A homeless sex offender at the center of the Wisconsin Supreme Court election on April 3 was arrested again last Thursday. Donald Skenandore, who was just given two years in jail for sexually assaulting minor children by Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Rebecca Dallet, was arrested for failing to meet the terms of his conditional release and supervision.
The arrest of Skenandore was first reported by WISN’s Mark Belling and confirmed in other media sources. According to the report by Belling, Skenandore “was arrested and taken into custody Thursday evening (March 29) outside a bar and restaurant on West Wisconsin Avenue in Milwaukee near the James Lovell intersection. He was taken in for a violation of the terms of the extended supervision handed to him in Dallet’s controversial 2011 sentence.”
Dallet, a liberal, is a candidate for the Supreme Court in the election on April 3. Her opponent is Sauk County Judge Michael Screnock, a conservative.
The Skenandore case has been the focus of criticisms of Dallet’s soft-on-crime approach. He was given two years in prison and five years of extended supervision in 2011, as recommended by the Milwaukee District Attorney’s office. That’s nowhere near the 20 years Skenandore could have been given.
At the sentencing, Dallet said she considered the harm done to the child victims.
“In looking at the factors that I do look at, the ages of these children were pretty young,” Dallet said in her sentencing decision according to the transcript. “As I said before, they were seven or eight. There wasn’t an extreme amount of harm. There wasn’t intercourse.”
Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce (WMC) have been running a controversial television advertisement that highlights the horrific nature of the crime by saying the relationship of the victims to Skenandore. Despite calls from Dallet’s allies and the victims’ family, WMC is unwilling to take the ad down because the information was already publicly available.
According to Belling, Skenandore was arrested for multiple violations of the conditions for his supervised release.
“He was in custody for four months until March 15 for violations including alcohol use and not reporting to his agent. After his release, he failed to charge the battery on GPS ankle bracelet and did not report to his agent. A warrant for his pick-up has been out for days. He was found last night on West Wisconsin Avenue and is in the Milwaukee County Jail.”
Under the sentence from Dallet, Skenandore is currently scheduled to be released from extended supervision at the end of this year.
