Judgment Day in Wisconsin

It's true, as the ad says, that "an independent panel recommended two finalists" for the position, and Gableman wasn't one of them. Earlier that year, McCallum had established, by executive order, an Advisory Council on Judicial Selection to interview applicants for judgeships and send him the names of several finalists. It's also true that five days after the list was sent, Gableman played a prominent role at a fundraiser for the governor, introducing him at the event and sitting at the head table with him. He had hosted a separate fundraiser for McCallum several months earlier. And it is indeed accurate that Gableman donated $2,500 to McCallum, according to campaign finance records, half of it just after the second fundraiser.

But there's no proof that Gableman's appointment was unethical. McCallum's order creating a panel to vet applicants for judicial vacancies didn't require him to choose someone from the panel's list. McCallum recently released a statement saying he chose "the best candidate available" and that "the final decision to appoint a judge was mine alone and not an advisory committee's." The chairman of that committee, lawyer James Troupis, said he didn't recall why McCallum chose Gableman over the two finalists recommended by his panel, and one of those finalists said he was "shocked" when he learned of the choice.

We'll concede that the circumstantial evidence raises questions, and we haven't heard a convincing alternative theory for Gableman's appointment, but that's not enough to prove wrongdoing, in our judgment.

The Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee agreed with our assessment:

Judicial Campaign Integrity Committee statement: [W]e believe the ad unfairly impugns Judge Gableman's integrity because it implies, without explicitly stating, that Judge Gableman somehow committed an ethical lapse in the events leading to his appointment. … The ad does not substantiate this claim.

Murder Most Foul
The most recent ad to appear on the scene in the Supreme Court contest is a brazen exploitation of fear by the Coalition for America's Families, which says its mission is "to fight to lower the tax burden and increase the decision making power of the American family."

Coalition for America's Families Ad: Armstrong
Narrator: Ralph Armstrong was a convicted rapist out on parole when he raped, beat and strangled a 19-year-old co-ed to death.
 
There was eyewitness testimony, fingerprints at the crime scene and blood under Armstrong's fingernails.

But Louis Butler wrote the decision to overturn this rapist's conviction.

On cases taken up by the Supreme Court, Butler sides with criminals nearly 60 percent of the time.

Tell Louis Butler victims, not criminals, deserve justice.

This 30-second spot gives a distorted, cartoon-like description of a tangled murder case that could easily be the basis for a 60-minute Law and Order episode. The real story involves recanted testimony from a colorful witness, an absurd police line-up and a conviction based in part on semen and hair that were later proved not to have come from the accused.

The spot begins with an extreme close-up of an eyeball and spins rapidly through images of a woman's body, a hand smearing blood, fingerprints, police cars at night with lights flashing, a bloody knife. The narrator reminds viewers of one of the most notorious homicide cases in Madison's history, that of 19-year-old Charisse Kamps. A friend of Kamps', Ralph Armstrong, was convicted in 1981 for her murder and rape the year before, and he was sentenced to life plus 16 years in prison. In 2005, Butler wrote the decision that overturned the conviction, based on previously unavailable DNA test results showing that hair on the victim's bathrobe belt didn't belong to the defendant, and ordered a new trial for Armstrong.