Vanity Fair: Wisconsin's official 2020 electors sue the Republicans' purported electors.

“Defendants not only helped lay the groundwork for the events of January 6, 2021, but also inflicted lasting damage on Wisconsin’s civic fabric,” the complaint reads.

The complaint, filed on behalf of Wisconsin’s official electors, seeks a “definitive statement” from the court that the scheme was improper, as well as punitive damages from the Republican electors who allegedly met to draft fake paperwork delivering the state’s 10 electoral votes to Trump: Andrew Hitt; Robert F. Spindell, Jr.; Bill Feehan; Kelly Ruh; Carol Brummer; Edward Scott Grabins; Kathy Kiernan; Darryl Carlson; Pam Travis; and Mary Buestrin. It also names attorneys James R. Troupis and Kenneth Chesebro, who in a memo following the 2020 election discussed the plan to introduce competing electors. Two of the defendants, Hitt and Ruh, were subpoenaed earlier this year by the House select committee investigating January 6, which is examining the fake electors plot as part of its probe. (Hitt agreed to comply.)

“There needs to be accountability for the fraudulent electors, because otherwise this will just happen again and again,” Jeffrey Mandell, the Wisconsin lawyer who filed the suit, tells Vanity Fair. “If we don’t have accountability, if we don’t have clarity on this, the system breaks down. It alienates people from democracy. This is a place where we need to restore some norms.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee police now enforcing city's curfew for minors.

Although none of those arrested were minors, (Milwaukee Police Chief Jeffrey) Norman said officials decided to enforce the curfew as a form of protection. Minors have been increasingly caught up in the city’s historic violent crime over the last two and a half years. ...

Norman said the enforcement will extend to parents of children violating the curfew as well. The city’s curfew ordinance prohibits anyone 17 and younger to congregate in public spaces during overnight hours, starting at either 10 or 11 p.m. and lasting until 5 a.m., depending on the day of the week and time of year.

Fines can range from $100 to $200 and can be extended to minors themselves, along with parents and business owners. Exceptions are made for minors in the company of a parent or guardian.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Judge tosses $1.4 million jury verdict against Ald. Bob Bauman.

A judge has thrown out jury verdicts that Milwaukee Ald. Bob Bauman wrongly defamed a nonprofit housing agency in the 2000s and should pay $1.4 million in damages.

Circuit Judge Pedro Colón found the plaintiff, Tri-Corp Housing, Inc., was a "limited purpose public figure" and therefore needed to prove Bauman acted with actual malice, and failed to do so.

WPR and Wisconsin Watch: Episode 3 of the Open and Shut podcast — looking back at problems in the Mark Price case involving Joe Paulus and Vince Biskupic.

Axios: Awaiting a presidential executive order on police reform.

Above the Law: Female D.C. Circuit Judge hasn't hired a female law clerk in 20 years.

Since being elevated to the appellate court in 1990 by George H. W. Bush (prior to that she was on the district court of South Carolina), (D.C. Circuit) Judge (Karen L.)  Henderson has only hired one female law clerk. ...

This hiring pattern was revealed as part of a confidential workplace survey conducted in the D.C. district and circuit courts, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Post. Chief Judge Sri Srinivasan said the survey — which was completed by more than 400 current and former court employees — was conducted as part of an effort to ensure all employees are treated with dignity and respect. And yet, what the survey revealed was allegations of discrimination and bullying.

By Gretchen Schuldt

​A man who did not have a chance to cross examine the officer who issued him a citation or to present evidence on a new charge determined by a judge is entitled to a new trial, a state appeals court ruled Tuesday.

District 1 Court of Appeals Judge Timothy G. Dugan did not even decide the case on the issue raised by defendant Roosevelt Cooper, Jr. – that he was denied discovery – but instead relied on Milwaukee County's recognition of errors in Cooper's trial.

"As the County acknowledged in its supplemental brief, '[a]t no point throughout the trial was Cooper afforded the opportunity to question or cross-examine' the officer and 'Cooper was denied his right to trial,' ” Dugan wrote. "A review of the record confirms the County’s characterization of the proceedings."

Cooper was cited in December 2020 for reckless driving / endangering safety. The officer who issued the citation testified at trial before Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Jonathan Richards that the officer observed Cooper speeding and making multiple lane changes while close to other vehicles. The officer said Cooper was driving about 80 mph in a 55-mph zone.

The officer's dash cam video showed that Cooper drove on a non-traffic area of the roadway, changed lanes without signaling, and drove faster than the cars around his, Dugan wrote. Cooper said he swerved into the non-traffic area to avoid an accident with a car in front of him when its driver slammed on the brakes.

The video, however, was never moved into evidence and Dugan said in a footnote that Cooper was not under oath when he began explaining his actions. "It was not until the county started questioning Cooper following Cooper's explanation of the video that Cooper was put under oath," he wrote.

At the end of the bench trial, Richards said he could not see where Cooper endangered safety, but that Cooper was speeding, passed six cars, and drove in the non-traffic area, Dugan wrote. The judge found Cooper guilty of unreasonable and impudent speed. 

"The county expressed confusion over the finding, and the clerk interrupted saying that Cooper was not charged with speeding," Dugan wrote. The county said it could amend the charge to unreasonable and imprudent speed "and over Cooper’s objection, the trial court accepted the amended charge and found Cooper guilty" of the charge.

Richards ordered Cooper to pay a $100 forfeiture, according to online court records.

The county, in its appeals briefing, said a judge has the power to amend a charge to conform to the evidence, but that the court also must find that the parties consent to the change, Dugan wrote. That is also state Supreme Court precedent, Dugan said.

"The county...concedes that the trial court failed to make any finding that Cooper consented to the amended charge, and in fact, the county maintains that Cooper was clear that he did not consent to the amended charge," Dugan said. "The county also concedes that the trial court failed to give the parties an opportunity to present additional evidence to support the amended charge." 

In addition, "Despite receiving an assurance that he would have an opportunity to question the officer, Cooper received no such opportunity," Dugan wrote.

While he is not required to accept the county's concessions, it is appropriate in this case, Dugan said.

"As a result, this court concludes that Cooper is entitled to a new trial on the amended charge of unreasonable and imprudent speed," he said.

Governing: Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson's plan to address safety and other issues.

(Mayor Cavalier) Johnson repeatedly stressed that public safety was the top issue facing the city, but he knew he was inheriting other challenges. The city’s annual pension payment is on track to balloon from $71 million to $145 million next year. A pension task force warned last fall that the spike could lead to layoffs for a quarter of city workers. One voter told Johnson that, as mayor, he’d have to choose between “a whole pile of no good.”

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Former state senator pleads guilty to charges of failure to pay employment taxes.

Kevin Shibilski, 60, of Merrill, appeared in front of federal district court Judge William Conley and pleaded guilty to failing to truthfully account for and pay the Internal Revenue Service the federal income taxes withheld and the FICA taxes owed on behalf of his employees at two of his businesses — Pure Extractions and Wisconsin Logistics Solutions.

Vox: Supreme Court decision in favor of Ted Cruz makes it easier to bribe officials.

The Court’s decision in FEC v. Ted Cruz for Senate is a boon to wealthy candidates. It strikes down an anti-bribery law that limited the amount of money candidates could raise after an election in order to repay loans they made to their own campaign. ...

The idea is that, if already-elected officials can solicit donations to repay what is effectively their own personal debt, lobbyists and others seeking to influence lawmakers can put money directly into the elected official’s pocket — and campaign donations that personally enrich a lawmaker are particularly likely to lead to corrupt bargains. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) manufactured a case to try to overturn that $250,000 limit, and now, the Court has sided with him.

Above the Law: Opinion on the law profs who think Alito is right in his draft upending Roe.

Yale Law School’s Akhil Reed Amar took to the pages of the Wall Street Journal to gently explain why Samuel Alito’s leaked Dobbs draft is entirely reasonable and legal. And you can believe him too because, as the Wall Street Journal editors gleefully note in the article’s sub-heading, Professor Amar is a “pro-choice Democrat.” . . .

Is it really a side effect of living the cloistered academic life? Seeing the world as a collection of abstract positions to be mentally cabined off of each other? I dunno. All I know is the same crop of law professors show up every time there’s a turning point in America’s constitutional order to say, “move along, nothing to see here.”

It might be that these law professors aren’t really liberal to begin with. Or it might be that their liberalism only extends to the issues they’ve decided matter to them.

Forbes: Georgia voters appeal decision keeping Marjorie Taylor Greene on the ballot.

​ABC7 Chicago: Florida governor signs law criminalizing protests in front of residences.

The Hill: Democratic lawmakers respond to shootings in Milwaukee and Buffalo.

“I’m devastated to learn about the senseless gun violence in Milwaukee last night. My heart breaks for the victims, their families, & the MKE community. I hope for speedy recoveries,” Wisconsin Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) said. “This is another unfortunate reminder we must work together to confront the scourge of gun violence.”

WISN: Long waitlist for GPS trackers to monitor pretrial defendants in Milwaukee County.

The New York Times: Justice Clarence Thomas complains about politicization of the Supreme Court . . . at an event hosted by conservative and libertarian groups.

There is no question that the court has become politicized, to its and the nation’s great detriment. But to be subjected to a lecture on that fact by Clarence Thomas, of all people, is like listening to a plutocrat lounging by his infinity pool in a bathrobe, eating a gold-plated steak while bemoaning the horrors of extreme income inequality.

Has it really not occurred to the justice that by giving partisan political speeches in partisan political environments, he is precisely what is damaging the integrity of the Supreme Court? Perhaps being cosseted in prestige and power for so long makes it easy to ignore the consequences of your words and actions. 

Brennan Center for Justice: Understanding the concealed-carry case on which the Supreme Court is expected to rule in the next several weeks.

The Trace: The National Rifle Association's interference with research on gun violence.

The NRA did not respond to calls or emails seeking comment. For decades, the group has pressured lawmakers to block the collection of ownership data — and denied that its position stifles legitimate firearms research. But in a January 2021 report to board members gathered in Dallas, NRA Research and Information Division director Josh Savani acknowledged that the group’s lobbying has created a major obstacle.

“All firearms research suffers from one problem: we do not know how many firearms are in the United States or how they are distributed,” Savani wrote in a brief report titled Assessing Firearm Research. “[The] NRA has long supported various federal laws and appropriation riders as well as laws at the state level to prohibit the collection and centralization of firearms records. While these laws are intended to prevent the creation of firearms registries, they also prevent researchers from conducting accurate studiewith the number and distribution of firearms as a variable.”

​Associated Press: How a 17-year-old with mental illness died in police custody.

Owing to the hour, a team that included a mental health worker was unavailable to respond on that night last September; police alone responded. And C.J. was taken not to a mental hospital but to the county Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center, where for about 40 minutes he was held face down, resulting in his death.

C.J. “went from crisis to death because we got involved,” said Sedgwick County Commissioner Jim Howell.

“We all need to own what we did right and what we did wrong,” he added. “And the reality is there’s things that happened that were wrong.”

By Gretchen Schuldt

​A Meijer Store employee's use of derogatory, homophobic terms when talking about a co-worker disqualified her from unemployment after she got fired for the comments, a divided state Court of Appeals panel ruled recently.

Susan A. Wozniak's comments constituted harassment, Appellate Judge M. Joseph Donald wrote in the 2-1 decision for the District I Court of Appeals panel. He was joined by Appellate Judge Maxine A. White. Appellate Judge Timothy G. Dugan dissented.

The decision affirms Milwaukee County Circuit Judge William S. Pocan, who ruled in favor of the Department of Workforce Development in its action against the state Labor and Industry Review Commission.

LIRC had contended that Wozniak was entitled to unemployment benefits; DWD disagreed.

The case began when Wozniak, frustrated that a fellow greeter was not doing his job, complained to co-workers. One of them reported the conversation to management, saying that Wozniak said the co-worker was a “pretty boy,” “fairy,” and “fruit loop.” Wozniak also said that he was gay, and that “the way he skipped around the store made her sick,” according to the appeals court decision.

Wozniak, interviewed by management, admitted calling the co-worker a "pretty boy," denied calling him a "fairy," and said if she had used the other terms she should not have done so. Wozniak was suspended and eventually fired.

Meijer, in its dismissal, cited Wozniak's “discriminatory remarks towards a team member."

Wozniak filed for unemployment, and DWD found that the firing was not for "misconduct or substantial fault connected with her employment." Wozniak was entitled to benefits, the agency said.

Meijer appealed. The administrative law judge reversed DWD and ruled that Wozniak was fired for misconduct and not entitled to benefits.

Wozniak appealed again, this time to the LIRC. The administrative law judge was overturned and Wozniak was back to being eligible for unemployment compensation. The LIRC vote was 2-1.

DWD asked a circuit court to consider the matter, and Pocan eventually ruled that LIRC had erred in finding that Wozniak’s comments did not constitute misconduct or substantial fault.  

LIRC appealed.

Wisconsin law, Donald wrote, defines misconduct as one or more "threats or acts of harassment, assault, or other physical violence instigated by an employee at the workplace of his or her employer.” 

While the law does not define harassment, DWD and LIRC agreed on a definition as "words, gestures, and actions which tend to annoy, alarm, and abuse (verbally) another person. ... [h]arassment may include verbal abuse, epithets, and vulgar or derogatory language, display of offensive cartoons or materials, mimicry, lewd or offensive gestures, and telling of jokes offensive to protected class members.” 

Wozniak’s comments were derogatory and aimed at the co-worker's sexual orientation, Donald wrote.

"Whether the comments were made directly to the co-worker is of no consequence" under the statute, he said. 

LIRC contended that Meijer did not provide a definition or examples of harassment in its work rules, Donald wrote, but the law does not require that the company have an anti-harassment policy or rule. There also is no requirement that a person "knowingly" engage in harassment, he said.

"We will not read additional language into a statute," he said.

​Dugan, in his dissent, said that Meijer had not met its burden in showing that Wozniak was fired for misconduct or substantial fault.

Harassment that fits the definition of "misconduct" must include an element of intent, which Wozniak's statements did not, Dugan said.

"Her comments were not loud enough for anyone to hear," he wrote. "She did not make her comments to customers, and she did not make her comments directly to the co-worker about whom she was complaining. The record is also devoid of evidence that either of these co-workers were offended or unable to continue with their work responsibilities as a result of the conversation. Thus, Wozniak’s comments were part of an isolated incident during a brief, private, casual conversation that does not rise to the level of misconduct and that demonstrates no intent to harass her co-worker within the meaning of" the law.

While the majority did not address the substantial fault issue because it already found Wozniak committed misconduct, Dugan did. 

"As has been repeatedly stated, there is no dispute that Meijer’s workplace rules prohibited harassment but also provided no definition of what was considered harassment under the rule. ...Wozniak would have had no reason to believe that her brief, private conversation with two co-workers would qualify as harassment," he wrote. 

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 2021 data on Milwaukee Police Department compliance with stop-and-frisk settlement.

Of all the police encounters, frisks represent the Police Department’s biggest challenge at reform. In six-month increments from January 2019 through December 2020, the department failed document justification for at least 79% of frisks.

Things improved with a score of 48.8% in the first half of 2021, but the April report showed no progress from there. The department failed to record justification for 53.6% of frisks in the second half of 2021.

Forbes: House moves forward with ethics bill for U.S. Supreme Court, while public opinion of the court drops.

BIG NUMBER
73%. That’s the share of voters in a recent Morning Consult/Politico poll who strongly or somewhat support binding Supreme Court justices to a code of ethics, as the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal and Transparency Act would do. Supreme Court justices are not bound by the same code of conduct that governs other federal judges.

Slate: Mark Joseph Stern on the Fifth Circuit's reinstatement of Texas' social-media censorship law.

Texas Republicans passed their internet censorship bill, known as H.B. 20, in the fall of 2021. Its sponsors said that the legislation was necessary to prevent “West Coast oligarchs” from silencing “conservative viewpoints and ideas.” (Their theory that social media companies discriminate against conservative speech has no evident basis in reality.) The bill applies to social media companies with “more than 50 million active users” in the U.S. each month, like Twitter, YouTube, and Meta, that operate in Texas. (Republicans rejected a proposal that would’ve broadened its application to smaller conservative platforms like Parler and Gab.) It states that these companies may not “censor” a user’s expression on the basis of their “viewpoint,” whether that “viewpoint” is expressed on the company’s platform or somewhere else. If a platform removes a user’s content, it must provide them with notice and an opportunity to appeal. Alleged victims of “viewpoint discrimination” can also file suit against social media companies, as can the Texas attorney general.​

Des Moines Register: Des Moines police officers denied qualified immunity for seizure of murder victim's family members for questioning. 

The violation arose after Shawn Davis stabbed his brother, Preston Davis, during a family gathering in August 2017. Crysteal Davis, Preston Davis' wife; Damon Davis, another brother; and cousin Iisha Hillmon witnessed the stabbing, according to the appeals court decision. The relatives were not suspects in the killing, police said, but officers took them to the police station and questioned them for more than three hours rather than taking them to the hospital to see Preston Davis.

Preston Davis, meanwhile, died.

Marijuana Moment: Did Georgia police racially target HBCU Delaware State University women's lacrosse team in traffic stop and search?

The incident happened as the Delaware State University women’s lacrosse team were making their way back home following a tournament. Students believe the black bus driver and players were racially targeted as officers threatened incarceration if they turned up any illegal narcotics.

Channel 3000: Election probe paused, Michael Gableman will still get paid.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Former Children's Wisconsin doctor sues over child abuse investigation.

Bloomberg Law: President Biden names seven people to the U.S. Sentencing Commission.

CNN: It's U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas' moment.

The court is heading Thomas' way on a host of issues. He has long believed in lowering the barriers between church and state. He wants to make it easier for states to conduct executions and restrict the meaning of cruel and unusual punishment, as defined by the Eighth Amendment. He wants to limit the power of executive branch agencies to issue regulations, especially when it comes to protecting the environment. There are important cases due later this term on church-state relations (about a football coach who offered prayers on the 50-yard line) and the environment (about government attempts to fight the climate crisis), and the court looks to be leaning Thomas' way.

NPR: Florida condo collapse brings settlement of almost $1 billion.

CNBC: Judge sets conditions for lifting Trump contempt order.

If those conditions are not met by May 20, Judge Arthur Engoron said he would reinstate a $10,000 per-day fine against Trump for being in contempt for having failed to comply with a subpoena issued by Attorney General Letitia James.

The New York Times: Fact-checking U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's draft abortion decision.

The Sacramento Bee: Federal appeals court strikes down California law banning sales of semi-automatic guns to peope under 21.

“America would not exist without the heroism of the young adults who fought and died in our revolutionary army. Today we reaffirm that our Constitution still protects the right that enabled their sacrifice: the right of young adults to keep and bear arms,” wrote Judge Ryan Nelson, who was named to the court by President Donald J. Trump.

Slate: U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito's "domestic supply of infants" footnote.

It’s chilling because it lifts us out of a discussion about privacy and bodily autonomy and into a regime in which babies are a commodity and pregnant people are vessels in which to incubate them. If this sounds like a familiar, albeit noxious, economic concept– it’s because it is.

Courthouse News: Wisconsin school not responsible for guard's "full frontal" hugs, Seventh Circuit says.

Politico: Will Alito crown a new "Great Dissenter?"

Roll Call: End of COVID energency could hurt people seeking help for drug abuse.

In the two years since the COVID-19 pandemic has begun, the Drug Enforcement Administration has allowed providers to prescribe the gold-standard addiction treatment to patients with opioid use disorder through telehealth without first doing an in-person evaluation that addiction experts say is a barrier to underserved communities.

The DEA said starting treatment via a telehealth visit would be acceptable during a pandemic that led people to avoid doctors’ offices and where substance abuse treatment facilities saw fewer patients.
​ 
Some groups, including people living in rural areas and others released from incarceration, especially benefited, clinicians say. They worry that such groups won’t be able to make in-person visits at the end of the public health emergency unless Congress or the DEA take action. 

Border Report: Legal advocates decry anti-immigration "judicial pipeline."

Reuters: Biden administration urges U.S. Supreme Court to let weedkiller verdict against Bayer to stand.

Bayer last August petitioned the justices to reverse a lower court's decision that upheld $25 million in damages awarded to California resident Edwin Hardeman, a Roundup user who blamed his cancer on the German pharmaceutical and chemical giant's glyphosate-based weedkillers.

The Verge: ICE is running a surveillance dragnet with little oversight, report says.

According to details in American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century, ICE has used a combination of public records and privately acquired information to build a surveillance system that can investigate the majority of US adults with little oversight. The agency now has access to the driver’s license data of three-quarters of US adults (74 percent) and has already run facial recognition scans on the license photographs of 1 in 3 adults (32 percent). And when three out of four adults hooked up utilities like gas, water, and electricity in a new home, ICE was able to automatically update their new address.

Brennan Center for Justice: Are concealed carry laws next on the agenda for the U.S. Supreme Court?

​To study bail jumping in Wisconsin, WJI and the Mastantuono Coffee & Thomas law firm are looking county by county at 2021 bail-jumping charges. Which counties are charging bail jumping the most? Who are some of the defendants? What happens to those cases? We'll report the statistics from individual counties and tell you the stories from randomly chosen cases.

Case file

Ashley last year racked up 14 counts of felony bail jumping, exposing her to a potential 84 years in prison on those charges alone.

Add in four counts of misdemeanor bail jumping, and she was looking at a possible 87 years – a life sentence for the 35-year-old woman – on bail-jumping charges alone.

​Then there were the other felony and misdemeanor charges she faced: 20 all together, ranging from disorderly conduct to battery to a law enforcement officer.

In each of her cases, she posted bond.

In the end, she pleaded to a variety of charges, including bail jumping. Most charges were dismissed in plea bargaining, however, and her penalty was far, far below the maximum she originally faced. 

As in many bail-jumping cases, alcohol and drug abuse played a big part in Ashley's legal problems. And in her case, so did her obsession with a man, whom she simply would not leave alone, according to criminal complaints. She broke into his home and harassed him with hundreds of unwanted texts. She was arrested several times on charges related to her obsession.

Her 2021 bail-jumping history actually began in 2019, when she was arrested in Bayfield County for drunk driving. She pleaded guilty to first-offense OWI with a child in her car and was sentenced in January, 2020, to 30 days in jail. Her license was revoked for 14 months, and Ashley was ordered to install an ignition interlock device on her car.

In February, 2020, Ashley was arrested again and charged with second-offense drunk driving, with second-offense operating with a prohibited blood-alcohol content, failure to install the ignition interlock device required after her first OWI case, and driving while her license was revoked. Her blood alcohol content was .136, according to the criminal complaint, well above the legal limit of .02 that applied to her because of the interlock requirement. 

In March, 2020, Ashley was busted for taking her car to the Bayfield County Courthouse at about 8:30 a.m. and to the Sheriff's Department at 12:15 p.m., according to the criminal complaint. Her occupational license, a result of her first drunk-driving case, allowed her to drive from 4:45 a.m. to 8 a.m. and from 1:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. Her trips to the courthouse and Sheriff's Department occurred outside those hours. She was charged in May with two counts of driving on a revoked license, a misdemeanor. 

Circuit Judge John P. Anderson set a $500 signature bond to cover both 2020 cases.

Ashley faced her first three bail-jumping charges in July, 2021, when she was allegedly dumping clothes and other personal items belonging to her boyfriend's roommate in a burn pit and a water-filled hot tub. 

"Victim said that items were ruined including her leather boots ($400), leather jacket ($200), Samsung Galaxy S7 phone ($700) and other personal belongings," the complaint said.

A witness told police that Ashley called him the night of the incident. Ashley told him that "she found out her boyfriend was cheating on her with his ex-girlfriend/roommate so she through (sic) some of her belongings into the hot tub and took some others," the complaint said. 

Ashley was charged with criminal damage to property and entry to a locked room. Because she was still on bond for the 2020 cases, she also was charged with two counts of misdemeanor bail jumping. It's unclear from online court records whether Anderson required a bond from Ashley.

Things spun downward for Ashley. She was charged in August, 2021, with 15 new criminal counts. They included her first felonies and her first two felony bail-jumping charges. 

Police got a call on Aug. 1 from a man – apparently the same man – who was staying at his father's house. Ashley, he said, broke into his dad's and would not leave. 

She finally left in a car shortly before a deputy arrived.

"Victim reported (Ashley) was texting him nonstop obscenities and very long messages," the criminal complaint said.

Earlier that very day, shortly before 4 a.m., Ashely texted "I swear to God, if you cheated and I find out – I will cover your cock in lye" and "If you fucking cheated on me, you don't tell me the truth, and I have an STD or find out you cheated it will be very unfavorable for you and your whore."

The man told a deputy that Ashley would not stop texting him despite his requests. The deputy took pictures of Ashley's texts – more than 300 in all, according to the complaint. The man told the deputy that he was worried about what Ashley might do.

WUWM: UW Law School report says Wisconsin's maps are the most partisan in the country.

"On every one of these standard partisan fairness metrics, these new maps are the worst, court-adopted maps that we’ve seen anywhere in the country," says Rob Yablon, an associate professor at the law school, who published the analysis.

The analysis finds that Wisconsin's state legislative maps have substantially higher levels of partisan inequity than other court-adopted maps, with a score three to five times worse on each metric. The inequity in these maps means that despite Republicans and Democrats getting approximately the same number of votes statewide, Republican politicians will likely continue to control the vast majority of seats in the Wisconsin state Legislature.
​
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Jacob Blake dismisses his lawsuit against Kenosha officer who shot him.

Reuters: The trend of criminalizing student misbehavior.

Much more troubling, teachers and administrators across the state have been routinely referring students’ misbehavior to local police, turning disciplinary issues that might have previously warranted a trip to the principal’s office into law enforcement matters, according to an analysis published April 28 by the Chicago Tribune and ProPublica

The police issue costly tickets to students that carry long-term consequences, including tagging kids with a record and harming future credit scores. And the money extracted from families funds the system itself: It pays for lawyers who prosecute the students and for hearing officers who rule on the cases, according to the Tribune.

The New York Times: The stories of five men claiming innocence who helped each other obtain freedom from New York prisons.

The “Dateline” segments, which were broadcast over the span of a dozen years, bolstered each convict’s claims of innocence with new evidence and new witnesses, highlighting problems in how cases were investigated and prosecuted.

The chance of even a single inmate achieving exoneration is a long shot in the New York State prison system, where out of thousands of inmate appeals, only a handful are successful each year. The fact that these five men rallied to support one another is exceptionally rare.

In interviews with The New York Times, the men discussed how they bonded and worked together in prison to overturn the convictions that put them behind bars for a combined century’s worth of time. One after the other, they were released, but they would continue to help those left behind by visiting, donating money, raising awareness and even searching for other possible witnesses.

Reuters: Moderna argues immunity from any patent infringement regarding COVID-19 vaccine.

Facing claims that its COVID-19 vaccine violates the patent rights of two biopharma companies, Moderna Inc told a Delaware federal court on Friday that the companies should have sued the U.S. government instead.

Moderna said it is shielded from the lawsuit brought by Arbutus Biopharma Corp and Genevant Sciences GmbH, thanks to its agreement to supply the vaccine to the federal government. It cited a federal law that was previously used to keep patent claims from interfering with the supply of war materials during World War I.
​
Intelligencer: Donald Trump's new explanation for not complying with subpoenas: he can't find his cell phones.

In an affidavit filed to the Supreme Court of the State of New York on Friday night, Trump’s lawyers wrote that he could not comply with state attorney general Letitia James’s subpoena to hand over documents related to a civil fraud probe into the Trump Organization because he lost the four cell phones containing those documents. “I don’t know its current whereabouts,” he says in the filing of one of the four phones provided to him by the Trump Organization. “I do not know their current location,” he says of “two flip phones and a Samsung mobile phone” he has owned since 2010 — adding that the Samsung was “was taken from me at some point while I was President.”