New York Times Editiorial: A Wisconsin Judge's Refusal to Recuse
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/a-wisconsin-judges-refusal-to-recuse.html?_r=1&emc=eta1
The Times does a nice job of summarizing Gableman's sleazy behavior.
Justice Michael Gableman of the Wisconsin Supreme Court announced last week that he will not retroactively recuse himself by taking back his vote in one of the court’s highly divisive recent cases. The decision is indefensible.
In a 4-to-3, right-left vote last June, the court overturned a trial court’s stay of the Republican-backed state law curbing bargaining rights of public employees. A brave county prosecutor made a motion for the justice to recuse himself last month after The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that, secretly and outrageously, the justice received free legal counsel for two years beginning in 2008 from the Wisconsin law firm of Michael Best & Friedrich, which represented the state in defending the law.
The justice has a blatant conflict of interest: He owes money to a firm that got his vote in this and other cases. He should have agreed not to sit on any case where the law firm is involved until he pays what he owes.
...
This is not Justice Gableman’s first ethical breach. He won his seat in 2008 in a foul campaign against the Supreme Court’s only African-American, Louis Butler. Justice Gableman accused Mr. Butler of having worked as a public defender “to put criminals on the street,” including by finding “a loophole” to release a girl’s rapist. In addition to playing to the fear and racism of some voters, the charge was false. The offender served his full sentence. In 2010, the Wisconsin court considered whether to sanction him under the state judicial code and split along the same ideological lines in a 3-to-3 vote without his. That meant he could not be disciplined for lying.
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