No charges in Prosser v. Bradley; Abrahamson proposes to make court conferences public

UPDATE: Mr. Gillette scooped me on this.  See the next post below for his remarks.

The special prosecutor appointed to investigate the Bradley v. Prosser fracas has decided not to press any charges.  (Amusingly, this story appears in the "Crime & Courts" section of the madison.com website. It is hard to think of a more appropriate section name.)

The Wisconsin State Journal has received and posted all the police reports and interview summaries (including accounts from all six of the justices who were present for the incident).

Unsurprisingly, the accounts differ.  I haven't yet read them in detail, but summaries are available here and here.  One interesting fact: the accounts appear to be anonymous unanimous that the incident did not take place in Bradley's inner office.  Instead, Prosser was standing in the office of Bradley's secretary, and the incident occurred when Bradley came out of her office to confront Prosser there.

Another tidbit.  Justice Gableman says that Bradley is taller than Prosser, that she rushed him and supposedly punched the air around his face, and that the scene reminded him of this famous photo, with Justice Bradley in the role of LBJ and Prosser in the role of Senator Green:



This reminds me of something my brother overhead someone say at a restaurant once:  "LBJ would have just killed that guy."

In other but related news, Chief Justice Abrahamson has proposed to respond to the justified crisis of confidence in her court by making court conferences open to the public.  These are the meetings where the justices argue about how to vote on individual cases.  Abrahamson's notion is apparently that making the conferences public would force the justices to be on better behavior.

Mr. Gillette, I'm curious what you think about this idea.  The first word that comes to my mind is: "ridiculous."