. Note that the Wisconsin Supreme Court may or may not accept an appeal. If the appeal is accepted, the state may uphold or overrule the appeal. So an appeal is not an utomatic victory for the State.The appeals court had overturned the conviction and remanded the case to the trial court. At this time, the accused was no longer a rapist. When the case was returned to the trial court, the prosecutor settled for a plea deal and allowed the convicted out on probation.

Brad Schimel’s characterization is full of omissions and his claim of Susan Bradford allowing a rapist to go free is false. The dishonesty of Brad schimel makes him a poor judicial candidate for any court.