Republican Supreme Court candidate Michael Gableman has been running
attacks against Justice Louis Butler for the Supreme Court’s decision
in State v. Richard Brown, 2005 WI 29.
In
the Brown case, the majority of the Supreme Court decided that the
state had not proven its case that Brown posed a continued threat to
the community—which is what the legislature required of the state to
prove to justify keeping him in prison beyond the term of his sentence.
It has also been reported lately that Gableman held fundraisers for,
and donated thousands of dollars of his government salary to
then-governor Scott McCallum—who then appointed Gableman to his current
job of Burnett County judge.
What hasn’t been pointed out yet,
however, is that the McCallum administration, which Gableman was trying
to curry favor with, was the same McCallum administration that was to
blame for the decision in State v. Brown.
The decision in State v. Brown was that the state did not produce evidence that Brown was a continuing danger to society:
Applying
the sufficiency of evidence standard of review to the circuit court
order denying Brown's petition for supervised release, we conclude that
the evidence adduced at the hearing was not sufficient to meet the
State's statutory burden imposed by Wis.Stat.§980.08(4).
State
v. Brown, 2005 WI 29 48. So there wasn’t sufficient evidence that Brown
was a threat to the public. If Brown was such a threat, how could this
happen? Because, the McCallum administration asked the court to release
Brown.
On December 30, 2002, the department (of health and
family services) filed the updated report, supporting supervised
release. The report stated that Brown "ha[d] completed sufficient
treatment at (Sand Ridge) to reduce his risk for sexually violent
behavior to the point that he has become an appropriate subject for
supervised release."
State v. Brown, 2005 WI 29 55. After this
filing by the McCallum DHFS, the state then didn’t call a single
psychologist to oppose McCallum’s DHFS’s request for release. The
result was, not surprisingly, that the state failed to provide enough
admissible evidence-- so it failed to prove its case. You can’t blame
the referee for calling the game for the defendant when the state
doesn’t show up to play—or worse, where the administration throws the
game.
Ironically, to the extent any blame is to be assigned for
the decision to release Brown (if he had been released, which he
wasn’t) was with DHFS under McCallum. Why isn’t Gableman attacking
McCallum? Of course! Because Gableman gave thousands of dollars to
McCallum, held fundraisers for McCallum, and then McCallum gave
Gableman his job. Hmmm. Classic. Accuse the other guy of your
weaknesses and hope nobody notices.
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