A class action lawsuit alleging Milwaukee County jailers shackled pregnant inmates during childbirth will go to trial June 5.

U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller denied a motion from lawyers representing the defendants, including Sheriff David Clarke, and the main plaintiff in the case, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, asking for separate trials over the class action allegations and allegations that former Milwaukee County jailer Xavier D. Thicklen sexually assaulted Jane Doe on five occasions.

Jailers work for Clarke. The sheriff testified in a deposition in the case that he did not know how many of his employees, whether it was 20 or 200, were referred each year to the district attorney's office for potential criminal charges.

The shackling issue arose during the course of pre-trial work by Jane Doe's lawyers and the class action allegations were added to the original sexual assault lawsuit. Doe's lawyers have said as many as 300 women could be part of the class.

Meanwhile, Thicklen's lawyer, Lew Wasserman, has asked to withdraw from the case because he has not been paid and because he cannot find Thicklen. 

"Mr. Thicklen has failed to communicate with counsel for over a year, indeed, counsel has been informed that even Mr. Thicklen’s family is unsure of where he is presently residing," Wasserman said in his motion to withdraw. "Messages sent to Mr. Thicklen’s family do not result in any response by Mr. Thicklen. Moreover, counsel concludes that it is unlikely that Mr. Thicklen will voluntarily appear for trial."

Lawyers for all the parties in the case wanted separate trials on the sexual assault and class action issues. The sexual assault claim and the shacking claims rely on different sets of facts and Thicklen, the correction officer, had nothing to do with shackling female inmates.

"Presentation of evidence of the other claim could confuse or prejudice the jury," the lawyers said.

In addition, county lawyers want to ask an appeals court whether Thicklen was acting in the scope of his employment when allegedly conducting the assaults, and Jane Doe's lawyers want more time to conduct discovery on the class action allegations.

Stadtmueller was having none of it.

"This matter is now almost three years old, and will be more than that by the time of trial .... If the parties have failed to use this extraordinarily extended period to conduct necessary discovery and motion briefing on the class issue, the problem is of their own making," he wrote.

Incumbent Valarie Hill on Tuesday took first place in a four-way Municipal Court primary that saw just 7.9 percent of registered city voters cast ballots.

She will face second-place finisher William Crowley, a disability rights lawyer, in the April  4 general election. 

Just 27,855 of the city's 352,765 registered voters cast ballots in the race, according to preliminary returns from the Milwaukee Election Commission.

Hill, a Municipal Court judge since 2004, garnered 13,084 votes. That is 46.7 percent of ballots cast for any candidate in the race, including write-ins, but represents votes from just 3.7 percent of registered voters. Hill's perceived acerbic attitude toward those who appear before her and the failure by the court's three judges to fully inform defendants of their rights are issues in the race.

Kashoua "Kristy" Yang and Scott Wales are competing for the Branch 47 judicial seat now held by Milwaukee County Circuit Judge John Siefert. This is the only contested Milwaukee County judicial  race this year. Wales and Yang agreed to answer a series of questions from WJI to better inform voters about issues in the race.

The answers were edited for length (maximum 400 words).

This week's question: What is your judicial philosophy?

A Court of Appeals panel on Thursday threw out a search that resulted in felony drug charges against a man, but let stand three counts of felony bail jumping issued when the man violated the conditions of his release on the drug charges.

​Oddly enough, missing a drug test is, by itself, not a crime, but was elevated to that level only because it was a condition of release in the case that the appeals court dismissed.

The District IV panel, in an unsigned opinion, first ruled that a La Crosse police officer was not justified in his pat down of Timothy C. Eigner, a search that led to charges of possession methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.

The panel was fairly harsh in some of its assessment of the state's case: "The proposition that anyone who rides a motorcycle in a group is likely to be a member of the Outlaws (motorcycle gang) and, therefore, armed and dangerous, is entitled to little or no weight," the decision said. ​​The panel members were JoAnne F. Kloppenburg, Gary E. Sherman, and Brian W. Blanchard.

 While Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack pushes for judicial pay raises of more than $20,000 annually, the number of decisions issued by judges on the state's two appellate levels has fallen dramatically, statistics show.

Roggensack's big boost request fell flat with Gov. Scott Walker. She wanted the state to spend $6.4 million per year on judicial pay increases, but Walker is proposing only $334,000 for 2018-2019 pay raises.

Walker also is, however, recommending that the director of state courts figure out a judicial pay plan, which would be submitted to the Joint Committee on Employment Relations for approval. The director of state courts works for Roggensack's Supreme Court.

Roggensack's plan would have taxpayers footing bigger bills for judges -- at least on the two appellate levels -- who issue far fewer decisions than they used to. 

Marquette University Professor Alan Ball examined the State Supreme Court's declining productivity on his excellent SCOWstats blog. He found the number of opinions issued declined from 83 in 1990-91 to 43 in 2015, a 48% decrease.