Kenosha County Sheriff Uses Office to Appear in Wisconsin Supreme Court Attack Ad

Oconto County Sheriff Todd Scarban don his official
uniform, claiming to speak for Wisconsin law enforcement, in
an attack ad against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford,
candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court. The Zoerner ad is part of
a heavy ad buy by Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

Kenosha County Sheriff David W. Zoerner and Oconto County Sheriff Todd Scarban don official uniforms in new attack ad. Zoerner claims to speak for Wisconsin law enforcement, in the ad against Dane County Judge Susan Crawford, candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court.

Crawford is running against former Republican Attorney General Brad Schimel in a closely watched April 1 election.

In the Zoerner ad, the office of Judge Crawford's office phone number is listed, as a narrator urges phone calls to the office.

 

The Kenosha County Sheriff's office has a history of overt hostility toward black people, advocating openly black people should be 'warehoused away,' as noted prominently in the Washington Post.

CNN has also reported on the racist Kenosha County sheriff office.

Making a Murderer Part 2 Is a Brilliant Light Cast upon Depraved People — Wisconsin Cops and Prosecutors

Wisconsinites should watch Making a Murderer, Part 2,
and bear witness to the crucifixion of human beings by
Wisconsin at its most-depraved.
If it were in my power, I would make viewing both series
of Making a Murderer obligatory for Wisconsin
public school students and staff.

Revenge and malicious prosecutions — State terror in the Badger state

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"I hate injustice. I guess that's about the only thing I really do hate."
Ben Shahn, anti-fascist artist (1898–1969)

Madison, Wisconsin — We finished Making a Murderer, Part 2 (Laura Ricciardi and Moira Demos) with critical minds and open hearts.

Lifelong Wisconsinites, both my life partner and I felt we were bearing witness. Such is the power of this pioneering documentary.

Making a Murderer, Part 2 shows attorney Kathleen Zellner's dismantling another wrongful conviction of Steven Avery, and a second, equally dedicated defense team led by attorney Laura Nirider, working for the other wrongfully convicted victim, Brendan Dassey, (induced into a wild, false confession of sorts), in this account of the Wisconsin criminal justice system.

Step-by-step, piece-of-evidence by piece-of-evidence, Zellner offers not just a compelling case of Avery's innocence, but an equally compelling case of criminal guilt by Wisconsin cops and prosecutors.

Wisconsin is not equipped, not wired, to expose, challenge and change its hellacious criminal justice system. We need help.

This documentary series brings viewers a spectacle of brutality and state violence, what we did to Steven Avery and Brenden Dassey and their families, victims of a framing scheme perpetrated by the Manitowoc and Calumet County (Wisconsin) Sheriff's offices and multi-jurisdictional prosecutions in kangaroo federal and state courts.

Bearing witness in viewing a series is assuming a duty to speak out and state, this is what happened and this is not done in our name.

It means asking the Wisconsin people to consider that having prosecuted and convicted innocent people for horrific crimes, it follows that the guilty are free and likely not leading lives in the tradition of Bertrand Russell and 20th century radical pacifists.

Avery was framed for murder because he was about to expose the ugly realities of Wisconsin law enforcement in his $36 million civil lawsuit for his first wrongful conviction.

I don't know how these County cops live with themselves. Then again I don't think I really understand killers and those who would lie with the objective to destroy lives.

Making a Murderer Part 2 is a brilliant chronicle, showing viewers the moral equivalent of murder committed twice against Avery, and once against Dassey in east-central Wisconsin.

The murderers are Ken Kratz (disgraced former district attorney and sex offender); Mark Wiegert, (sergeant at the Calumet County Sheriff's Office); Tom Fassbender (Wisconsin Division of Criminal Investigation investigator); Gene Kusche, the Manitowoc County chief deputy sheriff under Sheriff Tom Kocourek; Manitowoc County Sheriff's Lt. James Lenk; and Sgt. Andrew Colborn, all of whom acted in their official capacities to imprison the innocent, and inflict the psychological and physical deterioration of Mrs. and Mr. Avery, and Barb, Brenden Dassey's mother. Dozens more.

What horrific human garbage. 

This visual presentation of torture inflicted on the Avery and Dassey families is critical to understanding what a few dozen yahoos in Wisconsin are capable of — a state crucifixion of ordinary people in Wisconsin, a pleasant place to live, a great place to grow up, but a region full of by-standers, ignoramuses, and cowards.
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I know. I grew up in east-central Wisconsin in Fond du Lac, about 45 miles southwest of Manitowoc.

I loved what for me was a privileged first 19 years amid nigger jokes, Jew jokes, and a population steeped in committed ignorance. But none of it touched me, though on more than one occasion I felt like I was bearing witness to a region steeped in stupidity and racism, and every public official bar none who failed to speak out.

The same dehumanization and madness behind racism are at play in Manitowoc and Calumet counties.
  ---
There is plenty of footage in Making a Murderer Part 2 on Attorney General Brad Schimel (R), a typical Wisconsin Republican sadist who has kept the torture going.

Schimel was just defeated in his bid for reelection last November by a young Democratic candidate, Josh Kaul, another native of east-central Wisconsin and my hometown—Fond du Lac.

In the campaign for attorney general, crucifying the innocent was never an issue. It remains unclear how Kaul and the new governor, Tony Evers, also from east-central Wisconsin, will perform in their offices to put a stop to these obvious-to-any-rational-observer wrongful convictions.

With respect to Tony Evers, I don't think the man is equipped in intellect, character or inclination to correct an injustice through commutation or pardoning. Evers is just another by-stander, a bureaucratic non-entity.

When it comes to criminal justice and human lives, Wisconsin's political and legal cultures range from numb to malicious. Evers is numb.
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That addresses a question implicit in Making a Murderer Part 2: How did the Avery and Dassey crucifixions happen?

How do depraved criminals like Ken Kratz and the Calumet and Manitowoc County Sheriff's office get away with framing innocent people?

We in Wisconsin let them.

The injustice inflicted upon Avery and Dassey evokes Sacco and Vanzetti.

The innocent Sacco and Vanzetti were targeted, tortured and killed.

The killers murdered them because they could and because they would.

There is overwhelming evidence of corruption in Wisconsin / Manitowoc County. You yourself admit law enforcement let a violent rapist go free in 1985 ... and that was without being motivated by Avery's lawsuit. History repeating itself? #MakingAMurderer #MakingAMurdererPart2

— Making A Murderer - NeedlessThings (@Presumed_Guilty) November 21, 2018

This is the role of the police in American society: To carry out injustice.

What our role as citizens becomes is precisely what we make of it.

Viewing Making a Murderer, Part Two, it's clear that we as citizens gave cops and assorted killers a free pass to seek revenge against Avery and Dassey.

Avery was about to publicly display Manitowoc County as stupid and malicious, and Dassey was available.

It's the way it is here for killer cops, for Penny Brummer, and so many innocents to list.

Woke up at 5am with my daughter this morning and rewatched the last 2 episodes of @MakingAMurderer Thankful for women like @ZellnerLaw who demand justice and fight corruption. #FreeStevenAvery

— Hilarie Burton (@HilarieBurton) November 23, 2018

Watching Making a Murderer, Part 2 is to experience an ongoing hope that at some point, surely some decent force, some authority with a regard for liberty and humanity, is going to put a stop to this madness in Manitowoc.

After-all, the state and governmental authority are mere instruments to assure the liberty and happiness of the individual.

There is the writ of habeas corpus petition, the great writ, the last-chance for the innocent — weakened in 1996 in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA). [Thank you, Bill and Hillary Clinton for that.]

There's two broad methods judges can employ in considering post-conviction, habeas petitions in federal litigation.

Judges can consider the wisdom of Richard Posner (U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, (1981-2017)), on judicial opinion writing in federal appellate court: "Be sure to read every case, statute, regulation article, treatise, etc., [case documents]," (p. 257, Reflections on Judging (Harvard University Press. 2013)).

Alternatively, an appellate judge such as David F. Hamilton can effectively stick his head in a hole, dismissing facts and understanding of police and judicial action against a prisoner of the state.

Hamilton and appellate judges Frank Easterbrook, Michael Kanne and Diane Sykes of the Seventh Circuit chose the head-in-hole approach to habeas jurisprudence.

"[O]ur job as a federal court reviewing a state conviction under § 2254(d) [application for a writ of habeas corpus] is not to consult scholarly literature in search of new best practices," intoned Hamilton in his astonishingly dismissive opinion that overturned a federal district court and a three-judge ruling granting habeas relief to Brendan Dassey, (p.111, Dassey v. Dittman).

Avery's attorney, Kathleen Zellner, was clearly appalled at this Dred Scott of Habeas litigation.

Reading Hamilton's opinion on intentional ignorance of scholarly literature, Zellner replies, icy and incensed: "Really? Why not? Why would you not be availing yourself of what experts have determined about false confessions?" (Episode 8; 24 minutes, 45 seconds).

So WI Department of "Justice" doesn't care about justice in Brendan's case. They want him to rot in prison because they can't admit they went after innocent 16 yr old boy to convict his uncle.#makingamurderer#cjreform https://t.co/hLxeFy3MfC

— Jerome Buting (@JButing) May 10, 2018

Steven Avery is demonstrably innocent. Avery's case will become a wrecking crew of injustice. We're that close.

When Avery wins his legal fight, Brendan Dassey will be released. He cannot be an accomplice to a crime that did not occur.

But have we come to public crucifixions in Wisconsin? Has Wisconsin really come to that?

"It 'came to that' the first time you sentenced a man to death you knew to be innocent."

The quote is from Spencer Tracy as a composite character of Robert H. Jackson and other jurists in Judgement at Nuremberg (1961), a film worthy of the topic.

Wisconsin does not have the death penalty, but the bodies are piling up.

Wisconsin AG Moves to Protect Scott Walker

The corrupt Wisconsin Republican DoJ is working to shield the criminal Scott Walker adminstration regarding a corrupt Wisconsin Republican Supreme Court decision.

Reads the state DoJ press release in part:

Today, Attorney General Brad D. Schimel filed an amicus curiae brief in Archer v. Chisholm, a civil rights lawsuit in federal court brought against Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm and other prosecutors by one of the John Doe targets. AG Schimel's brief opposes the defendants' motion asking the federal court to set aside the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision ordering documents illegally seized by the John Doe investigators to be filed under seal. 

There are no targets in John Doe probes in Wisconsin, a statute Wisconsin Republicans repealed as it was used as a law enforcement probe that uncovered numerous unlawful dealings of Scott Walker and his cronies.

Federal court filings working to litigate the issues in Archer's case would reveal more unlawful dealings of Scott Walker as governor, hence the Republican DoJ's position.

GOP's AG Joins Cover-up of Scott Walker, Corrupt Court

Wisconsin Is Turing into Corrupt Banana Republic

Update: See also Opoien, The Capital Times.

To no one's surprise Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel (R) has said 'yes, destroy or return all seized material related to the investigation of Scott Walker campaign's illegal collusion.'

In a polemical Dec. 8, 2105 press release Schimel maintains the pretension the Wisconsin Supreme Court, the Wisconsin Attorney General, the Wisconsin gerrymandered legislature and Scott Walker are all independently reaching the same conclusion that investigating Scott Walker is a "long, unfortunate chapter in Wisconsin's history."

The reformist and now repealed John Doe statute was used to expose misconduct in public office in Scott Walker's office while serving as Milwaukee County Executive.

A subsequent John Doe investigation found Walker was at the center of a criminal scheme, (Marley, Bice and Glauber, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Schimel like other Republicans does not want more public exposure of the criminal scheme, or federal litigation of the Court's John Doe decision protecting Walker to blow back on the partisan Court and Walker's allies and donors who happen to be the same special interests.

The Wisconsin DoJ press release is reproduced below:

AG Schimel: John Doe II Should End 

Tuesday, December 8, 2105

The Wisconsin Supreme Court has issued yet another decision in John Doe II, the protracted and secret investigation into whether a political group exercising free political speech rights improperly coordinated with Governor Walker during the recall election. For the second time this year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court directed that the John Doe proceeding be halted based upon the Court’s conclusion that prosecutors did not have a legal basis to investigate these political groups when they commenced John Doe II. The Court found that campaign finance statutes upon which the prosecutors relied violate free political speech rights guaranteed by both the United States Constitution and the Wisconsin Constitution. 

Thus, the Court said that the matter is closed, and the evidence seized through subpoenas and search warrants issued as part of the investigation must be returned. That has not yet occurred, and the owners of that property are understandably upset. 

The special prosecutor has indicated that he intends to appeal. The only level of appeal left is to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS), but it is very unlikely SCOTUS would take the case. In the unlikely scenario that SCOTUS were to accept the case, it would more than likely uphold the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision. 

I write because I have indirectly been asked as Wisconsin Attorney General to intervene on behalf of the John Doe targets. The Wisconsin DOJ played a role in the proceedings before the Wisconsin Supreme Court, although it was not a leading role. DOJ represented the judge who was assigned to John Doe II after the initial judge recused herself. The new judge quashed subpoenas issued in the John Doe proceeding, finding that the special prosecutor's theory of the case was not supported by Wisconsin law. The special prosecutor appealed that ruling, and DOJ represented the judge in the Wisconsin Supreme Court. 

Last week, the Wisconsin Supreme Court again ordered that the seized evidence be returned to its owners. Given that DOJ represented the judge who first found that the John Doe proceeding was invalid, DOJ certainly has no intention of standing in the way of those orders. The Supreme Court’s order should be carried out forthwith. DOJ has no authority to represent those individual property owners in their effort to enforce the Supreme Court’s order. 

This has been a long, unfortunate chapter in Wisconsin's history. The courts have unequivocally rejected the John Doe investigation, both in the manner in which it was carried out, as well as the legal arguments brought by the prosecutors. The Wisconsin Supreme Court has now ordered that the property seized be returned. For everyone involved, the special prosecutor should end the case, and the property seized from the individuals in this case should be returned immediately. 

No Wisconsin Attorney General Candidate Ever Cited The Innocence Project, Until Now

Mal Contends contacted the four major candidates for attorney general, asking three questions pertaining to ethics, the wrongfully convicted, pardons, and the Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation.

In this election for attorney general, a small fraction of the electorate will vote in the August 12 partisan primary.

It is likely the campaign for attorney general will not feature the issues of wrongful conviction, impartiality, and the role of the attorney general in advocating for the state vis a vis the cause of justice, though these are areas of concern for any elected law enforcement official.

One question singles out the case of combat Marine, Eric Pizer (2000 - 2004, Iraq, Kuwait) who pled guilty to a trumped-up charge by the district attorney's office of Grant County (a less-than-sophisticated office) for this Marine home just two days after his return from Iraq in 2004.

As the Wisconsin Constitution is vague on the authority of the attorney general (leaving much to the statutes), the discretion of the attorney general is amplified in our state.

This piece is to inform the campaign with the responses to the questions presented below.

Repeated attempts by phone, email, and campaign-contact applications were made to all four candidates; only one candidate has responded with a response to this three-question questionnaire. One candidate promised, but failed to follow through, and two other candidates declined comment and contact.

The four candidates contacted are Susan Happ, Ismael Ozanne, Jon Richards and Brad Schimel.

The only candidate responding is Ismael Ozanne.

Ozanne's responses along with my three questions are below.
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Question: Our outgoing attorney general served as co-chair of a Wisconsin presidential ticket's campaign committee in 2008, a common practice of attorneys general.

In his capacity as attorney general, he and his political party (as Intervenor Plaintiff) filed a lawsuit in a voting rights case, Van Hollen v. Government Accountability Board (2008). This seemed untoward to me.

Do you believe it is ethical to serve as political party campaign chair while sitting as our state's attorney general?

Ismael Ozanne:

It is not unethical to serve as a campaign chair while serving as attorney general.  The service as a campaign chair is not the ethical concern.  The ethical concern is serving as campaign chair and then taking official actions as attorney general that are intended to benefit the campaign in question, and not reflecting the law and the best interests of the people of Wisconsin.  If AG Van Hollen thought it was necessary in his official capacity to participate in legal action involving the campaign, he should have either stepped down from any role in the campaign or recused himself from the legal action.

Question: Wisconsin's governor in December 2013 publicly dismissed Marine Eric Pizer's bid for a pardon in an interview with WKOW TV (Madison), continuing his stance against granting pardons. The governor stated in part: "If you pick one [to be pardoned] there's thousands of other examples out there of people who may not have the media or other outlets behind them, who would be in an equal position who probably have a compelling case to be made that we don't yet know about."

Scott Walker is correct about 1,000s of Wisconsin citizens having a compelling case for pardons.

In light of Walker's position unprecedented in modern Wisconsin history, would your office consider advising district attorneys to open cases for stipulations of time served to secure the freedom of the wrongfully convicted when an array of facts demand this action in the interest of justice?

Realizing this action of seeking justice would be unusual for the office of attorney general, but within its discretion, how much does the imprisonment of an innocent weigh on you?

Ismael Ozanne:

I think that it is unfortunate that Gov. Walker has decided, likely for purely political reasons, not to exercise his authority to grant pardons to deserving people who have turned their lives around.  Pardons are not intended to be used as a vehicle to reverse wrongful convictions.  No prosecutor should want to have innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted stay in prison.  If evidence is brought to the attention of the authorities demonstrating that a mistake has been made, the interests of justice demand that the evidence is carefully reviewed and the individual should be released if exonerated.  As Dane County District Attorney, I have worked with lawyers from the Innocence Project, and will do so in the future.  While these decisions are largely at the discretion of the DAs around the state, I would work with them as attorney general, providing resources and advice in these situations.  The ultimate goal of the system is not simply to secure convictions, it is to do justice.

Question: The Wisconsin Office of Lawyer Regulation (OLR) is widely regarded as both overly secretive and toothless, and a case study in administrative law capture theory.

As attorney general, would you advocate to the Supreme Court for reforms at the OLR for the health of the legal profession, and the judicial branch of government.

Ismael Ozanne:

The Supreme Court is a co-equal branch of government and it has the authority to maintain the system that we use to regulate the conduct of lawyers in Wisconsin.  In the event that I determined as attorney general that there were aspects of that system that needed to be addressed, I would have no problem making my opinion known through the process.