Neither Supreme Court Justice David Prosser nor fellow Justice Anne Walsh Bradley will face criminal charges for an altercation this summer involving the two, a special prosecutor has determined.
"After a complete review . . . I have determined that no criminal charges will be filed against either Justice Bradley or Justice Prosser for the incident on June 13, 2011," Sauk County District Attorney Patricia Barrett wrote in a fax sent Thursday morning to a Dane County judge.
Bradley has said Prosser put her in a "chokehold" during a June argument over a case in her chambers. Others have said Bradley came at Prosser with fists raised and he put up his hands to block her or push her back.
Even in as politicized an environment as Dane County has become, this one was too much for the local partisans in the Dane County apparat to handle. As it happened, most of the members of the court were there when the incident took place. If you had two factions disputing what had happened, on the record, in a court of law, it would have been a huge problem for the entire court.
I won't pretend to know what really happened that day, although I have my suspicions. At this point Prosser can claim vindication and his detractors can continue to cast aspersions. It's the closest thing to a win-win that's possible in Wisconsin politics these days.
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