Trashing the court

[dragonlady]

Here's an editorial that I thought just sums up what we here in Wisconsin are facing with regard to our Supreme Court:

Trashing the Court
Joel McNally, April 12, 2007

So when the Wisconsin Supreme Court decides whether to remove, suspend or discipline ethically challenged Judge Annette Ziegler for her brazen disregard of the state's judicial code of conduct, will newly elected Supreme Court Justice Annette Ziegler vote for or against herself?

It may sound absurd that a Supreme Court justice could participate in a case in which she is personally involved, but clearly Ziegler has no ethical qualms about that.

The author goes on to describe how Ziegler, a circuit judge, failed to recuse herself in hundreds of cases involving companies in which she owned stock, and in 46 cases brought by West Bend Savings Bank, which pays her husband as a director and gave the Zieglers a $3 million loan. (A nonpartisan group filed a complaint, which is pending.) This all did come out in the media and was used by her opponent. How then did she win the election by a large margin? Between her own personal fortune and $2.3 million in advertising by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce ("the state's largest business lobby"), the voters were snowed under with the message that she was tough on crime and put criminals away (although that is not really the job of a Supreme Court justice). Back to the editorial:

Emboldened by the wide margin of victory it achieved for a clearly compromised candidate, WMC announced the day after Ziegler's election that its next goal was to defeat Justice Louis Butler, the only African American on Wisconsin's high court.

And who is their chosen candidate? The judge who presided over a trial that had all the elements the media enjoyed hyping: young Democratic campaign workers, two the sons of African-American politicians, charged with letting the air out of tires on Republican vans on election day 2004. Most of them accepted the prosecution's offer to plead guilty to a misdemeanor with a recommendation of probation. But wait:

At the sentencing, however, Judge Brennan, who even then was considering running for the Supreme Court, refused to accept the agreement. Instead, he sentenced the four misdemeanants to up to six months in jail to "send a message." ... Sounds like the perfect candidate to join Judge Annette Ziegler in bringing a whole new concept of justice to the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

The whole article is worth reading:

http://shepherd-express.com/1editorialbody.lasso?-token.folder=2007-04-12&-token.story=176900.113121&-token.subpub=

[Demeter]

1. The States Are Little Laboratories of Fascism

Especially the smaller ones (with the plausible exception on Vermont).