MADISON, Wis. — With 35 days to go until the spring election, the race for Wisconsin Supreme Court is intensifying.

Both candidates have traded jabs over the state’s history of rape kit testing. While those DNA tests aren’t something the state’s highest court has control over, the topic is still playing a role in candidate endorsements.

What You Need To Know

  • On Tuesday, 44 former Assistant Attorneys General, who worked under both Republican and Democrat Attorney Generals, including Brad Schimel, signed a letter endorsing Susan Crawford for State Supreme Court Justice

  • The letter criticized Schimel’s handling of the state’s testing of sexual assault kits, including only nine kits out of a backlog of more than 6,000 having been tested during his first two years in office

  • Schimel’s campaign defended the decision to pursue grant money instead of funding from the Legislature during his tenure and stated that more than 4,000 kits were cleared in four years after zero had been tested when he took office

44 former Assistant Attorneys General with a combined more than 805 years of experience from both sides of the aisle signed on to a letter Tuesday endorsing Susan Crawford for State Supreme Court Justice.

Some of those supporters who signed on to the letter spoke out and went beyond the pages to share why they are backing Crawford. One of the biggest reasons has to do with how the state’s rape kit backlog got cleaned up, as the letter argues then-Attorney General Brad Schimel, who is now running for State Supreme Court, took too much credit.

“Partisan stripe means nothing to us,” Diane Sorensen, a former Assistant Attorney General, said. “Now, more than ever, we need a judicial system and leadership that embodies common sense, fairness, and integrity.”

44 Former Assistant Attorneys General Urge Wisconsinites to Once Again Reject Brad Schimel by Anthony DaBruzzi on Scribd

Those are qualities that Crawford believes her opponent lacks.

“One of his most glaring failures of his tenure was his refusal to prioritize the DNA testing of sexual assault kits,” Crawford explained. “Under his watch, the Wisconsin Department of Justice tested only nine kits out of a backlog of more than 6,000 untested kits in his first two years in office.”

That number comes from past reporting by the Green Bay Press Gazette in 2017 when Schimel was midway through his term.

Almost a year-and-a-half later, as the race for reelection against Democrat Josh Kaul ramped up, Schimel announced more than 4,100 kits had been tested with victim permission, leaving just five remaining, thanks to $7 million in grant funding.

Crawford, however, said that processing didn’t come soon enough and echoed concerns brought up by current liberal State Supreme Court Justice Jill Karofsky, who was the executive director of the Office of Crime Victim Services for the state Department of Justice at the time and has since endorsed Crawford’s campaign.

“[Schimel] instead told Justice Karofsky and the other staff at the Department of Justice to go seek outside funding, federal funding, while he went to the Legislature and asked for more attorneys to pursue the right-wing agenda,” Crawford responded when asked by reporters about Karofsky’s role in rape kit testing.

Meanwhile, former Chief Deputy Attorney General and Senior Counsel Paul Connell, who said he attended a meeting with Karofsky and the Senate Minority Leader at the time, said questions had been raised about the Dept. of Justice’s plan, and Karofsky defended the process.

“Jill defended the process of first inventorying all the kits before sending them for testing. Jill explained in detail that this was the appropriate way to handle these very sensitive pieces of evidence as part of a victim-centric approach,” Connell said in a statement. “She presented Minority Leader Schilling with a written plan outlining the process that she (Karofsky) was implementing. We left the meeting having thoroughly convinced Ms. Schilling and her staff of this approach, and we never heard another objection.”

As for the grant funding, Schimel told reporters last week the budget request at the time had already been made when he came into office. Though he also acknowledged that when testifying before lawmakers in 2015 on the department's budget request by his predecessor, there was no mention of rape kits in his remarks.

Schimel Campaign Spokesperson Jacob Fischer told Spectrum News that zero kits had been tested before Schimel came into office and he “inherited broken system” that no one was willing to fix.

“Brad Schimel solved a decades-long problem in less than four years. Susan Crawford is so worried about losing that she resorts to rewriting history the same way she is rewriting law. She knows she's lying and will happily do it at the expense of sexual assault survivors in her pursuit of power. Shame on her blatant disrespect for survivors of sexual violence," Fischer stated.

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