Wisconsin

Ellipsis

(9,124 posts) Mon May 12, 2014, 05:34 PM May 2014

Meet The Republican Judge Fighting To Bail Scott Walker Out Of A Criminal Investigation

Wrongful Conviction: Probably the most analogous case to the criminal probe he recently halted was the trial of former Wisconsin state purchasing supervisor Georgia L. Thompson, who was convicted of allegedly steering a state contract to a firm connected to the state’s Democratic governor. When a Democrat was at the center of a scandal, however, Randa handled the case very differently. Although Randa sentenced Thompson to eighteen months in federal prison, she served less than four months because the Seventh Circuit ordered her released. One Seventh Circuit judge said at oral argument that the evidence against Thompson was “beyond thin.”

Protecting Sexually Abusive Priests: In 2007, then-Archbishop of Milwaukee Timothy Dolan penned a letter to the Vatican explaining that, by transferring approximately $57 million in church funds to a separate trust set up to maintain church cemeteries, he’d achieved “an improved protection of these funds from any legal claim and liability.” Six years later, Randa held that, by engaging in this accounting trick, the Milwaukee Archdiocese did indeed shield these funds from lawsuits — brought by victims of clergy sex abuse. Indeed, Randa held that the Catholic Church had a constitutional right to insulate this money from lawsuits brought by the victims of priestly sex abuse.

Blocking Access To Women’s Health Clinics: In 1994, several individuals blockaded the entrance to a women’s health clinic in Milwaukee by wedging a car into the clinic’s front entryway to prevent people from entering or leaving. Three of them even welded themselves into the car while it was being used to block the clinic. The were charged with violating the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act. Randa responded to this incident by declaring this act unconstitutional. The Seventh Circuit reversed Randa, explaining that he “went beyond [his] own authority as defined by the Supreme Court.”

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/05/11/3436347/meet-the-republican-judge-fighting-to-bail-scott-walker-out-of-a-criminal-investigation/