MADISON — Last week, Madison grieved the senseless murder of 11-year-old Anisa Scott, the latest senseless murder in an increasingly violent city.
Anisa’s parents had to make the nightmarish decision to remove their beautiful daughter from life support — less than two days after she was shot in the head while riding in a vehicle on the city’s east side. The driver was targeted in the shooting. The thugs missed, instead hitting a little girl who was days away from starting sixth grade.
At a press conference on the eve of Anisa’s passing, the Rev. and Dane County Circuit Court Judge Everett Mitchell (he’s also a pastor at a Madison church) urged community members who know the killers to step forward, “That they do what a community is supposed to do and let the community know justice for Anisa can be done first.”
Of course, there may be little justice for any crime victim in the revolving door that is the Dane County judicial system.
Mitchell and his fellow liberal judges are big on “restorative justice” requiring convicts to make amends for their crimes and change their ways rather than doing time.
Mitchell made headlines as the University of Wisconsin’s director of community relations when he said prosecutors should go easy on shoplifters at “big box” stores.
“I just don’t think that they should be prosecuting cases … for people who steal from Wal-Mart,” Everett said. I don’t think Target or all them other places, the big boxes that have insurance, that they should be using … the fact that people steal from there, justification to start engaging in aggressive police practices.”
As a judge, Mitchell has been a “social justice” activist on the bench, handing out light sentences — or no sentences — to repeat offenders.
So have his liberal pals. Judges Juan Colás, Shelley Gaylord, Julie Genovese, to name a few. The lineup, up until recently included Judge Jill Karofsky, who this month began a 10-year term on the state Supreme Court.
Former Madison Police Chief Mike Koval took aim at the county’s juvenile “justice” system, asserting in an October 2018 blog that police see a “plethora of reasons why it is failing.” He pointed to a 13-year-old Madison boy who was suspected of viciously attacking a 59-year-old woman before stealing her car. One of too many such incidents as Madison faces a growing gang problem. The boy had 10 contacts with the police over six months, according to a Madison PD spokesman.
“What about accountability?” Koval wrote.
There seems to be little accountability in the social justice laboratory of the Dane County Courthouse.
Which brings us back to 11-year-old Anisa.
Perion Carreon, 19, is one of two male suspects facing charges of first-degree intentional homicide and attempted first-degree intentional homicide as party to a crime in connection with the death of the girl. Carreon has been in and out of the Dane judicial system repeatedly over the past two years — according to Empower Wisconsin’s review of court records.
He’s been charged with felony burglary, resisting arrest, bail jumping, battery, domestic abuse, and operating a vehicle without consent. On the latter charge, Carreon is a repeat offender many times over, his latest charge just last month. He was out on $500 cash bail at the time of the shooting.
Judge Julie Genovese presided over all but one of Carreon’s cases over the period, according to the review. Court records show charge after charge either dismissed or dismissed but read into the record.
Can Anisa’s parents, the community, Judge Mitchell expect justice in a system that is this criminally negligent?
Mitchell told community members that this tragic and senseless murder is “a reminder to hold your babies tight tonight. … No parent should have to have the anguish of this moment.”
More will if Dane County doesn’t fix its broken judicial system and get serious about removing activist restorative justice tools from the bench.
The liberal judges that have done so much damage to law and order in Madison are, as a group, Empower Wisconsin’s Tool of the Week.
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