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DEBATE: Roggensack recalls holding fellow justice ‘until she calmed down’

By: Dan Shaw, [email protected]//March 22, 2013//

DEBATE: Roggensack recalls holding fellow justice ‘until she calmed down’

By: Dan Shaw, [email protected]//March 22, 2013//

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Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Pat Roggensack and opponent Ed Fallone answer questions during a state Supreme Court debate at the State Bar of Wisconsin in Madison on Friday. (AP Photo/Wisconsin State Journal, Amber Arnold)

Nearly two years after Justice David Prosser allegedly put his hands around the throat of another Wisconsin justice, the incident continues to dominate debate about the future of the state’s highest court.

During a debate Friday night in Madison between incumbent Justice Pat Roggensack and Marquette law professor Ed Fallone, the man gunning to replace her in the next 10-year term on the state Supreme Court, talk again centered on a lack of resolution to the Prosser allegations.

Fallone questioned Roggensack’s decision to recuse herself from an inquiry into the attack, in which Prosser is accused of choking fellow Justice Ann Walsh Bradley in the court’s offices.

Roggensack said she recused herself because she was a material witness to the attack. She said she physically interposed herself between Prosser and Bradley and then “held onto Bradley until she calmed down.”

Fallone said Roggensack’s recusal, along with those of other justices, has prevented the case from being brought before the state’s court of appeals, where a three-court panel would determine if there was fault in the case.

“When there is no resolution, when the case is stuck in legal limbo, then there is no accountability,” Fallone said Friday. “And that’s when people begin to question if there is a different set of rules for Supreme Court justices.”

Roggensack said she pushed for resolution last summer, but as her campaign ramped up, she backed off. If reelected, she said she would sit down with her colleagues to resume that work.

“I will ask that this matter is added to the courts calendar for a conference among the seven of us because there is repair work to be done,” she said.

During Friday’s debate at the Wisconsin State Bar’s Madison office, Fallone said the choking incident and the court’s tendency to issue “fractured” opinions, with little consensus, has tarnished its reputation. He said he would be able to improve relations among the justices.

“I think what the court needs to do is break through these factions, break through these groups,” he said. “I am not a party to these prior disputes. I can display a willingness to compromise and build consensus and try to heal the divisions on the court.”

Roggensack said Fallone’s constant description of the court as being “dysfunctional” only helps to tarnish its image. She asked voters to not listen to innuendo and attacks and to judge her in the same way that they would have her judge them.

“I ask the public to judge me on my conduct and how I have behaved myself,” she said.

She said the primary asset she brings to the court is her experience, noting she has spent nearly 10 years on the state Supreme Court and was as an appellate judge for seven years before that. She said her appellate work is important because one of her main duties in her current position is to decide if other judges have interpreted and applied the law correctly.

Fallone — who focuses on constitutional, corporate and criminal law — also touted his experience, noting he has practiced law for 25 years and taught at Marquette for 20. Perhaps most important, though, will be his abilities as a mediator, he said.

“I don’t have any faith,” he said, “that anything will change on the court if Justice Roggensack stays on the court.”

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