The Wisconsin Judicial Commission, the state body responsible for investigating alleged misconduct by judges, has officially filed ethics charges against conservative state Supreme Court Justice David Prosser. The charges stem for an incident last year in which liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley has accused conservative Justice David Prosser of grabbing her neck in a chokehold during an argument, and also from an earlier occasion in which Prosser called liberal Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson a “total bitch.”
However, as TPM has previously reported, a problem for the Commission is that the final arbiter of the controversy would be the state Supreme Court itself.
Assuming both Prosser and Bradley recused themselves, that would leave the court’s now very polarized wings at 3-2 for the conservatives. But how would recusal work, when multiple other justices were witnesses to the incident in question? Only one other justice, the moderate-liberal N. Patrick Crooks, was not a witness — and he alone would not be able to form a quorum.
Last year, a special prosecutor decided not to file criminal charges.
