In July’s Legally Speaking show, Milwaukee County Circuit Judge John Siefert explained why he sued the Judicial Commission to overturn rules prohibiting partisan activities by Wisconsin judges. A Democrat, Siefert got federal judges to agree that Wisconsin judges should have the free-speech right to say whether they are a Republican or Democrat. But Siefert lost his fight to allow judges to endorse partisan candidates and solicit campaign donations – questions he said the U.S. Supreme Court will have to resolve. Siefert’s positions were attacked and supported by panelists Diane Diel, the immediate past president of the State Bar of Wisconsin; former Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Jon Wilcox, and Madison attorney James Troupis.

Wisconsin’s seven Supreme Court justices have disagreed often and sharply this term – including on whether campaign donations to justices should force them to withdraw from pending cases that involve those givers . In the June edition of Legally Speaking, WisconsinEye’s monthly show on legal issues, two veteran attorneys said the differences occur because of how often the court meets in public, the extremely difficult cases they must decide, and the trend of campaigns for the court costing millions of dollars. The panelists were Marquette University Law School Professor Richard Esenberg and former Court of Appeals Judge David Deininger, who is also a member of the Government Accountability Board.    

Lawyers, judges, the State Bar of Wisconsin and UW Law School professors agree: Guardianship laws designed to help children whose parents are unable to provide for their physical care need major revisions. On May 17, experts on a Legally Speaking show said those changes include how to deal with emergency situations and a new “best interest of the child” standard. The panelists, who are working on comprehensive bill that will be introduced for the 20011-12 session of the Legislature, were UW Law School Professor Gretchen Viney and family law attorneys Theresa Roetter and Henry Plum.

In the middle of the night on April 23, 2003, four police officers installed a GPS unit on the undercarriage of the car of Michael A. Sveum that was parked in his Cross Plains driveway. Evidence from the four weeks the GPS units were in place was used to charge, and later convict, Sveum of felony stalking. Police had obtained a legal order authorizing the GPS unit, but Sveum has asked the state Supreme Court to overturn the use of evidence obtained with the GPS unit as a violation of the Fourth Amendment’s right to privacy.  Legally Speaking show panelists who discussed the case were Sveum’s attorney, Dean Strang; former Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann; Patti Seger, executive director of the Wisconsin Coalition Against Domestic Violence and Larry Dupuis, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Foundation of Wisconsin.  

WisconsinEye Senior Producer Steve Walters sat down with the two coaches of the finalist teams in the Wisconsin High School Mock Trial Tournament. Janel Anderson from Lodi High School, and Kathy Vick-Martini from Rhinelander High School were interviewed. Each of the seven team members were also interviewed. The Supreme Court later ruled that the Rhinelander team won.

If you are poor and charged with a crime in Wisconsin, the odds are you won’t qualify for a lawyer who works for the State Public Defender’s Office. That’s because the income criteria to qualify for a public defender has not been changed since 1987. Panelists on a Legally Speaking show said the outdated income rules make a mockery of the constitutional promise of “equal justice for all” and have created an uneven pattern of counties relying on private lawyers to represent the poor. Panelists were Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm, State Public Defender Nick Chiarkas, Rev. Richard Jones of Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Madison and private-bar defense attorney Erik Guenther.

At the end of November, there were 344 sex offenders statewide who judges had deemed “sexually violent persons” – all but 17 of whom were locked up indefinitely because they were likely to attack again. How has the 1994 law that allowed civil commitments for SVPs worked, what is the process that keeps them confined – some of them forever – and what does it cost it cost Wisconsin taxpayers? Assistant Attorney General Michael Schaefer, Department of Corrections supervisor Melissa Roberts, defense attorney Eric Schulenburg and Dr. Stan Stojkovic, dean of UW-Milwaukee’s School of Social Work, explained the SVP process in the third Legally Speaking show.

Former Supreme Court justices William A. Bablitch and Jon P. Wilcox, who served a total of 35 years on the court, joined defense attorney and former Dane County District Attorney Hal Harlowe as panelists on the second Legally Speaking show Tuesday Nov. 24. They discussed controversial attempts to force Supreme Court justices to recuse themselves from cases pending before the court because of campaign donations from groups that are parties to those cases, or pre-election comments that defense lawyers say shows a bias against criminal defendants.

Can a Circuit Court judge refuse to accept a plea deal in a drug case, if he believes the deal doesn’t protect the public? The state Supreme Court will rule on that question this term, and panelists on the first Legally Speaking show debated it. Panelists were former Court of Appeals Chief Judge William Eich, defense lawyer and former State Bar President Gerald Mowris, and UW-Madison Law School Professor Michael Smith.