The drama continues on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, following the investigation of a physical altercation in which liberal Justice Ann Walsh Bradley accused conservative Justice David Prosser of grabbing her neck in a “chokehold.” Now there is a whole new round of accusations of an alleged incident –Â pointing to a date when the court may not have even met at all.
The Wisconsin State Journal reports that during the investigation, conservative Justice Michael Gableman made a counter-allegation, saying that Bradley once hit him in the head during a court meeting way back in September 2008, over a perceived disrespect of Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson.
To which the liberal bloc has replied: No meeting took place at all on that date or even that week, due to a request by conservative Justice Patience Roggensack that the court take a two-week period off.
The paper also reports that former Justice Janine Geske, a Republican-appointed judge who served on the court during the 1990s and is now a law professor at Marquette University, disputes a key element of Gableman’s story: “I have known Justice Bradley for 20 years. I cannot imagine her hitting another justice in anger because he (Gableman) called Justice Abrahamson ‘Shirley’ — because everybody calls her Shirley.”
The Wisconsin State Journal reports:
Asked to respond to the allegation, Bradley said in an email to the Wisconsin State Journal that “Justice Gableman recounts an event that never happened on a date that, according to my records, it could not have occurred.”
And Abrahamson said that, according to her records, “no meeting, conference or oral argument of the court occurred on September 18, 2008, or on any day that week.” Her calendar showed she had appointments outside the Capitol that day, including in Milwaukee, she said.
She said she asked Bradley and Crooks to check their records, which also show no meetings that week. And, she said, Justice Patience Roggensack earlier requested that the court not schedule anything between Sept. 15 and Sept. 29 that year.
“Such a request is ordinarily granted, as appears to have been the case here,” Abrahamson told the State Journal. “To the best of my recollection (and Justice Crooks’s recollection is the same) no incident as described (and no similar incident) ever occurred in our presence.”
Messages left with Gableman, Prosser and Justice Annette Ziegler were not returned. Roggensack declined to comment.
