Scott Walker Should Explain His Role in Open Records Scandal

Scott Walker refuses to acknowledge role after Walker and Republicans back down on killing Open Records Law

Updated - Scott Walker's office operating as if proposed open records gutting is law (Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).
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Scott Walker should release all papers, memos, emails and other communications and chronicle all of his and his administration's communications with Republican members of the Joint Finance Committee regarding the Republican effort to gut Wisconsin's Open Records law.

Following an unconvincing prepared statement, Scott Walker is offering silence to the Wisconsin people on his and the Republican effort to gut the Open Records law just before the July 4 holiday weekend (Hall, WisconsinWatch).

Walker's and Republican legislators' proposed evisceration of the Open Records law, [through a motion by the Wisconsin legislature's Joint Finance Committee (JFC)], provoked broad and blistering criticism of Walker and the Republican Party, including a front page editorial by Wisconsin's right-leaning and largest daily on July 4th (Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel) (Caffeinated Politics).

The right-leaning Wisconsin State Journal writes of this appalling Republican attempt to codify corruption and secrecy: "Any politician who continues to support similar attacks on Wisconsin’s open records law in the future will never receive the endorsement of the State Journal."

Moreover, this newspaper will use every investigative mechanism and journalistic capability possible, including seeking opinions of the court, to shine an even brighter light on legislative action. Our readers should expect no less of a free press."

Walker backed down, declining to shed light on any authorship and raising more questions than he and the Republicans answered, as legislative Republicans and Walker issued a joint statement (Spicuzza, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel).

Wisconsin's Open Records law helps citizens track legislation and special interests, shining a light on campaign donors who push for public law for their own benefit, against public interest.

So who was the culprit? JFC member, State Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-White People). A PRWatch piece certainly has her as a suspect. Scott Walker signed off the secrecy provisions, as noted by State Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton), as did all 12 Republican members of the JFC. (Punzel, Wisconsin State Journal)

Leah Vukmir

The Open Records law has been a thorn in the side of Scott Walker and Republicans who have taken a sledge hammer to openness in government, impartial watchdogs, academic freedom and non-partisan state services.

"Public access to governmental records is a key component of an open government. Most of our contact with government decision-making comes in the form of governmental records. The public has a right and responsibility to monitor these decisions and hold government accountable for their decisions," notes Midwest Environmental Advocates (p.2).

Public access is even more important when legislative Republicans hold no committee hearings and slip in radical changes to state government with no debate or public notice.

Walker said in a statement that the Joint Finance Committee's effort to enshrine secrecy "was never intended to inhibit transparent government in any way."

Scott Walker isn't fooling anyone, but a town hall-style, question-and-answer session (which would be Walker's first in Wisconsin) is surely called for to explain why this proposed destruction of government transparency was even contemplated, when and by whom.

State Journal's Dee Halls Blows John Doe-GAB Piece

Wisconsin John Doe Statute

Update: Further knockdown of Wisconsin discredited rightwinger, subject of State Journal stenography. From Marley, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
"The attorney for the state's ethics and elections board on Saturday said he will soon file court papers disputing claims that the agency had violated Wisconsin laws in pursing a campaign finance investigation of Gov. Scott Walker's campaign and conservative groups."

The Government Accountability Board will present evidence that 'will refute and disprove specific allegations as well as the general hyperbole of the plaintiff's complaint,' said a statement from the board's attorney, Paul Schwarzenbart."
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What is the Wisconsin State Journal (Madison, Wisconsin) newsroom doing to its reporter Dee Hall?

Hall is typically a solid and occasionally brilliant journalist but errs and misreports badly in today's Page One piece, "GAB didn't OK secret inquiry, records say."

Hall's reporting is uninformed, contrived and is constructed in the manner of a GOP operative's.

In fairness to Hall, uninformed reporting in Wisconsin on the John Doe probes of criminality associated with Scott Walker and his former staff is on a par of the low-grade journalism put out by Gannett Co. and Wisconsin's rightwing propaganda mill, the Wisconsin Reporter and other GOP organs.

The piece reports on the release of Government Accountability Board (GAB) documents, ordered by a Waukesha County judge at the request of rightwinger Eric O'Keefe of the extremist group, Wisconsin Club for Growth.

Writes Hall:

The state Government Accountability Board’s top officials proceeded with a secret probe into coordination between Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and conservative political groups for months without authorization from the six retired judges who run the board, court records unsealed Friday allege.

The documents filed by a target of the investigation also allege that the board voted to end its involvement in the probe in July but that staff continued to work on it.

The records add ammunition to Republicans in the state Legislature seeking to overhaul or abolish Wisconsin’s elections and ethics watchdog agency.

Some corrections:

Target

There are no targets (ala federal grand juries and many other state grand jury systems) in Wisconsin John Doe proceedings until a probe determines individual(s) are to be criminally charged and served with a probable cause warrant.

Wisconsin John Doe probes investigate if and by whom crimes may have been committed when conflicts of interest, practical difficulties (such as stonewalling) and protection of privacy is judged imperative by a district attorney(s) and a supervising judge, per Wisconsin statute, who determine that reasonable suspicion of criminality merit further investigation in the above circumstances.

For Hall to refer to Mr. O'Keefe as a "target of the investigation" is an error in reporting, and one which furthers the GOP PR line that the John Doe probe is a "witch hunt" though the fact is the John Doe probe that has determined Scott Walker is at the center of a "criminal scheme" is being run by Wisconsin constitutional law enforcement officials who are publicly proclaimed to be Republican and Democratic, and who are sworn officers of the sovereign state of Wisconsin.

Knockdown

In the ninth graf, readers are treated to the knockdown by "David Deininger, the retired appeals court judge who chaired the board during the launching of the John Doe investigation, defended Kennedy and the GAB staff Friday."

"Deininger was skeptical about the assertions made in the complaint. He said he didn’t recall exactly when the board was made aware of the investigation, 'but something of this magnitude would have been brought to our attention at the earliest opening.'"

'They would know this would have been something the board needed to be up to speed on from the get-go,' Deininger said.

He also vouched for Kennedy and Becker, saying impartial administration of election laws was their 'modus operandi.'"

Deininger's quote demolishes Hall's piece and should have killed it.

Omission

Hall quotes Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and another Republican without mentioning that Vos and the Republicans have already insisted publicly on direct gubernatorial appointments to the GAB, a partisan power grab of which Hall is certainly aware.

Hall opines "The records add ammunition to Republicans in the state Legislature seeking to overhaul or abolish Wisconsin’s elections and ethics watchdog agency," as though the proposed dismantling of the non-partisan agency has not been part of Republican machinations in the manner of Walker's appointments to the Wisconsin Judicial Commission in 2012, picked by a corporate lobbyist (Millhiser, ThinkProgress).

Tell me Hall could not get a jurist or elected officeholder to describe Vos' nonsense as a power grab on the record. Hall omits what is common knowledge of the GOP's aversion to the GAB or any independent agency that would hold GOP officials to account for criminality and corruption.

There's more, but Hall blew this piece, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin can celebrate the news columns of the Wisconsin State Journal once again.

Help for Exonerated Individuals in Wisconsin Needed

A District Attorney destroys exculpatory evidence; a presiding judge
has an affair with the alleged victim, and an innocent Don Miller
draws a 42-sentence in a clear abuse of office. The Wisconsin
Innocence Project is on the case as the Miller family endures.

"There is no more cruel tyranny than that which is exercised under cover of the law, and with the colors of justice." [UNITED STATES v. JANNOTTI (No. 81-1020), UNITED STATES v. SCHWARTZ  (No. 81-1021)]

A long over-due discussion is needed on innocence and what we as a society can do about the criminal justice system herding innocent people into prisons in a manner right out of the dark ages.

This phenomenon is not caused solely by corrupt prosecutors, though they play a prominent role.

Very few institutions exist to address this atrocity of an innocent person, unjustly arrested, falsely accused and unjustly convicted.

Ask Penny Brummer; hey, she's a lesbian so in a more bigoted time she was an instant suspect, and ultimately convicted because of her sexuality in Madison, Wisconsin.

Sheila and Doug Berry document Ms. Brummer's case in their Who Killed Sarah?

In the book, readers are treated to "a twilight zone where evidence is ignored or manipulated, innocence is disbelieved and justice is denied to both Penny Brummer and Sarah Gonstead (who was murdered with a gun)."

Writes David Protess in The Huffington Post, "In light of the progress that's been made by the LGBT movement, it's hard to imagine that not too long ago an innocent woman could be convicted of murder because she was a lesbian. And, it's harder still to believe that it could happen in a progressive city like Madison, Wis."

This twilight zone is the reality when innocents are systemically fed into the Police-Prison meat grinder; liberty and dignity prevented, human spirit assaulted and any type of human kindness systemically prevented, and life destroyed.

There are journalists, Dee Hall of the Wisconsin State Journal and Bill Lueders of the Wisconsin Center for Investigative Journalism are examples; institutions such the Milwaukee-based Innocence Consultants and the University of Wisconsin Law School's Innocence Project, all of whom do tremendous work.

Facing the power of the prosecutor's office, the mindlessness of politicians, the unthinking actions of law enforcement and the apathy of the public, an innocent man or woman convicted of a crime is up against what author Glenn C. Loury terms an "American ... leviathan unmatched in human history."

A leviathan today is defined as a totalitarian state with a vast bureaucracy. 

And a leviathan is an uneven match in our nation of by-standers, as politicians posture as tough-on-crime, and the prison-for-profit industry soars and one company is actually publicly traded on the New York Stock Exchange, as it too lobbies for harsher sentencing laws.

Keith Findley, faculty director of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, discusses in this linked video an effort to help exonerated innocents in Wisconsin.

It would of course be better that innocents never be convicted. 

The putative nature of American culture and the careerism of American jurists and law enforcement in the system make the incarceration of innocents almost a fait accompli.

The English jurist William Blackstone in his 18th century Commentaries on the Laws of England famously declares, "It is better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."

One can only reference Blackstone today with dark irony

Too many American jurists delude themselves into thinking Blackstone's tenet guides the criminal justice system. 

Denying liberty is the go-to move today, it's convenient for police, prosecutors and judges.

Most of us—untouched by the cruel tyranny of the criminal justice system—view a common effort with the unjustly incarcerated (done in our names) as relevant to our lives as the passing appearance of the moon.

One person who can be helped now is Penny Brummer. She gets a DNA test, she'll get cleared.

Writes Protess:

Penny Brummer - Arrested and convicted of murder
because of absurd, atavistic bigotry towards lesbians.
No evidence, no eyewitness, just ignorance and hate

The best hope at this point, Sheila (Berry) says, is DNA from the bullet that pierced Sarah's brain. Funds are needed to conduct Y-STR testing, which produced results in another infamous Wisconsin murder case involving Laurencia "Bambi" Bembenek. The testing costs $10-15,000, and the Berrys are offering copies of Who Killed Sarah? to anyone who makes a donation.

Will the justice system ever admit its mistake? Penny herself thinks so. "Something's got to happen," she told investigative reporter Bill Lueders, who first exposed the injustice. "God's not going to let me sit here for something I didn't do. I feel he's guiding somebody out there to help me."

But without the DNA testing or other new evidence, Penny's chances are slim. Now 43, she will not be eligible for parole until she turns 70. Unless something does happen, Penny will die in a Wisconsin prison, damned for a relationship once forbidden in an era of intolerance.

An online contribution, or a check can be sent to:

Penny Brummer Defense Fund
The People's Community Bank
P. O. Box 369
Spring Green, WI  53588

Justice Pat Roggensack Lists Sheriff Who Negligently Incarcerated Freed, Innocent Man

Joseph "Joey" Awe - Another
innocent man goes free. Imprisoned by
negligent law enforcement and
corrupt District Attorney.

Innocents Incarcerated and Freed Show Inappropriate Use of Police Images in Supreme Court Campaigns

Updated - Take a look at Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack's endorsements on her website and a reader will find one Sheriff Kim Gaffney of Marquette County.

But Kim Gaffney, Marquette County Sheriff (1975-present), is responsible, along with the past Marquette County DA [then-Marquette County District Attorney Richard Dufour (2006)], for putting an innocent man behind bars (for arson)—a common occurrence in the American prison-industrial complex.

Joseph "Joey" Awe was convicted in September 2006 because Gaffney and the insurance company (Mt. Morris Mutual Insurance Company) could not find an explanation for a fire that began in the electrical service panel of a 130-year-old building.

The Sheriff and DA blamed Mr. Awe; and the insurance company saved money from having to pay a policy, and Sheriff Gaffney got to fly the flag of law-and-order, after a Sheriff's investigator conducted only one interview with Awe.

They—Sheriff Gaffney, the DA and Mt. Morris Mutual Insurance Company—relied on the discredited practice on "negative corpus," concluding the fire must be intentional because no cause was found.

No evidence implicated Awe.

Wonder if Gaffney will issue an apology.

The innocent Awe spent three years behind bars before a judge ordered his release from incarceration.

The Wisconsin State Journal's Dee Hall deserves special recognition for digging into the case and her superlative investigative reporting throughout this case. Said Awe, "I don't think I would be where I am now (free) if it weren't for (the State Journal). I know I wouldn't."

As Justice Pat Roggensack proudly lists Sheriff Gaffney's name on her endorsements page, one wonders if Rogeensack will renounce Sheriff Gaffney and remove her name from her campaign.

The problem with listing law enforcement officials generally in a run for judge is the presumption that the police and the DA's office are always right and righteous. Nothing could be further from the truth; talk to the folks at your local Innocence Project.

In any event, we have the images of righteousness, goodness and rectitude conveyed through law enforcement and appropriated by political campaigns for the Wisconsin Supreme Court, though any jurist knows perfectly well that due process, impartiality and the rule-of-law demand that no class of litigants—not defendants, not campaign contributors, not law enforcement, not the DA's offices—deserve a superior place in a judge's consideration of a legal case, emphatically in the state's highest court of the land.

Justice Pat Roggensack clearly holds a different opinion.
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We have written before, 'Don’t worry about the result; just tell me what the law is.'

Such a directive ought to be the mission, objective and goal of every candidate to the justice of the state’s top appellate court, the Wisconsin Supreme Court.

If one were to ask candidates for the Wisconsin Supreme Court their commitment to the above principle, one can expect a declaration of absolute fidelity.

But you would not deduce the presence of this judicial ethos from the campaign of Pat Roggensack.

Like the others' before her, her campaign does not offer explanation of the judicial process, the nature of appellate procedures, the role of briefs and arguments in the creation of judicial policy, and the imperative to be impartial; but rather well-crafted political demagoguery.

Now, one can read about the endorsements from police associations, law enforcement officials, and District Attorneys.

What does parading these endorsements mean?

That Pat Roggensack has a disposition in favor of a particular class of litigants?

Judges are supposed to be impartial.

Roggensack should stow the likes of the law-and-order, we’re-tough rhetoric, and instead edify the electorate on the judicial processes, the function of the top appellate court in impartially ascertaining what the law is, and the candidates' ability and dedication to this enterprise.

Electing judges whose job it is to avoid advocacy once in office ought to result in the candidates' insulating themselves from specific communities of interest during the campaign, especailly the likes of Sheriff Kim Gaffney.

Facts and Law v. Corruption

The foundation upon which we elect judges to Wisconsin's top appellate court is impartiality and committed application of the law and facts, right?

Wrong again.

With the notable exception of Shirley Abrahamson, this year's supreme court campaign between Judge Randy Koschnick and incumbent Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson again demonstrates the utter lack of fidelity to the above principles, with virtually all of journalism blindly following along the circus (disappointingly journalist Dee Hall joinied in the no-thinking chorus).

Last night's debate and coverage are emblematic of the know-nothing judicial campaigns of Wisconsin.

Consider Hall's reporting.

Hall makes no reference to Wisconsin's Code of Judicial Conduct that mandates "'(impartiality' (meaning) the absence of bias or prejudice in favor of, or against, particular parties, or classes of parties, as well as maintaining an open mind in considering issues that may come before the judge."

Hall, instead, gives readers a he-said, she-said reporting of the debate:

In what is becoming a replay of previous Wisconsin Supreme Court races, Judge Randy Koschnick, a self-declared 'judicial conservative' and 'choice of law enforcement,' sought to paint incumbent Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson as a liberal who favors defendants over victims and the police.

Abrahamson retorted that 'a judge is not supposed to be pro- or anti-anything.' Calling such labels 'meaningless' and 'name-calling,' Abrahamson insisted that she decides cases on facts and law — not her personal feelings.

[Note Stacy Forster's reporting in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is no better than Hall's, quoting Abrahamson's reference to a "fair, impartial, independent judiciary" without mention of the fact that an impartial, independent judiciary is the law.]

Only one candidate's campaign, Abrahamson, is in compliance with Wisconsin's Code of Judicial Conduct mandating impartiality and application of facts and law.

This campaign is a replay certainly (like the Butler-Gableman race last year), but the culprits are know-nothing journalism such as Hall's and Koschick's campaign, in stark contrast to Abrahamson's.

Koschnick outright promises to be biased in favor of a class of litigants (what he terms law enforcement) while Abrahamson promises fidelity to facts and law.

This routine per se breaking of the foundation of judicial policymaking in judicial campaigns escapes Hall's reporting (and all that I've read), though Koschick has said, in effect: 'Elect me, I'm corrupt.'

Isn't this worth a graf or two?

Wisconsin Flood Victims Can't Get Aid

From bad to worse: Residents may not get flood coverage, it's just people, let's send the money to Iraq instead.

Ziegler’s Corruption Ought to Disqualify Her

Update III: SCR 60.03 A judge shall avoid impropriety and the appearance of impropriety in all of the judge’s activities.

A. SCR 60.03(1) states: "A judge shall respect and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary."

That's cited from a decision (March 22, 2004) of the Judicial Conduct Advisory Committee (OPINION 03-1) deciding that "a judge (is) required, after a contested election, to recuse himself or herself from contested matters involving a former campaign manager," for "a reasonable period of time."

Surely, Ziegler's conflicts, her pattern of conflicts, are much more serious and cause much more damage in not avoiding the "impropriety and the appearance of impropriety," promoting the public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.

Update II: Hearing ended.

Update: Cory Liebmann live-blogging the Judicial Conduct Panel hearing.

Dee J. Hall, reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal, must have looked long and far to find a source willing to knock down criticism of Justice Annette Ziegler’s presiding over numerous cases in which Ziegler had a clear financial interest, violative of Wisconsin conflict of interest rules.

Hall has been skillfully covering the case for the State Journal, and in Sunday’s piece she found an authoritative source who well represents the character of Ziegler’s dismissive attitude toward the public interest: Herbert Kritzer, a former UW Law School professor now teaching at William Mitchell School of Law in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Kritzer’s quote is incredible: “I would describe the misconduct as significant in the sense that it raises some questions about Justice Ziegler’s judgment. … But I wouldn’t call it serious, in the sense that I think it extremely unlikely that it had any actual impact on any decisions then-Judge Ziegler made.”

The Judicial Conduct Panel now investigating Ziegler will hold a hearing today (Monday, November 19) and the Wisconsin Supreme Court will ultimately decide the fate of Ziegler, disciplining one of its own members for the first time in state history.

As the State Journal’s Hall points out, “The disciplinary options available to the court include reprimand, censure, suspension, and expulsion.”

But what has Wisconsin jurists appalled is Ziegler and Kritzer’s blasé mindset toward the conflict-of-interest rules (State Code of Judicial Conduct and its enforcers) that guide Wisconsin judges.

The rules exist to assure the public and all parties involved in litigation that Wisconsin judges hearing cases will be impartial, neutral, and fair in all facets of a given legal case, meaning that a judge is to be regarded as an utterly objective entity who will base decisions upon the law and nothing else.

“You won’t hear many attorneys saying this out loud (on the record), but this professor (Kritzer) is nuts. It doesn’t matter how she (Ziegler) ruled. She had a conflict of interest and failed to disclose it. That’s unforgivable,” one jurist commented. “For a law professor to say that (presiding over cases in which one has a conflict of interests) is not serious is ridiculous. It’s always serious, and it always matters that even if circumstances exist that would only lead to a perception of a conflict of interest, perception is vitally important so people know their judges are not corrupt.”

Public interest groups agree.

One such group, One Wisconsin Now maintains a website detailing the “(Judicial Conduct) panel’s requests with links to the documents and information sought … .”

Reads the website: “Newly elected Justice Annette Ziegler has the dubious distinction of being the first sitting Justice on Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court to find herself in the middle of an ethics investigation. She is also likely to be the first Justice to force her own colleagues on the high court to discipline her for her ethical lapses. She is accused of violating SCR Chapter 60, Code of Conduct pursuant to Section 757.81(4)(a) of the (Wisconsin) Statutes.”

Wisconsin citizens elected Ziegler after these conflicts of interests and Ziegler's lies about them on the campaign trail were widely disclosed.

But it’s up to jurists, the Wisconsin Supreme Court, to see that Ziegler, surely a demonstrably corrupt judge to any objective observer, is not allowed to continue serving on the state’s highest court.

Many Wisconsin attorneys expect the Court—declining in the academic quality of its opinions and ascending in it partisanship—to issue a slap on the wrist.
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