Justice Gableman's account of 2nd altercation has serious holes in it

Conservative justice claims Bradley "smacked him" on a date when the Court wasn't present

The recent spat (if you can call it as simple as that) between State Supreme Court Justices Ann Walsh Bradley and David Prosser brought about a lot of questions regarding the integrity of one of the members of our state's highest court. But new allegations -- this time levied by a conservative member against the liberal Bradley -- highlights how others on the Court may have integrity problems as well.

During the investigations against Prosser, Justice Michael Gableman told investigators that Bradley wasn't as innocent in the whole matter as she let on, describing an altercation between Bradley and himself involving a slap on the back of his head in response to disrespect Gableman allegedly showed towards Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson:

According to the sheriff's reports, Gableman said he was in a meeting with other justices, including Justice Patrick Crooks, who he said was "reading the horoscopes." Gableman said he made a joking comment to Abrahamson, calling her by her first name.

In response, Gableman said, "Justice Bradley came over to him, hit him on the back of the head and told him that he needed to show respect to the chief," according to sheriff's reports. He said he believed Bradley wasn't being playful because no one was laughing at the time.

Such allegations, if true, warrant an investigation against Bradley. However, it seems that the allegations made by Gableman can't possibly be true because there was no record of the Court even being in session at that time.

In fact, Gableman is the only justice on the Court that can corroborate this story. The only other justice who says she remembers hearing anything of it, Justice Annette Zeigler, can only do so because she remembers hearing the story from Gableman.

When confronted with this evidence against his claim, Gableman did something even more profound -- he changed the date of when the incident happened! According to his revised statement, the incident occurred in 2009, a year later than when he sad it had happened.

That doesn't stand by other aspects of his story, however, as Gableman told investigators it was a date he remembered "because it was his birthday and just weeks after he joined the court.

If that's how Gableman remembered the date, then it could only have occurred in 2008. If it occurred in 2009, then it was well after he had joined the Court. He either remembered the date that way, through remembering that he had just joined the Court, or he's full of BS.

If Gableman was a witness in his own courtroom, his testimony would have serious holes in it. He'd likely be dismissed by any court, Supreme or otherwise, for changing his story to fix the missing pieces within it. The fact that no other justice on the Court, even those aligned with him ideologically, has come forward defending his story, is further proof that he's likely making it up.

It seems we can't trust many of the Court's sitting justices, namely those on the right, based upon both their behavior and their lying to investigators. It's a sad sight when one of the most respected State Supreme Courts in the country is now one of the most abhorred.