Too bad they did away with chain gangs.
Posted on 03/12/2006 9:57:44 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
MADISON, WI (AP) -- A jury convicted state Rep. Scott Jensen on Saturday of felony misconduct for using state employees as secret campaign operatives, rejecting his claims he thought they were off the state clock and Assembly Republicans had used state workers to campaign for years.
The jury deliberated for 17 hours over three days before finding Jensen guilty of three felony counts of misconduct in office and a misdemeanor count of using his public position to benefit the Republican Assembly Campaign Committee.
An extremely ambitious lawmaker who rose to the Assembly's top position in five years and harbored hopes of one day becoming governor, the Waukesha Republican now faces up to 16 years behind bars and $35,000 in fines. He also must give up his political office.
Jensen showed no emotion as the verdicts were read. He gave a brief statement to reporters, thanking his friends and constituents.
"The only plans I have at the moment are to go home and hug my wife and kids," Jensen said. He declined to comment further.
Jensen's conviction concludes a secret investigation into Capitol corruption prosecutors launched in 2001. The probe was sparked by a series of stories in the Wisconsin State Journal newspaper detailing allegations of state workers campaigning on state time.
Jensen was one of five lawmakers charged in 2002 in the probe. He was the only one to stand trial; the others reached plea deals.
"These cases have really highlighted the potential for abuse of power. I don't think it's a happy day for anyone here," said Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, who led the probe with help from state Department of Justice investigators. "This investigation showed that no one's above the law, that everyone's responsible for their actions, whether they have a position of power and influence or whether they're someone who doesn't have access to those tools."
Jensen, 45, used his position as Assembly speaker to direct his Capitol office staff and other state employees to work on his campaign and those of vulnerable GOP Assembly candidates from 1998 through 2001, prosecutors said. The goal was to expand Republicans' majority in the Assembly and gain a cheap edge over Republicans' opponents, they contended.
Jensen also was accused of putting GOP aide Sherry Schultz on the state payroll only to function as a full-time Republican fundraiser.
The jury found Schultz, who was standing trial alongside Jensen, guilty of felony misconduct in office as well. Schultz, 53, now faces up to five years in prison and $10,000 in fines.
Jensen and Schultz remain free on bond until their sentencing. Judge Steven Ebert said he expects to schedule those proceedings for late April or early May.
Under state statutes, convicted felons cannot hold a legislative seat. Jensen must relinquish his position when he is sentenced. His seat will remain vacant for the rest of his term, which ends in November.
If a state appeals court reverses his conviction before the end of his term, he would get his seat back. Appeals can stretch on for months or sometimes even years, although it's unclear whether an appeals court might expedite Jensen's case.
Jensen's attorney, Stephen Meyer, declined to comment on whether Jensen would file an appeal, saying he is focused on preparing for the sentencing.
Schultz and Jensen each racked up more than $67,000 in taxpayer-funded legal fees and will likely be required to repay the state that money as part of their sentences. Jensen has also transferred $239,000 from his campaign war chest to his legal defense fund since 2003, records show.
Schultz and her attorney, Stephen Morgan, left the courthouse through a back exit without talking to reporters.
Prosecutors spent two weeks putting a string of Jensen's Capitol aides and former Assembly Republican Caucus workers on the stand. The caucus was a group of state workers who were to do research for legislators, but prosecutors said Jensen commandeered them for campaign staff.
The caucus workers testified they served as field campaign operatives, held campaign strategy meetings in both Jensen's office and the caucus' state offices, recruited candidates and produced campaign literature on their state computers, all under Jensen's oversight.
One of Jensen's Capitol staff, Carrie Richard, testified she doubled as Jensen's personal campaign manager. She said she received campaign contributions at the office, met with Jensen and lobbyists in the office to solicit donations and worked on more than two dozen fundraisers on state time.
Jensen took the stand in his own defense, saying it was tradition in the Assembly to use legislative employees to campaign and he did political work while a legislative employee himself. But he testified he believed state workers under his watch were off the state clock when they did campaign work.
He acknowledged he sometimes brought campaign checks into his Capitol office, but said he ran his campaign from his house, his cell phone or from office space he rented at the Wisconsin Republican Party.
"I hope this verdict will signal to all government officials the need to follow state law and ... the essential responsibility to keep official government duties separate from political campaigning," Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager said in a statement.
The state workers also testified Schultz worked out of the caucus' state office. They testified she tracked candidates' finances, drummed up donations for them and would update Jensen and other Republican legislative leaders, including Reps. Steve Foti, R-Oconomowoc, Bonnie Ladwig, R-Racine, and John Gard, R-Peshtigo, on candidates' finances during meetings in Jensen's Capitol office.
Foti and Ladwig were both charged in the same probe that netted Jensen.
Foti ended up testifying against Jensen in exchange for prosecutors' recommendation he spend 30 days in jail when he's sentenced later this month. Ladwig also reached a plea deal in which prosecutors agreed to recommend she pay $4,500 in fines and restitution.
Former Democratic Sens. Chuck Chvala of Madison, then the Senate Majority Leader, and Brian Burke of Milwaukee, who served on the powerful Joint Finance Committee, also were charged. They both reached plea deals and were sentenced to jail.
"It was always clear that if there was misconduct here, the responsibility for that would fall on the elected officials who had the power to set the rules," Blanchard said.
What a fool to go to trial. If he had plead, he's be facing a few months in JAIL, versus PRISON just like the DEMOCRATS that were charged with the exact same FELONIES, and now can spend their evenings in jail and still work their day jobs.
Spoke with my friend Randy yesterday. He's a Republican staffer at the Capitol in Madison, WI and has known Jensesn for ages. He said Jensen was totally railroaded because he was a threat to the WI Dems. They pulled out all the stops and sacrificed a few of their own to get rid of Jensen. (Jensen's the one responsible for the turn around and our Republican Majority in the WI Assembly and Senate.)
Of course I'm less than pleased as how my tax dollars have been used in this manner by BOTH parties, but it's pretty obvious what the end goal was here.
"Sorry for the Late Ping," Ping! You all probably know how this turned out already, but I said I'd follow up. :)
Jeez, where did he think he was? Illinois?
I notice there was no reference to any Democrats in the article.............gee, I wonder why?
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Too bad they did away with chain gangs.
Jeeez, many rapists, robbers and arsonists don't even get that much time, these days. Dumbass for doing it, though.
Of course punishement was deserving...but the disparity between sentencing for the Dems and the Pubbies is what's pissin' me off. I'd like to see the Dems in PRISON for just as long as Jensen & Schultz may get, instead of the hand-slap and jail time they got.
Fair is fair. ;)
Fair is something you take the family to for fun. Life is not fair.
Fair is related to civilized human actions.
Obviously Democrats, Socialists, Communists and assorted other scum with dictatorial tendencies are not affected.
I like Belling. I can't quite get him in here on my radio, so I check his site from time to time. :)
One tiny sentence at the end mentions the Dems. But by that time your eyes have already glazed over from the Pubbie Bashing. ;)
You've got that right.
My statement should have said no REAL mention of Dems.....
It's a good thing John Conyers is a Democrat and does not have to worry about prosecution for even worse abuse of power. The judcial system is MOSTLY a one way street.
The world sure seems filled to the brim with creepy politicians these days, doesn't it? We need a bunch of "Ronald Reagans" at so many levels in this country, it isn't even funny anymore.
I guess we are looking at humanism's new "ethics" in action. It can be summed up with "The ends justifies the means."
Well we can perform a bit of political dialectical synthesis with this news and recent history. Wisconsin might have recently passed the Personal Protection Act but for craven political considerations, one of which is the prohibition of felons being armed. I wonder how this politician will feel being disbarred his 2A Right.
What is a felon/felony in Wisconsin? In another state you are disbarred from being armed if you were liable for felony level punishment. That is, a felony may be (is in some state) a crime punishable by a term of one year of incarceration and you need not be sentenced to the year but only liable.
Once we step onto the slope of infringement we are entangled by our cowardice.
Democrats, Republicans and the media are America's cacocracy.
If Jensen's lawyer had requested change of venue and been denied, that could result in a new trial at appeals time. Impossible to seat an impartial jury when a Republican is on trial in Madison.
State Rep. Scott Jensen, once considered a likely future candidate for governor, could only sit at the defense table and listen as prosecutors in his misconduct trial told jurors he violated his duty by using state-paid employees as campaign operatives.
"He could only sit" is an apt description. They replayed portions of actual courtroom testimony on the Jeff Wagner Show (Jeff is a former Federal prosecutor) on conservative radio AM 620, Milwaukee.
It was shameless. Jeff said the judge was seeming to send it to the appeals court himself.
Every time it was brought up that he was following in the footsteps of the Dem administrations there before, it was objected by the prosecutor and sustained by the judge -- reasonably arguable (I don't want the Republicans to be using the weak defense often used by the Dems--sounds too whiny. And sounds -- too Dem).
In fact, it looked (anecdotally) that NO testimony about Dims would be let on the Defense case.
What I found particularly heinous were the objections sustained by the judge when the defense tried to bring in evidence of when the Ethics Committee called him and asked him for stuff that assumed he was running it the same way his predecessors ran the office.
Appeal, Mr. Jensen!
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