In a 2019 case, now-Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Susan Crawford sentenced Madison man Brian Campbell to only two years in prison after he pleaded no contest to charges of possession of improvised explosives and reckless endangerment.
Prosecutors claimed Campbell’s internet search history produced instructions for making explosives and uncovered drawn maps of underground tunnels on University of Wisconsin-Madison’s campus. Campbell faced up to 10 years in prison and extended supervision on the charges of reckless endangerment and up to 6 years on charges of possession of explosives. Authorities found that one of Campbell’s computer passwords was “McVeigh” – notably the name of Timothy McVeigh, one of the masterminds in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City that killed 168 people and left over 680 injured. Campbell’s home was found to have had all the necessary material to carry out an attack of that magnitude.