Just get some things
set. Make sure everything looks good
here.
And then can I have you just say
your name a couple times?
Zoe and Berg.
Okay. Is that about how loud you'll
talk?
Probably. Okay.
Maybe.
Yeah. That sounds like you get
really animated.
Okay, great.
So here's my my openers.
Always. How many languages can you
count to? Ten.
At least two.
I think just two.
Is that Spanish speaking?
The second.
One? No, that's French right?
Okay.
Yeah.
So what is one through two
in French, I don't know.
It's just going to make it onto the
interview because my accent is
appalling.
Under trois.
Thanks. You set me up enough.
And did you get to go to France?
Was part of it.
I studied abroad in France.
Oh. You did?
It wasn't just high school.
Yeah. And then I lived in Montreal.
I went to college in Montreal.
Oh.
That's cool.
Yes.
That. That's the
Paris you can afford to visit.
Exactly. Yes.
Do they have that same atm?
Well, I guess it's changing how
Canadian American relations is
shifting again.
You know, he's had been in Montreal.
Was a little more.
Yeah. Toronto was more welcoming.
That was like the New York, Canada.
So I'm wondering what the the
attitude is now for American
tourists there.
I don't know.
You know, I was a university student
there. And so I lived there and,
you know, really loved it.
But, you know, I think
that there certainly there's a long
history between Anglo and
Francophone people in Canada that
it's not always amicable.
All right. Don't mind me with the
stupid thing. I'm just gonna set it
here, and then we're ready to go
back whenever you're ready.
Once I get that set up,
I could stay put it, like,
at the back of the chair.
I'll just help fill in the side of
your face just a little bit.
Cool.
All right. All set?
All right.
So we see
a lot of television ads these days
for the state Supreme Court race,
when they are all focused on
sentencing issues.
You know, someone let a pedophile go
early with a slap on the wrist or a
wife beater, or they didn't handle
the appeal. Right.
What goes through your mind when you
see those those ads come
across the screen?
Well, the short answer is that
there is a lot of evidence that
shows that when judges
are making decisions in individual
cases,
part of their motivation behind
their decisions is their own
electability, their own
prospects and future election
campaigns, and particularly
the impact that negative ads could
play on those campaigns.
And in particular, the evidence
shows that judicial candidates,
regardless of political affiliation,
regardless of what their
constituencies want, they become
uniformly more punitive
and more pro prosecution.
When or when an election approaches.
So, for example,
there is a lot of evidence that when
judges are approaching an election,
they sentence people more
harshly than they do in other points
in their term.
And there's also a lot of evidence
that shows that negative campaign
ads, in
particular, have a
large impact on how judges make
decisions in cases.
So, for example, in jurisdictions
where a lot of money is being poured
into judicial elections,
where there is a high level
of TV ads and negative
attack ads in judicial races,
judges in those jurisdictions
are more hostile towards defendants
in criminal cases, more punitive
than judges in other jurisdictions.
And I think that this is a real
problem, because it indicates
that judges, when they're making
decisions in individual cases,
they are making those decisions
while thinking about their own
careers.
And they're an out of a
self-preservation interest, not
because they think that that is the
decision that is the most fair or
just outcome in a particular case.
So we
have these two particular candidates
in this in this election,
and there's only so many
spots. The vast majority of
judges around the state know
that they're likely not going to be
Supreme Court candidates.
But does this still effect of them?
You know, I can't comment on any
particular judge or on the
candidates in this race or in this
race in particular.
But in general, judges
run for reelection in this state.
And there is a lot of evidence that
shows that when judges
know that they will have to run for
reelection or run for election
for a new position, that that
prospect of whether they will
be electable in their upcoming
campaign impacts what
decision they're making in
individual cases while they're
sitting on the bench.
Well, I guess let me rephrase that,
because in most of those local
elections or county elections for,
for for a judge, there are
television ads.
Most of those go fly
beneath the radar. Many of them are
unopposed, but there's still that
prospect of become of having to
stand for election.
Most of the races are appearing in
these Supreme Court elections and
not commenting on the individual
candidates. Running
those ads still
affect the mindset of potential
judges or judges everywhere across
the state, even though they're
unlikely to face a barrage million
dollar barrage of ads against them.
Right?
I think that's certainly true, that
all judges are concerned about
reelection, regardless of what sort
of race they'll be running in, and
also election ads
and campaign ads and negative attack
ads influence voters in
all races, even if it's not
necessarily the race that that ad is
being run in.
Why do the negative ads work so
well? What is it about
the ads that talk about,
you know, a light sentence or a slap
on the wrist or all these things?
Why does that strike fear
in voters and make them fear putting
this person on the bench.
I think that's a great question.
I think there's a couple of reasons
why these negative attack ads are so
effective in these judicial races.
You know, one thing I think that is
really important to consider is just
the nature and format of an
ad.
Ads are typically 30 to 60s
long.
They are almost uniformly pro
prosecution.
Painting an opposite an opposing
candidate as being soft on crime.
And typically what they do is they
pull an individual decision or
an individual case and present
maybe the most inflammatory facts
about that case to the viewers,
without providing any of the context
that's really necessary for
understanding why the
outcome of that case may have
actually been appropriate in that
case, or why the judge made that
individual decision.
In that case,
and there's a lot of research that
shows that
voters and members of the public,
they actually don't necessarily
want incredibly punitive sentencing,
but it all depends on what
information they have when
they're judging whether a sentence
is too harsh or too lenient.
So when somebody only has
the headlines, only has, you know,
the crime that somebody was
convicted of and the sentence that
was imposed.
They tend to think that judges
were too lenient and should have
imposed a harsher sentence.
But when a voter or
a member of the public has the full
context, all of the information
that a judge considers when
imposing a particular sentence, so
you know the background of the
person being sentenced, what their
life has been like, the
circumstances of the crime, any
mitigation that may have been
presented to the judge.
Then people actually think
that judges tend to impose sentences
that are too harsh and too punitive.
But in a 32nd AD or a 62nd
AD, it's really difficult to get
that full context.
So all voters have are these
headlines, which tend
to kind of inflame them and make
them want people to be sentence more
punitively.
But you never see an ad saying this
judge imposed way too long of
a sentence on this person.
Why doesn't that work the opposite
direction?
I think that that's it's just a much
more difficult story to tell.
When we're talking about campaign
ads, you know, often
when you're talking about judges who
are too punitive or too harsh,
which I do think that if a voter
again was fully informed, many
voters might think that some judges
are too punitive or too harsh.
Voters tend to prioritize public
safety. They tend to prioritize
crime prevention not necessarily
the most punitive or the most tough
on crime approaches and individual
cases.
But telling a story about a
judge who is too punitive or
too harsh often requires
a lot of information about the
history of mass incarceration in our
society, the impact that that has
had on our communities and on
families.
That is a very difficult story to
tell in 30s or 60s,
but pulling details or information
out of one particular case and
presenting it without context to
viewers, that is a much easier
story to tell within the format of
a campaign ad.
Do you think we could ever see a
case where someone who was
sentenced
comes back a year or two down the
road and says, that judge sentenced
me more harshly than they should
have, because they were about to run
for a high profile office and
they couldn't afford to look after.
My sentence is way out of line, and
it seems a clear straight line
from them being about to run for
office and me getting this harsh
sentence.
I think that certainly could happen.
You know, right now we are
revisiting a lot of the incredibly
punitive sentences that were imposed
back in the 1990s during the tough
on crime era.
You know, I run the
Criminal Defense and Youth Advocacy
Clinic here at UW Law School.
We represent a lot of people who
were convicted and sentenced as
children, you know, 15, 16, 17
years old, back during this era
where judges were imposing
incredibly harsh and punitive
sentences.
And now, as a society, we're
really revisiting that type of
sentencing And
questioning whether that was really
appropriate or just or necessary
at the time. And a lot of people, I
think, have really changed their
opinion about really
excessive sentences, particularly
for children.
And I certainly think that because
we are now more open to that
kind of review of sentencing as a
society, we've seen people who
had these incredibly harsh sentences
imposed, and we've been
able to question whether that was
really appropriate or necessary.
In those cases.
I hope that we are now
open to questioning
incredibly harsh sentences that
judges impose
in.
Is it even more offensive
in the sensibilities of justice
that these campaign ads for
Supreme Court are being run on these
issues when the Supreme Court
doesn't sentence anyone like that?
The disconnect between what they're
actually doing versus what
the campaign is being driven by
could not be wider.
I think that's certainly true.
And I think that this is something
that is just in such an easy way,
and it's such a common way
of attacking judicial candidates,
taking one individual case, one
individual decision, and attacking
an opposition for that
decision, regardless of whether
that's going to be something that
a decision that the candidate is
expected to make in their new
position.
And there have been other states
that have really tried to curb
the influx of these negative and
misleading attack ads
in their Supreme Court elections in
particular.
So, for example, in some states,
candidates have all agreed to run
clean campaigns where
they all agree to refrain
from running misleading, negative
ads against their opponents.
And I think that this is really a
huge step forward to preserving
judicial independence and making
sure that when judges
are making decisions in individual
cases, they are making the
decision that they think is fair
and just and Appropriate
for that case for our communities,
not something that is just the best
decision for their own personal
career.
So what's it like for you personally
when you see some of these ads?
I mean, whether you know the details
of the case or not, is it you like
screaming at your TV or what's that
like?
I think the difficult thing about
watching these ads is that so
much of the context is missing,
and that viewers are not really
being given the information they
need to understand
the outcome of this particular case.
You know, a lot of attack
ads of this nature about individual
cases, about individual decisions
made for judge by judges,
often are attacking judges for
fairly typical decisions that
almost any judge would have actually
made given a
similar case in similar
circumstances.
But because many viewers
of these ads don't spend a lot of
time in criminal courtrooms, they
don't really understand what
is a typical outcome of a case.
And the ad is not giving them that
information.
It comes across very differently
because they're lacking that
context.
So there are.
Fact checks that the newspaper will
run or TV stations occasionally will
do. Trying to give some of that
context, can that in any
way compare in
like the scope or the reach that
the actual campaign had in the
first place?
I certainly think that that's
important to make sure that
campaign ads don't include
misinformation.
However, often I think
what the problem is, is it's not
necessarily the facts in the ad are
incorrect or wrong,
it's just that the context that's
necessary for understanding
this particular decision, this
particular outcome of a case, is
missing from that ad.
And so it's it's, you know,
you can provide that context.
But again, that's a much more
difficult a longer story
to tell that doesn't fit within
a 30 or 60 second AD
in the same way.
You think you might have mentioned
that, you know, you can give some
examples of some people that you
think have been negatively impacted
in this fashion?
Sure, I certainly appeared
in front of judges and worked with
judges who have been the recipients
of negative attention, negative
ads because of individual
decisions that they've made in
particular cases.
You know, I think a fairly common
one is a judge who let
somebody out who is charged
with a fairly minor crime
on on bail.
You know, before their trial.
And then that person, very
foreseeably, is been
charged with a much more serious
crime while out on bail.
And again, that's a decision that
given the facts that were available
to the judge at the time,
it's it's a decision that almost any
other judge would have made to
just given the nature of the
original charges.
But because, you know, this very
unfortunate and unforeseeable thing
happened in this particular case.
That judge is really raked across
the coals by the media, by their
opponents because of that and really
blamed for
what happened.
Again? Pretty unforeseeable.
And you know, the impact of this
is that I think it
it motivates judges to always
on the side of being more punitive
and make decisions, kind of because
in the back of their mind, they're
thinking, what will this case look
like in an election
ad in my next reelection?
And the study that you sent me
looked like it's from the 90s,
principally in Pennsylvania, but
it cumulatively said there were
thousands of years added on,
according to the estimate.
Can you walk me through how how
they can make that conclusion?
Sure. So that was a study that's
that looked at a decade's worth
of sentences imposed in Pennsylvania
by judges in criminal cases.
And they found that when
judges were approaching reelection,
on average, their sentences
became much more punitive and much
longer than at other points
in their term.
And that was true regardless of what
jurisdiction they were running in.
That was true regardless of their
own political affiliation across the
board. Judges became more punitive
as their election approached.
And, you know, they were able to
look because they had such a large
data set. They looked at such a wide
array of cases over such a long
period of time.
They were able to really see how
these trends developed and
point to, I think it was about 2000
years of incarceration over the
space of a decade that was directly
attributable to reelection,
and not just typical sentencing.
And that was a few decades
ago.
Do you think the problem has gotten
any better or gotten worse?
You know, I, I think that that's
hard to say.
I do think that we still
see massive amounts of money being
poured into judicial elections.
And that leads to a lot of
television ads, which
reinforces a lot of these problems
and these fears that judges have
when they're making decisions in
cases.
Again, I think that having judges,
all while running in a race
against each other, agree to refrain
from running misleading ads that
would go a long way towards solving
this problem.
All right.
Walk me through a little bit of what
you do as part of the project.
Is it project?
Is that the correct title for.
So I run a I clinic
here at the law school. Also
as part of the clinic, the Criminal
Defense and Youth Advocacy Clinic,
we represent people in Wisconsin
prisons who were convicted and
sentenced to extreme sentences
as children and young adults,
and the students who
are students here at the law school.
The law students work on these cases
with me.
They represent clients, and they
work to try
to mitigate the sentences,
try to advocate for our clients,
especially in consideration of the
fact that they were children and
young people when they were
originally convicted and sentenced.
And what kind of success have you
seen?
We've seen some success.
We certainly have seen
that sentencing has changed here in
Wisconsin since the 1990s
and early two, thousands and many of
our clients were convicted and
sentenced, though the sorts
of incredibly excessive
sentences that were being handed
down at that time
are not really being imposed today.
In the same way today, we
now understand
a lot more about how children's
brains work, that children
are more impulsive and more reckless
because of their age, because
of their undeveloped brains
than adults, and therefore
much less culpable and much
more capable of rehabilitation.
And one of the problems,
though, is that there's really a
lack of access
to re sentencing here in Wisconsin.
You know, in many other states,
people who were children and
sentenced to extreme sentences back
in the 90s.
They have since been given new
re sentencing hearings, where they
can come back in front of a judge
and challenge the sentence that was
originally imposed based
on kind of this new understanding
that we have about children
and about how children should be
treated when they are charged
with crimes.
And here in Wisconsin, we haven't
had that wave of free sentences,
and there's really no mechanism
that our clients can use to
challenge these original sentences.
Okay.
Can I get you to state and spell
your name and give your title?
Yes. My name is Zoe Ingber.
Zoe emg
BRG, and
I'm an assistant clinical professor
here at UW Law School and the
director of the Criminal Defense and
Youth Advocacy Clinic.
All right. Anything else you want to
add that might be missed?
No.
Great. Thank you so much.
So much.
If you want to hold still for just a
bit, you want to get some room to.
Yeah, that just maybe like 10s or
so.
Okay. We'll just be quiet and listen
to the room.
That's probably enough.
Great.