In Madison, Wisconsin, state Attorney General Josh Kaul reignited a past conflict on Monday with Brad Schimel, a conservative candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court race. This clash stems from delays in processing sexual assault evidence kits dating back almost ten years. Kaul, a Democrat, previously defeated Schimel, a Republican, in the 2018 attorney general race. During that campaign, Kaul criticized Schimel for taking over two years to test around 4,000 evidence kits, which remained unexamined in police departments and hospitals.
Now, Schimel faces Susan Crawford in the Supreme Court race, and Crawford has been critical of Schimel’s management of the kits in her campaign advertising. During a Democratic Party-organized news conference, Kaul revived the issue, asserting that Schimel failed to effectively oversee the testing initiative and wrongly claimed the project was finished, leaving hundreds of kits for Kaul’s administration to test. Kaul argued that state Supreme Court justices need to exhibit honesty, suggesting Schimel lacked transparency concerning the handling of these evidence kits.
In a defense presented prior to the 2018 election, Schimel explained that the Justice Department required time to sort and catalog the kits, and faced challenges in finding private labs to manage the backlog, as national labs were already handling untested kits from various states. Jacob Fisher, the spokesperson for Schimel’s Supreme Court campaign, stated that Schimel had pioneered a significant initiative to address the testing and accused Kaul of politicizing the matter.
Scheduled for April 1, the Supreme Court race between Schimel and Crawford is of high stakes in Wisconsin, a battleground state. Although the election is officially nonpartisan, Schimel has GOP backing, while Democrats support Crawford. The election will be pivotal, deciding control over issues like abortion rights, union power, voting regulations, and legislative boundaries.
Crawford’s supporters are leveraging national figures like Elon Musk to challenge Schimel. America PAC, linked to Musk and influential in Trump’s administration, has invested $3.2 million in digital ads, mailers, and outreach to back Schimel. Meanwhile, Musk-funded Building America’s Future has directed over $2 million towards TV ads criticizing Crawford.
Back in 2014, the Wisconsin Justice Department identified around 6,800 untested sexual assault kits. These delays occurred for various reasons, such as weak cases or uncooperative victims, according to Schimel’s administration. This issue wasn’t exclusive to Wisconsin; a 2015 USA Today Network investigation revealed approximately 70,000 untested kits nationwide, spurring advocacy group demands for complete kit analysis to potentially identify serial offenders.
As the attorney general in 2015, Schimel secured a $4 million federal grant to initiate testing in Wisconsin, though actual testing only commenced in January 2017. By September 2018, Schimel announced that his administration had processed 4,150 kits, declaring the project concluded. He opted not to test the remaining kits due to victims’ lack of consent for analysis or prior convictions. Kaul’s administration later completed testing the leftover 300 kits by November 2019, revealing the incomplete work left by Schimel’s team.
