[Riot]

Whoops ... gee, Justice Prosser ... you just didn't know what you were doing? Couldn't help yourself? It just wasn't your fault, was it? Need some definitive anger managment classes?

Supreme Court Justice David Prosser acknowledged to detectives touching Justice Ann Walsh Bradley's neck

In his interview, the report says, Prosser told a detective he remembered "feeling the warmth on the side of Justice Bradley's neck in his hands." He said that he then pulled his hands back and then he believed he "went limp."

"Oh my God, I'm touching her neck," Prosser said he thought, adding later, "What does any self-respecting man do when suddenly that man finds that his hands, or part of his hands are on a woman's neck? Get them off the neck as soon as possible."

When Prosser was asked by detectives if he felt he needed to apologize, he said he had talked with people about doing that but felt he had done nothing wrong.

And that is Prosser's problem.

The interviews show that the three justices in the minority have had with serious personal problems with Prosser - a member of the court's four-person majority of solid conservatives - that go back at least 10 years. According to the report, Bradley and another justice met with court staff about Prosser's displays of anger in February 2010 - more than a year before the latest incident.

Bradley said she confronted Prosser because he was agitated and loud and she wanted him to leave her suite of offices. Bradley said she was "in control" and denied that she had rushed toward him or raised her fist, saying instead she had walked to him and pointed to the door.

" 'Buddy, get out of my office,' " Bradley said she told Prosser during an interview with a detective on July 12. While saying that, she said in a June 28 interview she was "standing face to face to confront (Prosser)."

She said she specifically remembered using the word "buddy" for a reason.

"Buddy puts me in control and them in the diminutive," she told a detective.

Later, Bradley said, she could recall the contact of Prosser's hands on her neck but no pain or pressure. She did say that she had become emotional after the incident.

The records show Prosser retained Madison lawyer Stephen Meyer to represent him and that Meyer was present for the July 8 interview. No other justices had legal counsel with them during their interviews.

Abrahamson said in her interview with detectives on July 1 that Bradley had walked toward Prosser and that she had not seen Bradley raise her fist, though she may have pointed toward the door or motioned with her hand. When Prosser put his hands on Bradley's neck, the chief justice said she was concerned for Bradley's safety but didn't think Prosser actually squeezed.

"I was shocked at what I saw," Abrahamson said, adding that Bradley "never, never, never touched him and I'm certain of that."

Justice Michael Gableman told detectives in a July 5 interview that Bradley "rushed" to Prosser and punched the air around his face. He described Bradley as being a little bit taller than Prosser and compared Bradley's stance with Prosser to a famous photo of then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson leaning over a shorter, cowed senator.

According to the records, Prosser is 5-feet-9-inches tall and weighs 165 pounds. Bradley is 5-feet-3-inches and weighs 131 pounds.

Yeah.

Two days later, Capitol Police Chief Charles Tubbs and court human resources officer Margaret Brady met with the justices about the incident. Tubbs said that he was there to mediate for the justices and that he wouldn't take notes because they would be a public record. At the meeting, Tubbs asked for a commitment from the justices to avoid any more abuse and told them that in a workplace a man can never put his hands on a woman.

At the meeting, Bradley read a three-page statement about "workplace safety" and said that her husband, Mark Bradley, wanted her to go to court to get a restraining order against Prosser. But she asked if the incident could be dealt with internally instead.

She asked that Prosser seek out counseling, saying he was at times a "wonderful person" but at other times abusive.

"If I cannot get any assurances from you, the court, that this problem is going to be addressed, then I will go to the outside and take other means," Bradley said.

Justice N. Patrick Crooks, the only justice not present at the June 13 altercation, told detectives he had observed blowups by Prosser going back more than a decade. In a June 29 interview, Crooks told detectives that during a meeting sometime around the fall of 1999, Prosser had called him a "viper" for not supporting Abrahamson's re-election campaign and then left the room, slamming the door hard enough to make the glass vibrate. Crooks said Prosser "explodes and storms out of a room" about three or four times a year.

Crooks also recounted to detectives a closed meeting of the justices on Feb. 10, 2010, in which Prosser called Abrahamson a "bitch" and said she would be "destroyed," an incident that Prosser later acknowledged. Crooks said that on Feb. 22, 2010, he and Bradley met with Brady, the courts human resources officer, and John Voelker, the director of state courts, "because they felt there was an escalation" in Prosser's aggression, the records said.

Crooks said after the February 2010 incident Abrahamson described Prosser's behavior to a friend who was a mental health professional to seek advice on whether Prosser was a physical threat. The professional decided he was not.

In her interview, Abrahamson said that Prosser had had "temper tantrums" and that she had tried to deal with them by having the court take 10-minute breaks. She said she had talked to friends and colleagues about how to deal with Prosser's behavior.

And here PDF's of the originals of everybody's statements.
http://www.jsonline.com/news/statepo...128463653.html