Soros-backed judge defends reduced sentence for repeat child molester at debate in state Supreme Court race

Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford, a George Soros-backed liberal, defended her determination to importantly trim a condemnation for a convicted kid molester who had repeatedly assaulted a five-year-old girl, successful a 2020 lawsuit during Wednesday night's heated statement against blimpish campaigner Brad Schimel.

The debate, which was to beryllium the lone statement for the precocious tribunal spot contention earlier the April 1 election, was moderated by ABC affiliate WISN 12 astatine Marquette University Law School. The victor of the contention volition find whether conservatives oregon liberals volition power the state's precocious court, arsenic justices are expected to perceive cases involving abortion, sex individuality and the powerfulness down labour unions. 

During a statement conception wherever candidates were asked astir the multi-million-dollar ads they'd aired criticizing each other's judicial records, Crawford – a justice connected the Dane County Circuit Court – was questioned by the moderator astir a arguable intersexual battle lawsuit involving a five-year-old miss she had ruled in.

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"In 2020, you did condemnation a kid enactment offender to 4 years successful situation aft prosecutors requested 10. Do you regret that sentence?" the moderator asked Crawford.

"I don't regret that sentence, due to the fact that I followed the law successful that case, arsenic I ever do," Crawford responded. "I applied the law, which says that judges person to see each applicable origin successful sentencing, you person to see some the aggravating and mitigating factors, and the Supreme Court has said you person to bid the minimum magnitude of situation clip you judge is indispensable to support the public. That's what I did successful that lawsuit and each different case."

"And my extremity is ever to support the assemblage safe. And those person been sentences that person been successful, they person kept the assemblage safe," she said. "Unlike the abbreviated jailhouse sentences that Brad Schimmel has entered implicit and over, wherever radical person gone connected to perpetrate caller crimes, that's erstwhile you cognize the condemnation has failed."

The moderator past turned to inquire Schimel astir his grounds of delaying investigating of thousands of intersexual battle grounds kits – a cardinal absorption of Crawford's run ads against him – astir a decennary agone arsenic the then-attorney general. 

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"Some of the ads radical person seen astir you, Judge Schimel, 9 rape kits tested successful your archetypal 2 years arsenic the Attorney General. Do you regret that?" the moderator asked.

Schimel, who presently serves arsenic a justice connected the Waukesha County Circuit Court, alternatively utilized his reply clip to occurrence shots astatine Crawford's determination successful the kid intersexual battle case. 

"My hostile conscionable revealed the occupation successful her judgment, that, successful weighing each the factors, giving the minimum magnitude of clip to a unsafe offender weighs higher than protecting the community," Schimel said. "That's what she conscionable revealed."

"That is not what I said," Crawford said. "The tribunal requires you to bid the condemnation indispensable to support the community, and that's what I've done, and that's what those sentences did."

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Crawford, backed by a $1 cardinal donation from progressive philanthropist George Soros and $500,000 from Illinois Democratic Gov. JB Pritzker — a apt 2028 Democratic statesmanlike contender — besides traded barbs with Schimel implicit his million-dollar donations from Tesla CEO and caput of DOGE Elon Musk's governmental enactment committees. 

The high-profile candidates besides sparred over abortion, an upcoming authorities elector ID ballot measurement and President Donald Trump. 

The Wisconsin Supreme Court presently has a 4-3 wide majority.