Channel 3000 reports that all Justice Annette Ziegler gets for all those judicial ethics problems is a reprimand.
If you recall the campaign last spring, Ziegler was called out on mishandling 11 cases in which she had a personal interest and possibly a conflict of interest (her husband was a director at the involved bank).
According to the La Crosse Tribune, the special panel agreed that Justice Ziegler "committed judicial misconduct" but didn't benefit from it and has taken steps not to do it in the future."
So... a slap on the wrist... Kinda reminds you of another resounding slap on the wrist....
If you recall the campaign last spring, Ziegler was called out on mishandling 11 cases in which she had a personal interest and possibly a conflict of interest (her husband was a director at the involved bank).
According to the La Crosse Tribune, the special panel agreed that Justice Ziegler "committed judicial misconduct" but didn't benefit from it and has taken steps not to do it in the future."
So... a slap on the wrist... Kinda reminds you of another resounding slap on the wrist....
Labels: Wisconsin Supreme Court
3 Comments:
From one of your links:
"...A public reprimand — the lightest punishment possible — is appropriate because Justice Annette Ziegler has taken steps to avoid similar mistakes and did not benefit from her actions, the three-judge panel said.
The panel said Ziegler mishandled 11 cases involving a bank where her husband was a paid director when she was a judge in Washington County, north of Milwaukee. Ziegler should have recused herself or disclosed the potential conflict of interest to the parties even though she reached the correct result in each case, it said.
“Given her knowledge of her husband’s relationships with the Bank, red flags of danger were prominently flying,” the panel wrote in a 27-page decision. “Justice Ziegler did not see them.”
Ziegler’s colleagues on the seven-member court will now decide whether to accept the recommendation. If they do, it will mark the first time the court has disciplined a sitting justice.
The panel rejected arguments from some outside groups and individuals that Ziegler be suspended or removed from the bench.
That discipline would be inconsistent with the state’s previous treatment of judges, the panel said, noting one judge was reprimanded after beating his wife. Another judge who repeatedly lied that he was up-to-date on his caseload was suspended for 15 days for misconduct the panel called far more severe.
The Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a watchdog group that filed the complaint against Ziegler, said a reprimand was too weak and called on the court to suspend Ziegler..."
In light of the panel's decisions on other manners that are in my opinion more severe, a short suspension would have been appropriate, but not expulsion from the bench permanently. After all, she did not do something that will permanently affect her ability to do her job or lose the public trust for all time. The reason I say this, even though Ziegler was found to not benefit from her ethical lapses and appears to be avoiding them in the future, is that the public trust in our court system is one of the essential pillars of our system of government, thus stronger discipline was absolutely warranted.
So was the punishment a slap on the wrist compared to what I would have preferred? Yes, but it is a very different situation to Libby's sentence commutation or President Clinton's 2000 pardon of corrupt Congressman Rostenkowski, the former Democratic Party chair of the powerful congressional Ways and Means committee. I am concerned President Bush will pardon some asshat like Ney, even though he is just as bad as Rostenkowski (pardons can make presidents of either party look like jerks I guess)…
Quickly on Congressman Rostenkowski… He was of the fifth congressional district of Illinois in Chicago, and was succeeded by later Democrat Governor Blagojevich, who is probably going to be indicted himself on corruption charges (that will be 7/40 governors for Illinois lol, former Republican Governor Ryan was the most recent), and after that, current Congressman Emanuel, who seems clean. Rostenkowski used public money for employees on his staff who did “little or no work,” and to buy personal gifts, “so pleaded guilty in federal court to two counts of mail fraud and was sentenced to 17 months in prison and $100,000 in fines” (http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/12/22/clinton.pardon.02/).
Unfortunately, this is how presidents of both parties operate when it comes to pardons, I hope whoever is in there next decides to ignore pleas to help the crooked in their party.
These situations, however, have more to do with a person's preferences over how executive pardoning should work and not an independent ethics panel's checks and balances on a state's judicial system. Certainly, there are flaws with both such institutions in our system, but we should address them separately, since they have imperfections for different reasons.
I didn't mean to equate Libby with Ziegler's case. Other than the fact that they are slaps on the wrist.
Ahh k.
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