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Sonderhouse for the defense

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Another defense attorney is running for office, and Media Trackers has found an unsavory client. Ron Sonderhouse is a Waukesha attorney running for judge against another attorney Mike Maxwell. In an article cross-posted at RightWisconsin, Nathan Schacht reports,

Sonderhouse and his client were able to cut a plea deal with Waukesha County prosecutors in July of last year. The deal included Beardsley pleading no contest to the sexual assault of a child charge with prosecutors agreeing to drop the remaining charges. The plea deal stated prosecutors would ask for an unspecified amount of prison time – with Beardsley being eligible for up to 25 years in prison and 15 years extended supervision. Beardsley would also be considered a sex offender according to the deal.

But despite the acknowledgement that prosecutors would request prison time for the admitted sex offender, Sonderhouse urged the court to consider no prison at all for the crime of impregnating a 14-year-old girl.

At the October 10, 2014 sentencing hearing, Sonderhouse asked for leniency for his client:

I would ask the court to consider a probation type sentence with a sentence hanging over his head that will impress upon him the need to continue to change his behavior and work on the things he needs to do.

Sonderhouse went on to note that Beardsley had already spent 195 days in jail and argued that Beardsley was not likely to go on to commit other crimes.

Let me repeat what I have said before in these cases, including when Susan Happ was running for Attorney General. Nobody likes defense attorneys until they need one. The exception is when they’re watching fictional defense attorneys on television.

Let’s first dispose of the idea that Sonderhouse was asking for no jail time. Beardsley, as Media Trackers reported, already served 195 days in jail. Six months is not a long time, certainly not the ten years Beardsley did get, but there was jail time.

Two, it’s not as if Sonderhouse redefined “sexual predator” or had an inappropriate land deal with the judge. There is no ethical violation here. There’s no even a whiff of hypocrisy here, everyone’s favorite political sin.

Finally, what does Schacht, or anyone else, expect a defense attorney to say? That my client is guilty as hell and should be tied to the giant Golden Guernsey cow down the road and flogged?

I’m sure if Schacht digs he’ll find unsavory cases handled by Mike Maxwell, too. I’m sure in the interest of fairness Schacht is right on that story.

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