Richard Westley: [inaudible 00:00:04] about five minutes and double-check. I just have certain items that we talked about starting as a Leave It To Beaver young man in Madison in the 50s and 60s, high school, college, UW. And then from there we'll got to your law school, military, back to law school. By they way, I have a question for you. Didn't you graduate in '74?

John Albert: Yeah.

Richard Westley: So, this will be your 50th year?

John Albert: Yeah.

Richard Westley: Did you get recognition?

John Albert: I got a thing from the Bar.

Richard Westley: Oh, you did?

John Albert: Yeah.

Richard Westley: Oh, I didn't see it, but it's a long list. I might have missed it. Okay, good. They're pretty thorough about that. Okay, then start off with your first few years of practice, which was private practice, right?

John Albert: Yeah.

Richard Westley: Madison with Smoller, was it?

John Albert: No, private practice was four years with the Dane County Legal Services Center, which was the precursor of the State Public Defender. I was there from '74 to '78, and then was a State Public Defender [inaudible 00:01:30] Dane County Legal Services. [inaudible 00:01:33] Smoller-Albert at that time. I can't remember the other lawyer but-

Richard Westley:

I just got a brief statement at the beginning here. Good afternoon, I'm Attorney Richard Westley, and it is my privilege today to conduct an interview, today being July 10th, 2024, with esteemed judge and distinguished member of the Dane County Bar Association, John Albert. This interview is conducted under the auspices of the DCBA History and Memorials Committee in an effort to preserve the distinguished history of this organization. So, I suggest we start with your upbringing in Madison and I'll guide you through from there.

John Albert: All right. I was born in 1946 when my dad returned from World War Two. He was an engineer in the Navy. I grew up on the West side of Madison on a street called Alden Drive. The Sunset Hills neighborhood was the neighborhood. I went through grades one through six at Our Lady Queen of Peace School, and then the West Side was expanding very quickly, so the next school I went to was seventh grade at Cherokee High School on Lincoln Boulevard. I went to eighth grade at Van Hise Middle School, also on the West Side. And then, instead of West High School, I went to Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart. I graduated from Edgewood in 1964 and began attending the University of Wisconsin. I actually was in pre-med for a while and I wanted to be a doctor, but that didn't work out because I didn't do very well on the Medical College Admission Test.

And so in 1969, when I found out I wasn't being accepted into any medical school, I quickly wrote the SAT which is the... LSAT, the Law School Admission Test, and I got a letter inviting me to join in the 1969 class at UW Wisconsin Law School. During the first year, I was the lucky recipient of a draft notice to serve in the Army. This was toward the tail end of the Vietnam War. So, I asked them if they could defer my entering into the Army for one year. They let me go until the spring of 1970, and that begins my law school career. So, that's the background that brings me to my legal career.

Richard Westley: Okay. So, you started law school what year?

John Albert: 1969.

Richard Westley: And how many years did you attend before entering the military?

John Albert: Well, it's the fall of '69, spring of '70. I entered the military in July of 1970. I went through basic training at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and went to advanced individual training at Fort [inaudible 00:05:04], Oklahoma, and in the school they taught the operation of the FADAC, the field artillery directional computer. So, what we were learning to do was how to punch data into the computer and control the elevation and the coordinates for the 105 howitzer cannons. After doing that until November of 1970, I was sent to Vietnam. Sorry, I was to the Oakland Shipping Station to be in-country at Christmastime 1970. We went out to Oakland, California and they put us on hold. Come to find out, there was enough 71 echo 20s, I believe that was the MOS, the military occupational specialty, and they didn't need us anymore.

So, they put us on hold for 10 days. As Christmas approached, they had to send us someplace because the best place, the best time to attack the United States [inaudible 00:06:22] all the military installations stateside. And we got orders to report a fort in Washington, I think Fort Lewis, what it was. Yes, so we went to Fort Lewis, and then shipped us up to Alaska, so I got in Alaska January of 1970.

Richard Westley: And you had a two-year career in the Army?

John Albert: Well, when I got to Alaska I was still in the artillery unit and in other words that meant we would go out in the field and shoot the howitzer 105 at the Russians because our mission in Fairbanks, Alaska, was to defend against a Russian infantry invasion over the North Pole. Now, as silly as that sounds, and I think it sounds pretty silly because the temperature would average between 20 and 40 below in the winter in Fairbanks, I thought that a real [inaudible 00:07:26] Fairbanks was to be a lifeblood economically of Fairbanks, Alaska. So, I was in the barracks one night, [inaudible 00:07:34] January, 1970, and a couple of guys came to my room and knocked on the door and said, "John Albert?" And I said, "Yes."

And they said, "We are..." It was Jerry Wozniak and Richard Hill, and they said, "We're leaving legal clerks at the... We're legal clerks here on base and we're losing one of our legal clerks. We see that you have a year of law school, would you like to be a legal clerk at the brigade JAG Corp, the Judge Advocate General? Go to work at 8:00 in the morning, get done with work 4:30 at night? Or would you like to spend your time on field exercises in tents with a heater out in the boondocks at 32 below?"

Richard Westley: And that was a tough decision for you, I'm sure.

John Albert: I said, "I would prefer to be a legal clerk," and he said, "All right, you're hired."

Richard Westley: Did you spend the entire two years on active duty?

John Albert: No, actually. What happened then was Nixon was withdrawing troops from Vietnam when they did a year, so when your year was up you got sent home. Well, the benefit of that was you had a lot of soldiers back here who didn't have anything to do, so they announced a program that if you were partway through with your education and you could get a letter from the university or the educational institution that you had been attending, they would let you out after 18 months. So, they let me out after 18 months. I got in February of 1972 having served 14 months in the land of the chosen frozen and went to law school for my third semester in the spring of 1972.

Richard Westley: Okay. And you graduated and got your law degree in 1974?

John Albert: Right. I did 1972 spring semester, '72, '73, and then 1974 I did the fall semester, and graduated in 1974.

Richard Westley: So, that would make you a 50-year lawyer?

John Albert: Yes, that's true.

Richard Westley: Well, congratulations on that. I've got a year to go yet.

John Albert: Oh, thank you, Dick.

Richard Westley: I'm right behind you.

John Albert: Okay. So, after law school, tell us about your early years of practice? Well, jobs were hard to come by, frankly, at that time. Everybody wanted to be a lawyer. I was clerking in a private firm and I got that job through my wife who was the legal secretary for Geisler and Shea, who had their offices on West Washington Avenue in the AAA Building. And Bob Shea was great lawyer and used to employ two or three law clerks. So, I was one of the law clerks until the spring of 1974 at which time I advised the... answered an advertisement for a position at the Dane County Legal Services Center, which was a pro bono, in other words free to the clients.

Richard Westley: Indigent clients.

John Albert: Indigent, yes. And we did criminal defense. We did juvenile defense. We did bankruptcies and divorces. And there were seven lawyers. We weren't making very much. I think it was $1,000 a month, and I went to work in the juvenile division, and I quickly expanded into the criminal division. Then, from 1974, '75, '76, well, actually up until 1978, I did that job.

Richard Westley: Okay. And then at that time did you get into private practice?

John Albert: Yes. In 1978 the State Public Defender was going to grandfather in all of the smattering of sort of mom-and-pop pro bono legal services around Wisconsin, and I decided that I should try private practice before going with the State. So, I went with Smoller, Albert, and, I can't remember his name, Tom whatever. Anyway, I practiced there. I practiced solely litigation during those four years. I represented some... I'm sorry. I'm thinking about something else. '78 to '88 I did private practice, personal injury, some divorces, some juvenile. And then in 1988 our firm had to split up because my partner, Bill Smoller, had a very huge medical malpractice case. It went by the slang term of a blue baby case. The doctor in charge of the delivery had noticed on the fetal monitor the baby was in distress but he had something else he thought more important, so he told the nurse to turn the monitor off and he went wherever it was that was his social or business or social obligation, whatever, and the baby was born brain-damaged because of lack of oxygen.

So, Bill Smoller went with Ray Shea. I went with [inaudible 00:13:21] by the name of Eustace... I'm sorry, Olick, Brill, and Eustace. And Jack Aulik ran for judge shortly before I got there, so I was put on the door as Smoller, Albert, Sobranek, I can't remember the other lawyers, and did criminal cases, civil cases, some unusual cases. I think one of the things we did was, because we were at that time in 1988, '89, '90, [inaudible 00:14:01] was still a largely agricultural-based economy, so we represented a fertilizer and feed operation out of Iowa called Terra Chemical.

And one of the cases I remember doing for Terra is that a farmer had bought corn from them and planted it, and then he didn't get the yield that he wanted, and he owed Terra Chemical $40,000. And he said, "I'm not going to pay because I didn't get the yield that I wanted." Well, we had an agronomist as our expert witness and other side had an agronomist as their expert witness. And our agronomist was head-and-shoulders above the other expert and we won the case. But I learned about things like plant counts, which is how many plants you have in a three-foot-by-three-foot plot. And, if you had too many plants, the plants the strangled each other competing for nutrients. Well, he had plant counts that were just off the chart. He also didn't using herbicide or insecticide because he said it made him sick. Well, that's described as a farmer, but if you don't used herbicides or insecticide on your crops, you don't get much of a yield.

He also was harvesting, and I can't remember what the problem was with his harvester, but he was losing some of the yield out the back of the combine. So, his yields were understandably subpar and the judge, which was Judge William Johnston then, agreed with us that basically his low yields were his own fault and he owes $40,000.

Richard Westley: Oh, it was Johnson [inaudible 00:15:57]?

John Albert: Yes.

Richard Westley: Okay.

John Albert: And you know the story there.

Richard Westley: Well, I do, and it's probably too long a story to get into today, but you're talking about the murder of his partner.

John Albert: I can tell it very quickly. A lawyer [inaudible 00:16:11] calls Judge Johnson. Judge Johnson was not highly regarded by the legal community or the population of guys in-

Richard Westley: Well, it was McDonald, right?

John Albert: Judge McDonald, excuse me.

Richard Westley: Okay.

John Albert: And McDonald got beat by the other lawyer. And the Saturday morning after the election he went to Johnston and that lawyer's law firm, [inaudible 00:16:42] Johnston, kills the other partner. And when he was charged with homicide, they went to arrest him and the Sheriff of Lafayette County came to the door and he said, "You don't have the power to arrest me." So, he had to leave and go get the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Justice Department to arrest him.

Richard Westley: And a fascinating case, and one that continued. He ended up serving a life sentence, I believe-

John Albert: Yes.

Richard Westley: ... and had numerous mental issues.

John Albert: And he squirreled all of his medication that he was on for his mental illness and he took it all at once and committed suicide in prison.

Richard Westley: Okay. We don't have judges like that anymore, I don't think, John. We might have a few.

John Albert: No, we don't.

Richard Westley: Okay. Now, at some point you became interested in the judiciary?

John Albert: Yes.

Richard Westley: How did that come about? You ended up on the bench. Tell us the path you took to get there.

John Albert: Well, in, I think, '97, '98, and '99, some vacancies occurred on the Dane County Bench. I filled out the 25-page form putting my hat in the ring, so to speak. And one year my competition was Maryann Sumi. She got the job, I didn't. Another year, my competition was Steve Ebert, Bill Phelps, and me, and Steve Ebert got the job. The next time it was me and two other Democrats, but Tommy Thompson was suspicious that they were clearly Democrats. He wasn't sure about me, so he appointed me and that's how I got on the bench.

Richard Westley: Managed to keep your politics totally under the table so nobody would know?

John Albert: At that time, I did.

Richard Westley: Okay. Now, so you were appointed, and then did you have to run for reelection?

John Albert: Yes. The first year I went to the Elections Board and waited to see if anybody else filed nomination papers against me, and I hadn't heard that anybody was so discouraged with me that they wanted to run against me. And about 10 minutes before the closing bell at 4:00, Attorney Koua Vang came in with his nomination papers and said he was running for my seat and registering. The press interviewed him and they asked him why he was running against Judge Albert, and he said, oh, he really didn't know me but he was very proud because his father, I think, or his brother, one or the other, had fought in Vietnam on the side of the United States and he came to America as a 'Nam refugee, graduated from law school, and just wanted to have the experience of running for judge.

So, he ran for judge against me. I was endorsed by the Capital Times and the State Journal. I had the support of the Bar. He skipped a public forum that the Bar held for the judicial candidates, didn't even appear, and then when the election was held I had 78% of the vote and he got 22% of the vote. The day after the election, because I was the establishment candidate endorsed by both papers and endorsed by the Bar, all of the people who had liberal leanings on the Isthmus voted for Koua Vang. And I got an email from Judge Moeser about the 17,000 votes that Koua Vang got, and email said, "Judge Albert, how can 17,000 people be wrong?"

Richard Westley: And he was a wise jurist, for sure. So, you served a total of seven years?

John Albert: No, 15 years.

Richard Westley: Oh, is it a 10-year term?

John Albert: Six-year term.

Richard Westley: So you must have run a second time?

John Albert: In the judge post.

Richard Westley: Okay.

John Albert: So, I served three six-year terms, '99 through 2015, and we had [inaudible 00:21:30] in the third term. So, a 15-year term on the bench in Branch Three. While I was there, we would divide into criminal, civil, and juvenile, and I chose, because nobody wanted it, the juvenile division, and served six years in the juvenile division. And then, because I had done that, Judge Foust, the Chief Judge, granted me my first wish as to where I wanted to go, and I said I wanted to go to civil, and I went to civil and served out the rest of my term. I think it was 10 years or whatever in the civil division.

Richard Westley: Now, once you left the bench, did that end your legal career? Or did you continue serving as a judge?

John Albert: Were you going to ask me about any political cases?

Richard Westley: Well, I'll get to that in a minute, but I wanted to understand your-

John Albert: Sure. I retired in May of 2015, and after that I was a reserve judge. I did reserve judging actually down in Lafayette County. I did a reserve judging for Judge Daly in Rock County. I did a reserve judging in Vilas County for Judge Moore. Yeah, Judge Moore and then Judge Chuck... I can't remember Chuck's last name. And then the court administrator for that district called me up and said, "We have a horribly messy case in Marathon County, Wausau. Several judges have quit the case. The defendant has hired seven lawyers, and now we need a new judge to try that case. The case will run about a week and you'd have to stay at a nice hotel in Wausau, Wisconsin." I said, "Okay, I'll do it." So, I went out and I got into the courtroom and Judge Grau had recused himself. The crime scene was just... Oh, this is well-documented because it went to the Court of Appeals.

Richard Westley: [inaudible 00:23:55].

John Albert: Yes. And at that time there was a... I think his seventh lawyer was a lawyer from fairly far away from Wausau who had to travel a long distance in order to represent him. And after a few weeks of that, they weren't getting along and [inaudible 00:24:21]. I can't remember the lawyer's name. So, he said, "I want a new lawyer." Well, I did some research and I found out that there was a case in Wisconsin whereby if you met certain criteria, in other words if the record was clear of discharging lawyer after lawyer after lawyer, the defendant would be required to act as his own counsel. So, after learning about that, we had a court hearing and I said, "Mr. Smith, I'm going to grant your request. You're going to get a new lawyer, and that lawyer is you, because the record indicates that you have forfeited your rights to representation by indigent attorneys given what you've managed to do to irritate every lawyer in Wausau and some outside of Wausau."

So, we tried the case [inaudible 00:25:24]. He had a self-defense case. He said that his girlfriend, who he had beaten badly, attacked him first. It turns out that we took some testimony on his side of the case and it became real clear that he had actually attacked her. Sorry, the [inaudible 00:25:52] services said that the Derek Smith was clearly the aggressor in that case, so when it came time to [inaudible 00:25:58] he had sharing, and I said, "Do I understand that you plan to use self-defense?" He said, "I'm going to." And I said, "Well, the testimony is overwhelming without any contrary testimony at all that you were the attacker, so I'm not going to let you present your self-defense defense." And he was convicted. The case went to the Court of Appeals and assigned it to some kind of review and no-merit was filed against it.

Richard Westley: Did you see differences in the judiciary between the remote regions of Northern Wisconsin versus Dane County?

John Albert: Well, yes. I stopped in when I went to a friend's County which was Phillips, and told them that I was going to be a reserve judge for a while. Actually, what happened was the judge that resigned was not appointed for some months, and so I was a reserve judge in [inaudible 00:27:14], Wisconsin three days a week, and actually, it was Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And I stopped in to introduce myself to the Chair of the County Board who was also the Chair of the Republican Party of Portage County at the time. Clearly, there was a different political atmosphere in Portage County than in Dane County. I would call it very conservative, although the DA was a Democrat for some reason. And so it was kind of I would get some unusual cases.

One was I was asked to sign a search warrant by a State of Wisconsin DNR warden because there was someone who was going into the Chequamegon National Forest and cutting down small birch trees of about the diameter of a baseball bat and [inaudible 00:28:11] them to craft stores that have Christmas artifacts for a profit. And, of course, it was illegal to harvest trees from the State Forest without getting a permit from the... I can't remember if it was the Parks Service or the National Forest Service. I think it was the National Forest Service. So, I think what he wanted to do was put a little clamp under his vehicle, his truck, and then watch where it went. And when it went out in the country and stopped for a while, and then went a little ways and stopped for a while, and went a little ways and stopped for a while, they could catch him harvesting birch trees where he was harvesting [inaudible 00:28:56].

Richard Westley: Interesting. Now getting back to your days on the Dane County bench, if you're a judge for any length of time, which you definitely were, you're bound to get some political cases. Was that true in your case?

John Albert: It was. I got a significant political case in 2010. Governor Walker was pursuing, I guess, for lack of a better term, union-busting, and it enraged Madison's liberal population. And they went and they took over the Capitol. And there were 7,500 people in the Capitol [inaudible 00:29:45] very quickly. And one Monday morning the court administrator came into my office. She had a sort of grin on her face and her hands behind her back. And I said, "What's so humorous here?" She said, "Well, the more liberal faction or segment of Dane County has sued the State for not having the Capitol open, and you have the job of getting 7,500 people out of the Capitol." So, I said, "Okay. Set aside my calendar," and we took three or four days testimony on that. And we heard that the Capitol was being damaged by the number of people that were there. I guess there was some vandalism going on, but very minimal.

And so I heard all the testimony and I had Mike, maybe it begins with K, I can't remember, and I said... He might have been the... He was the Director of the Department of Administration. And I said, "Mr. K, has the Capitol ever been closed to the public to this degree ever?" He said, "No, it never has." So, I ordered that the Capitol reopened. That was on a Thursday. I gave them until Monday morning to keep it closed to clean it, and they were to reopen Monday morning and let the people in. Both sides sort of saw that as a win. I told the people that closed the capitol they had to reopen it. I told the people that were in the capitol, "The capitol is open to the public under reasonable business hours from 8:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night. It is improper and illegal to camp in the capitol. You cannot sleep in the capitol. You have to get out at closing time. So, you have until night tonight to get out of the capitol." And they did.

They cleared out voluntarily, although evidently they had a lot of encouragement from the Capitol Police. So, I can't remember his name. I think is name was Stutz. And the famous attorney was an attorney general, a female attorney general. What was her... Do you remember the female attorney general for years?

Richard Westley: Oh, from Fond du Lac?

John Albert: Yeah.

Richard Westley: I know who you mean.

John Albert: Okay. She ends up... Captain Stutz convinced their clients to leave the capitol immediately.

Richard Westley: Any other political experiences as a judge? Or did you get your fill with that one case?

John Albert: There were some cases after that, but they were handled by Judge Flanagan and Judge Sumi. I was fortunate enough not to draw any more cases like that.

Richard Westley: Okay. Now I would like you to address, however you care to do it, your family life, briefly.

John Albert: Okay. As I said, Queen of Peace from grades one to six, Cherokee in grade seven, Van Hise for the four years of high school, Edgewood High School of the Sacred Heart. I met a... Well, I'd known her for some time prior to that because she was also a classmate at Queen of Peace, her name was Ginger Wagner. We started dating spring of 1964. We actually got married in 1968. I had actually had one child when I was drafted, and she came up to Alaska in March with our child, Megan, and got a job as a legal secretary. So, they had spent some days in Alaska at 40 below zero. And then, when we came back, I got an apartment on the East Side, and then we bought a house on the East Side, and then we had a second child, Sarah. I spent way too much time at Legal Services Center of Dane County, and that probably doomed our marriage. We got divorced. 1975 did we get divorced? Probably.

And then I, 15 years later, well, actually maybe 10 years or so, I met a court reporter in the courthouse. It was a [inaudible 00:35:14] from Fond du Lac. She was a nice court reporter, and in order to get to meet her I ordered a preliminary hearing transcript for $25 which I didn't need, but I got to go pick it up from her, so that worked out. We had one child in 1965, 1995 excuse me, and that's Austin. Austin is now 29. He's in the second year of residency at the Medical Hospital of San Diego, just started a career as a plastic surgeon. So, 37 years together, but I think I was married to her in 1989, so that would be 35 years. 14 minus nine is [inaudible 00:36:02].

Richard Westley: [inaudible 00:36:01].

John Albert: 35 years.

Richard Westley: Well, and I know that Ann is very well known in the Dane County Courthouse because of her court reporting, and I know that she had transcribed some of these interviews, though we're now doing it all on tape. But when she did [inaudible 00:36:23] it was transcribed, and it was all voluntary from what I understand.

John Albert: Yeah. And she also transcribed some World War Two declarations of [inaudible 00:36:29] service.

Richard Westley: Oh, really?

John Albert: Yes.

Richard Westley: Interesting. Well, John, I think we've covered the high points, though we could go on and on, but is there anything else you'd like to leave for posterity?

John Albert: Well, during the first two years of my legal career, politics in Wisconsin was much different than it is now. People cooperated to try to get a law passed that benefited the greatest good, legislators were cordial to each other. Things are far different now and it's actually somewhat frightening as to how [inaudible 00:37:26] this country has become, including Wisconsin. But I make no bones about the fact that I voted for Biden. I'll have to vote for him again because I'm deadly fearful of a second Trump administration.

Richard Westley: Okay.

John Albert: That's all she wrote.

Richard Westley: Well, thank you. I appreciate it, and we'll add you to the roster of [inaudible 00:37:55] in Dane County.

John Albert: Thank you very much [inaudible 00:37:57].