Jensen, Foti lose motions in court
10:10 AM 1/10/03
Ed Treleven Courts reporter

Criminal charges against two top Assembly Republicans and a former aide will continue after a Dane County judge on Friday denied their motions to dismiss the charges.

Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser also turned down a request by lawyers for former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, R-Waukesha, Majority Leader Steven Foti, R-Oconomowoc, and former Foti aide Sherry Schultz to delay a three-day preliminary hearing, slated for next week, while they appeal Moeser's decision.

Attorneys for Jensen, Foti and Schultz sought to dismiss the criminal complaint against them, which charges each with felonies for allegedly conducting campaign activities using taxpayer resources.

The charges stem from an 18-month John Doe investigation that began after a series of stories in the Wisconsin State Journal about alleged illegal campaign activities by the Legislature's now-defunct partisan caucuses.

State Rep. Bonnie Ladwig, R-Mount Pleasant, a co-defendant of Jensen, Foti and Schultz, faces a misdemeanor charge. Sen. Chuck Chvala, D-Madison, and former Democratic Sen. Brian Burke, have been charged with multiple felonies in separate criminal complaints.

Frank Gimbel, Stephen Meyer and Stephen Morgan, attorneys for Foti, Jensen and Schultz, argued that the misconduct statute under which they were charged is unconstitutionally vague and that they shouldn't be prosecuted for doing the jobs they were elected or hired to do, a notion challenged by District Attorney Brian Blanchard.

"The defendants are trying to create the idea that their responsibility to seek re-election protects them from any responsibility to fulfill their duties as public officials, not to abuse the public trust," Blanchard said. "That's a non sequitur. That's really a means and ends argument."

The lawyers also claimed Blanchard inappropriately charged their clients with felonies when their alleged acts were, at most, misdemeanors under state campaign finance and election laws.

In particular, each of the attorneys attacked the complaint because they said it didn't spell out the duties of their clients and what they were doing that was inconsistent with those duties.

But Moeser said, while it takes a little work to discern the duties of the three in the complaint, "reasonable inferences" of them do exist and make it clear that Jensen, Foti and Schultz knew that what they were doing was wrong.

"It is not a duty of employment to use state time, money and resources to solicit money and assist in private campaigns or to direct somebody to do it," Moeser said. "And I think that's easily discernible from the statutes."