Uppity Wisconsin

Mike Gousha, in a recent TV interview, asked Judge Randy Koschnick about his time as a public defender:

GOUSHA: Let me talk for a moment about the issue of your past; you were a public defender and there are some political conservatives who say they cannot support you because you defended a guy convicted of killing a police officer, Ted Oswald. Are you surprised?

Koschnick defends himself, citing Paul Bucher's admiration for his work in that case:

KOSCHNICK: ...(W)hen I was a public defender I did the cases that were assigned to me, I did them ethically and to the best of my ability. And I am proud of the work that I did as a public defender.

In the Oswald case, the DA in that case, Paul Bucher who prosecuted the case, wrote me a letter after the trial commending me for my ethics and following the rules of procedure in court. He supported me when I ran for circuit court judge about 5 years later in 1999, and he has publicly supported me now in my supreme court race.

Golly, gee, Paul Bucher must have mellowed as he's aged. We know he wouldn't support Koschnick because he's a conservative Republican, because the Supreme Court race is non-partisan (wink, wink.)

But you do have to wonder, because here's what Bucher said of Koschnick's work at the time, as reported in the Journal Sentinel by one Jessica McBride:

Bucher calls Oswald defense 'garbage'

Milwaukee Journal,Mar 8, 1995 :

Waukesha Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher delivered an angry, highly emotional closing statement Wednesday, calling 19-year-old Theodore Oswald a cop killer and fake, whose coercion defense is "garbage."

Bucher agreed with defense attorneys on only one thing: that Theodore's father, James Oswald, 50, is a "lowlife piece of scum."

At least Bucher didn't call Koschnick a lowlife piece of scum. But her certainly called the work that Koschnick did a piece of garbage.

Or was he misquoted?