Convoluted Brian

During the campaign for Wisconsin Supreme Court justice, the airways have been full of claims of Susan Crawford being soft on crime and easy on pedophiles. A deeper look into these claims show missing facts. These include recommended sentences by prosecutor’s vs. the maximum by law. Delays in bring a suspect to trial denies the accused the right to a speedy trial. Or, the requirement that a sentence must be reduced by the time served while in custody waiting for trial leading at times to substantial reductions in remaining time.

However, important issues that are ignored in the run for the Wisconsin Supreme Court are judicial independence, temperament, and competence. If we look at Schimel’s record as attorney general, judge, and his campaign strategy, it is unlikely Brad Schimel will exhibit any of these qualities.

During Schimel’s Attorney General days two things stood out: The lack of testing rape kits and his involvement with Republican cases outside the state.

His history of failed kits testing started with his term as Waukesha County, Wisconsin district attorney from January 2007 through January 2015. A Post-Crescent article dated 13 June, 2018, stated that Schimel “allowed at least 26 rape kits to remain untested” when he left his office in Waukesha County. This article went on to state the difficulty that the USA-TODAY Network had in obtaining records regarding these untested rape kits. A state office under Attorney General Schimel’s control blocked all requests for privacy reasons. USA-TODAY was finally able to get the information from Waukesha County police agencies. Note that the information requested contained mostly statistical information. No victim’s names were part of the release contrary to Schimel’s claim of protecting victims which was contrary to reasons given by Schimel’s agency for denial of information to the press.

Schimel’s term as Wisconsin Attorney General was even worse for his handling of rape kit testing. In 2014, Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen revealed that more than 6,000 rape kits had not been submitted to crime labs for testing. In January 2015, Schimel replaced Van Hollen as Attorney General. And, after two years in office, finally, his office had inventoried but not submitted rape kits under Schimel’s purview.

In September 2015, Wisconsin received four million dollars from Federal and New York sources resolve the untested kits problems. Yet, in January 2016, Wisconsin reported little progress in testing. In June, a detailed questionnaire was sent to Wisconsin law enforcement agencies. Eighty percent of agencies did not respond. A second request was sent, and another seventeen percent responded. In July, DOJ officials began contacting agencies that did not respond to the questionnaire. In September 2016, Wisconsin received another $1.1 million in grants to assist with sexual assault services.

Almost one third of Wisconsin’s law enforcement agencies had ignored the Wisconsin Department of Justce request for kits from the state that delayed testing. In October, Schimel announced Wisconsin had received approval for testing while waiting for the non-compliant agencies to submit the evidence. It does not appear that Schimel made an effort to reach out to recalcitrant agencies to expedite the inventory.

In February 2017, Schimel announced a “few hundred” rape kits had been tested. His office revised that statement to only nine kits had been tested.

In May 2017, the Wisconsin Department of Justice announced that 6300 rape kits had finally been inventoried and were ready for testing. Yet, Schimel claimed there was no testing backlog. Apparently getting the kits inventoried counted as tested. The Department of Justice planned on testing of 4,000 of these kits. An estimated additional 870 kits could be tested with victim permission. In late 2018 testing could begin at a rate of 200 kits per month. Schimel claimed that concluded cases, dropped cases, and a lack of victim’s permission precluded testing of some kits.

Schimels term as Wisconsin’s Attorney General was over on 7 January, 2019.
Governor Scott Walker gave him a consolation prize in November 2018 when Schimel conceded the election. Walker appointed Waukesha County circuit court judge starting on 7 January, 2020, the day when Schimel’s term as Attorney General concluded. There were 13 existing candidates for that judgeship. How Schimel manage to bypass the selection procedure or if he made a formal application is murky.

In August 2020, Schimel was removed from his courtroom by Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack. He was allowed to preside remotely. Schimel had defied an order to enforce the mask mandate while presiding in his courtroom, and stating he would not wear a mask. News reports from the time labeled Schimel as an “avid opponent” of mask mandates. He had attended a Republican Party fundraiser as emcee after which one of the attendees had been diagnosed with COVID-19. People were rightfully concerned about exposure resulting from behavior of mask denyer Schimel. In the United States, there were over a million deaths from COVID-19. Life expectancy in the United States dropped by 1.8 years. He was allowed back in his courtroom after he agreed to mask up.

Also, it is unethical for judges to attend political fundraisers with the appearance of support for a political party or candidate. Judges are expected to follow the written law and not engage in political partisanship. Schimel denied ethical concerns with his role as an emcee at the Republican Party fundraiser on 2 October, 2020. The ethical rules do not deny judges from membership in a political party only from overt displays of support of a party.

During Schimel’s term as attorney general, when the rape kit effort was haphazard, Schimel had other tasks for his staff to do. Namely joining as friend of the court for Republican fronted lawsuits or interceding in other states lawsuits against private companies. These included attempts to overthrow the Affordable Health Care Act and opposing gun control laws in Washington DC.

Schimel had Wisconsin siding with Exon-Mobil against two other states attorneys-general. Exon-Mobile filed a lawsuit to stop state investigations into concealment of information. Schimel had Wisconsin join a lawsuit to oppose California efforts to hold logging company for responsibility in a forest fire case.

So, while the rape kit testing program was bogged down, Schimel was using Wisconsin paid attorneys and time to engage in lawsuits that were politically motivated instead of reflecting the need of citizens of Wisconsin. Citizens of Wisconsin are various shades of liberal or conservative, religious, or not religious. The attorney general is responsible for enforcing civil and criminal laws enacted by the state legislature, defending the state when sued, and advising state officials. There is no mandate to join in lawsuits that have a political agenda. And, using time and money to join in lawsuits supporting a private company cannot be justified. It is difficult to image the interests of wisconsinites to back private companies attempting to evade responsibility for their actions or evasions of responsibilities.

It took Schimel a 17 months, not counting his time in Waukesha County, to get a handle on the kit testing. Plus he had falsely claimed to have tested many more kits than were actually tested: 200 vs. 9. And, finally claiming there was no backlog when kits had just started to be tested.

During that time, Schimel was used state time and money to join in lawsuits that were contrary to needs of state residents or inappropriately supporting businesses against the actions of other states.

Schimel’s latest campaign advertisements have given a strong hint of how his temperament would be if elected to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. He claims it was a “liberal judge” who issued a halt to deportations without a due process hearing. Note that Venzualian citizens were deported to an El Salvadore prison based on the mere presence of tattoos with method and reasons that were sometimes arbitrary. And, now Schimel says that if elected he will “support President Trump’s Agenda.” With Brad Schimel, rule of law is out the window.

We should not forget the 19+ million dollars Elon Musk has pumped into Schimel’s campaign via his PAC. Musk has a beef with a state law only allows dealers to sell automobiles in Wisconsin and wants direct sales. No doubt, Musk has plans to buy a judge in Wisconsin. And, that Judge is Brad Schimel.