The Sconi

Mark Belling, a talk radio host on 1130 WISN, recently said that Judge Jennifer Dorow, who presided over the trial of the Waukesha Christmas parade attacker, will be running for Wisconsin Supreme Court. Although Dorow is most well known for the Christmas parade attack trial, throughout her career she has represented a former law enforcement officer charged with child sex crimes and a 17-year-old accused of murdering his grandfather with an ax. She also stayed prison sentences for people including a life coach who was accused of telling his client to get naked and masturbate in front of him.

"Waukesha County Circuit Judge Jennifer Dorow will run for state Supreme Court," Belling wrote in a Nov. 29 Twitter post.

The next day, Dorow, who received much media attention for presiding over the trial of the Waukesha Christmas parade attacker who was convicted of killing six people, announced that she was running for Wisconsin Supreme Court, Channel 3000 reported.

Judge Dorow said during her first campaign speech, “I am a judicial conservative who believes it is the job of a judge to apply the law as it is written to the facts of a case and not try and bend the Constitution and statutes to what I would like them to say." Dorow spoke highly of Pat Roggensack, the retiring conservative justice whom she is seeking to replace, saying Roggensack demonstrated "consistent and reliable leadership as a jurist dedicated to the rule of law.”

Dorow's record is not without controversy. 

In 2012, she secured a plea deal for Terrence Greenwald, age 57, who was accused of sexually assaulting two children related to him, according to a TMJ4 article shared by Police, Prostitution, and Politics. Greenwald, a former Waukesha County sheriff's deputy, was charged with six felony sex crimes and could have faced dozens of years in prison, but Dorow's plea deal got all felonies reduced to misdemeanors. 

"It's a fabulous offer," Dorow said at the time. "It avoids felony convictions, it avoids prison." 

Relatives of the children were less enthusiastic about the plea deal. The children's grandfather said, "And him being a retired deputy, at the Waukesha County Sheriff's department, it's outrageous. That guy should be taken out in the back and just pounded to a pulp." The children's mother said of the plea deal, "It takes considerable restraint, and only because of my job and my kids and the fact that I don't want to go to jail, I haven't done anything." The criminal complaint alleged that Greenwald had begun abusing the children, one boy and one girl, when they were 6 and 8 years old, and continued the abuse for more than 10 years until they finally told their mother.

When Dorow was appointed by former Gov. Scott Walker in 2011, Dorow's law firm's website stated that she specialized in defending people accused of sex crimes, according to a post on WisCommunity. The website stated, "Our lawyers have an impressive track record. Attorney Jennifer Dorow is a former Waukesha County prosecutor who has firsthand knowledge about how prosecutors handle child sex abuse cases. We defend against child sex crime accusations involving: Child pornography, child solicitation, including internet solicitation of a minor, child enticement, statutory rape, sexual assault of a minor, sexual exploitation of a minor, prostitution and internet stings." That webpage has since been removed.

Dorow also represented 17-year-old Richard Wilson, who was accused of killing his grandfather with an ax at the grandfather's home, but Dorow was replaced by a different attorney after Wilson's family made a substitution request, according to the Wisconsin Law Journal.

In 2021, Dorow stayed the prison sentence of a man who was convicted of sexual exploitation by a therapist, sentencing him to probation instead, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The criminal complaint in the case alleged that a woman had contacted Rogers Memorial Hospital and asked to be connected with a life coach. Rogers connected the woman with 59-year-old Christopher Gilbert. Gilbert came to the woman's home in May 2020, and during the course of the meeting, the woman told him that she struggled with saying "no," particularly when flirting with men. Gilbert then told the woman to put on a dress, and she did so, but he asked if there was something "more sexy" she could wear. The woman changed her outfit several times, until Gilbert instructed her to get naked. She said no, and Gilbert reportedly responded, "OK, so you do know how to say the word 'no.'" The complaint said that Gilbert also tried to get the woman to masturbate in front of him. The woman subsequently reported the incident to the Village of Pewaukee Police Department.

The state's Supreme Court primary election will take place Feb. 21, and the general election will take place April 4, according to PBS. Former conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Dan Kelly is also running for the open seat, as well as liberal circuit court judges Everett Mitchell of Dane County and Janet Protasiewicz of Milwaukee County.