David Prosser

Prosser retired from the Wisconsin Supreme Court on July 31, 2016.

The Dane County Sheriff's office gave its findings to county District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, who referred the matter to special prosecutor Patricia Barrett; Barrett ultimately ruled in late August 2011 that the circumstances and evidence reviewed did not support the filing of criminal charges. On March 16, 2012, the Wisconsin Judicial Commission filed an ethics complaint against Prosser, "recommending that the court discipline him for alleged misconduct", however, three conservative members of the court recused themselves from the matter, with the result that no quorum existed, and no decision could be made.

In 2011, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said Prosser is a "reliable judicial conservative, but he's also independent", citing an August 2010 Wisconsin Law Journal analysis which concluded "Prosser voted with no justice more than 85% of the time, though he generally combined with three other conservative justices (Michael Gableman, Patience Roggensack, and Annette Ziegler), to form a 4-3 majority on the court. The New York Times said some observers believe that Prosser is a member of a conservative 4-3 bloc on the court.

Prosser received media attention in 2010 following verbal altercations with the chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and also in June 2011 when allegations were made of a physical altercation between Prosser and a fellow associate justice that occurred in connection with the union-curbing bill. A special prosecutor investigated but declined to press criminal charges. An ethics action against Prosser was recommended by the Wisconsin Judicial Commission, however, after three other justices recused themselves from the matter, no further action was taken.

In 2006, Prosser testified on behalf of Wisconsin State Representative Scott Jensen who was being tried on three felony counts of misconduct in office because his legislative staffers also performed campaign activity on his behalf. Prosser stated that during seven years of his own tenure in the Wisconsin Assembly, he had used his taxpayer-funded staff for campaigning—the same crime Jensen was eventually convicted of. Prosser was not charged, and defended the actions saying, "it was a different era and public expectations were quite different". However critics described this as illegal activity, and the Appleton Post Crescent, Prosser's hometown paper, found Prosser's admissions sufficient reason to endorse Prosser's opponent in the 2011 election, saying Prosser fell short of having the "unimpeachable integrity" required of a high court judge because he had admittedly "condoned illegal activity" while serving as an elected official.

In September 1998, Thompson appointed Prosser to a vacant seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, hailing him as a conservative. In an unusual move, a bipartisan group of 77 of the 132 state legislators sent a letter to Thompson supporting the appointment, describing Prosser as, "learned, thoughtful, and fiercely defensive of our system of law".

Following his graduation from University of Wisconsin Law School, Prosser worked in Washington as an attorney at the U.S. Department of Justice and as an aide to U. S. Representative Harold Vernon Froehlich. Returning to Wisconsin, he began a private practice, worked as a district attorney for two years, then served 18 years as a Republican party legislator in the Wisconsin State Assembly. He was the state house minority leader for six of those years and assembly speaker for two years. After an unsuccessful bid for the U.S. House in 1996, Prosser was appointed by Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson to a vacant seat on the state tax appeals board, then in 1998 to a vacant seat on Wisconsin Supreme Court.

New York Times analyst Nate Silver declared on April 8 that Nickolaus' error pointed to incompetence, not conspiracy. However, Democrats called on Nickolaus to resign, citing her previous employment under Prosser in the mid-1990s as a member of the assembly caucus and questions about her procedures and counts in prior elections. State election officials announced an investigation of possible voting irregularities going back to 2006.

In 1981, he opposed removing criminal penalties on sexual activity and cohabitation between unmarried, consulting adults, though he did express a willingness to repeal the jail terms. He stated that legalizing sex outside of marriage would increase divorce rates, the number of children born outside of wedlock, welfare payments, sexually transmitted diseases, and abortions. In 1995, while he was Assembly Speaker, Prosser led the push for the new baseball stadium for the Milwaukee Brewers, saying that Wisconsin had a choice of being either a "big league or bush league" state.

Prosser served as a member of the Wisconsin Council of Criminal Justice (1980–1983), the Judicial Council Commission on Preliminary Examinations (1981), the Wisconsin Sentencing Commission (1984–1988, 1994–1995), the Wisconsin Sesquicentennial Commission (1993–1999), and the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (1983–1996).

Prosser represented the Appleton area in the Wisconsin State Assembly as a Republican from 1979 through 1996. His committee assignments included Criminal Justice and Public Safety and Judiciary. During his tenure in the Assembly, he served six years as Minority leader and two years as Speaker.

In 1978, while serving as District Attorney of Outagamie County, Prosser declined to prosecute a Catholic priest accused of sexual abuse by two brothers (ages 12 and 14), who said the priest had touched their chests and unsuccessfully attempted to touch lower. Prosser later explained he did not file charges because the case was weak; it involved relatively new sexual assault laws that were untested at the time, and he did not think he could win a jury trial. He said he had assumed the priest, John Patrick Feeney, would be reassigned as a result of his discussion with Feeney's bishop. The priest was not removed from duties which allowed him contact with children, and he went on to abuse other children before being sent to prison on a 15-year sentence in 2004. The prosecutor who ultimately and successfully prosecuted the case in the early 2000s said that when Prosser had the case in the 1970s, he was lacking sufficient information: "We were able to gather a wealth of information that far exceeded what Prosser had," he said, adding, "It's not fair to second-guess him now." When interviewed in 2011 one of the victims said that in 1978 he and his brother had not communicated detailed information about the abuse to the authorities, and that when the case came to trial in 2002, Prosser helped in the prosecution.

Prosser lectured at Indiana University-Indianapolis Law School from 1968 to 1969, before working from 1969 to 1972 in Washington, D.C. as an attorney advisor in the Office of Criminal Justice, U.S. Department of Justice. He ran unsuccessfully for a seat in the Wisconsin General Assembly in 1973, then served as an administrative assistant to U.S. Representative Harold Vernon Froehlich, a Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee from 1973 to 1974 during the Watergate impeachment hearings. After two years in private practice as a self-employed lawyer, Prosser served as Outagamie County district attorney from 1977 to 1978.

Prosser was born in Chicago, Illinois to David T. Prosser Sr. and his wife Elizabeth (Patterson) Prosser, and was raised in Appleton, Wisconsin. After graduating from Appleton High School, he attended DePauw University, receiving his B.A. in 1965. He went on to law school at the University of Wisconsin and received his J.D. in 1968.

David T. Prosser Jr. (born December 24, 1942) is an American jurist and politician who served on the Wisconsin Supreme Court from 1998 to 2016. A former Republican speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Prosser was appointed to the court by Governor Tommy Thompson in 1998, and was elected to his first 10-year term without opposition in 2001. He ran for reelection in April 2011 against little-known Wisconsin assistant attorney general JoAnne Kloppenburg. The race received national attention and was viewed as a referendum on efforts by Republican Governor Scott Walker and the Republican-controlled legislature to curb the union rights of public workers in Wisconsin. The April 5, 2011 election was too close to call until two days later when the Waukesha County Clerk announced she had erroneously omitted more than 14,000 votes from her earlier tally. The additional votes gave Prosser a lead of over 7,000 which was sustained by a later recount.