Janet Protasiewicz attack on opponent Dan Kelly gives short shrift to defense attorneys
Watch Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz’s ad “Predator,” and you’d be forgiven for thinking she has a low opinion of criminal defense attorneys.
The 30-second spot released in late February opens by asserting the liberal Protasiewicz’s opponent, conservative Dan Kelly, “won’t keep our communities safe,” then goes on to allege that “as a lawyer, Kelly defended child sex predators who posed as ministers in order to prey on vulnerable young girls.”
You’ll decide control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in the Wisconsin spring general election April 4. Tuesday was a chance for Milwaukee voters to hear from both candidates, but only one accepted the invite.
Amid the requisite scary music and unflattering photos of Kelly and “predators” scroll images of court records and a list of four court cases from 1997 and 1998.
Three of those cases were against Kenneth D. Spaulding, who was convicted by a Milwaukee County jury in December 1998 of four counts of first-degree sexual assault of a child, according to online court records. The fourth was against his wife, Rhonda Spaulding, who was also found guilty of first-degree sexual assault of a child, but by a separate Milwaukee County jury in December 1999.
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According to a news report from the time, Kenneth Spaulding had acted as pastor of a church the couple ran out of their home, where they would sometimes have unrelated children sleep over and where the abuse occurred.
Kelly served as an attorney for both Spauldings from February 1998 to August of that year, according to online court records, but had withdrawn by the time their trials began.
“I was assigned those by the first law firm I worked at out of law school,” Kelly said at a Dane County Bar Association event Thursday. “I handled a couple of pretrial matters and then I moved on to the firm where I spent the vast majority of my career before being appointed to the court.”
By representing defendants accused of even some of the most heinous crimes imaginable, Kelly was fulfilling a vital function under the American constitutional and criminal justice systems.
Abortion, redistricting take center stage in Wisconsin Supreme Court debate
So what’s the rest of the story?
The Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees criminal defendants the right to an attorney. Yet Protasiewicz’s “Predator” ad suggests attorneys who provide this constitutionally required service are unfit for the state’s highest court.
In a meeting with the Wisconsin State Journal editorial board on March 14, Protasiewicz appeared to distance herself from the ad, saying, “You know as well as I do we’ve got people who put those ads together.”
Protasiewicz spokesperson Sam Roecker on Thursday sought to portray the ad as a kind of tit-for-tat response to the “months” Kelly has spent “misleading voters about Judge Janet Protasiewicz’s record of holding people accountable and following the law.”
One Kelly ad, for example, cherry-picks cases Protasiewicz has handled as a Milwaukee County judge to paint her as soft on crime.
But Kelly called the ad “a slander not just to me, but to the entire criminal defense (community).”
“Think about what this ad is telling attorneys who might be inclined to take those cases,” he said. “OK, you’re gonna lose money taking this case but in exchange for that, you get to have a member of the judiciary slandering you and trying to destroy your character, simply because you do a job that is commanded by the constitution of Wisconsin and of the United States.”
State Journal reporter Alexander Shur contributed to this report.
Some conservatives doubt that Kelly’s broad appeals to the Constitution is a winning campaign strategy.
Unlike possibly ever before, voters in April will not only be choosing a Wisconsin Supreme Court justice but effectively deciding the outcome of a court case.
Janet Protasiewicz said she would recuse herself from cases involving the Democratic Party. Dan Kelly would not make a similar pledge regarding cases involving the GOP.
GOP leaders are hoping not to see a replay of the November gubernatorial election.
At this point, Protasiewicz has a nearly 7-to-1 committed ad spending advantage over conservative Dan Kelly in the general election phase.
Janet Protasiewicz said she favors the court deliberating its administrative rules in public, but Daniel Kelly said such a policy promotes grandstanding instead of efficiency.
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