Our attorneys are drowning.
The agency says a staff shortage leaves defendants waiting for representation and a backlog of cases in the courts, here to talk about Deputy State Public Defender, Bridget Krausey, and thanks very much for being here.
Good morning. Thanks for having me.
So how has the shortage of support staff and attorneys grown?
It's grown tremendously over the last few years, especially since the pandemic. Not only have we been short with the number of private bar lawyers that are taking cases in the state of Wisconsin, we've also had an increase in the number of cases coming in, but we have not had an increase in the number of public defenders or public defender support staff added
to the SPD. So it has been growth over a number of years. And I think after the pandemic, we finally saw how it was affecting both the legal system as well as the attorneys and the clients that are represented by the public defender's office.
What are the consequences of not having enough people to timely defend everyone who needs it?
People waiting custody longer, right? Cases go longer without having a lawyer. So we have had clients sitting in custody prior to a preliminary hearing, which they're entitled to have within 10 days if they're in custody, 20 days if they're out of custody, and they're sitting there without a lawyer because there's no lawyer to take their case.
You also have cases in the system longer, right? So cases that might have resolved six months to nine months pre-pandemic now we're waiting longer to resolve or longer to even get an attorney.
So there's a lot of delay in both giving a client a lawyer, and there's a lot of delay in resolving a case, which could have an impact on both the system as well as the individuals who, you know, the complaining witnesses in a case.
The people that have gone to the police for help. It delays the case for them also.
What are the frustrations like inside the courtroom, inside the criminal justice system?
I think the judges are frustrated, right? They're frustrated because there's no lawyer sitting with the client at very important stages, including a preliminary hearing.
As the case moves forward, right? It's hard to get a lawyer to sit with that client if there's no lawyers available.
There's a lot of frustration by public defenders. Honestly, we want to represent our clients. We don't want people sitting in custody without a lawyer, right?
We don't want people sitting there that could be innocent of the crimes that they've been accused of because they don't have a lawyer to represent them.
I think it's frustrating for prosecutors too, honestly, because they've charged specific cases and someone doesn't have a lawyer, therefore that case cannot move forward.
So I think there's a lot of frustration in the system. It's probably frustrating also, honestly, for the sheriff's office that run the jails because if you can't get a lawyer for a client, that client might sit in custody, and then you have more people in custody than should be in custody, and the jails can't handle it.
The state did authorize new prosecutor positions. How does that exacerbate case delays?
I mean, there's only so many lawyers to take the cases that are coming in, and when you add prosecutors, you add the number of cases coming into the system.
So if you're adding prosecutors on one side, they're reviewing charges, they're charging cases, but if you don't have the lawyers on the other side to represent those clients, it just bottlenecks the system.
So any progress that we make in bringing in new lawyers, new private bar lawyers to take the cases, any progress we make in filling vacancies in the state public defenders really go nowhere because of the increase in the number of cases coming into the system.
So you spoke to private bar attorneys who can be appointed, and are they at all helping to offset this shortage?
I think they're helping as much as they can, right? They also only have so much bandwidth, so they can also only take so many cases.
We have some really great private bar partners who take cases for us, right, and they've taken cases for us for years, but at some point they're also saturated with representing clients,
and it's not just a warm body next to a client, right? A client has a right to affective ethical representation, and if you have too many cases, you can't provide that to a client.
So I think our private bar partners are working really hard to help us, but again, you only have so many lawyers, and if you continue to bring the cases in, you just don't have enough lawyers to handle those cases.
Your agency calls this an unfunded mandate. What's the mandate?
I think the mandate is, you know, Gideon, the anniversary of Gideon was just this past Wednesday, and in Gideon, the U.S. Supreme Court said that clients have a constitutional right to have a lawyer represent them.
That's the mandate. When you don't have lawyers checking the prosecution, checking the police department, it causes a tremendous...
It causes an effect across the state, across our counties, across our cities, because people are unchecked, and they're able to prosecute people or charge people with very serious cases, and if you don't have a lawyer sitting next to that client, it affects the entire community.
So we have an obligation, an obligation in our state, to provide lawyers for people that are charged with crimes. There is a constitutional protection those clients have to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, but you need a lawyer sitting next to that client providing that defense,
reviewing that discovery, providing that advice to clients, and fighting it if necessary, and when you don't have that, the entire system fails.
You leave it there.
Brigitte Krause, thanks very much.
Thank you.
I can see you're in effect of attorney.
Thank you. I appreciate that. I try to be.
So just one question before I let you go, and that is, what's the next step? Just keep kind of advocating for this?
We have to, like we have to keep advocating with representatives in our communities.
I think we have a lot of support from judges who have come up to us and said to us, like, what do you need?
Who should I talk to? How can I get you more staff? Like, how can I make sure these things pass so that you get the resources that you need?
And I think we talked a lot about lawyers, but support staff is big for us too, because they do a lot of the work behind the scenes that you really need to get work done, right?
So I think we have a lot of support in the system.
We just have to get it before the legislator so that they will, they will, like, provide us resources.
Unlike the prosecutors, they get their resources from the counties.
So their paralegals, their investigators, anybody else, their legal secretaries, their support staff, all comes from county funding.
Ours can only come from the state.
So we really rely on that legislation to pass so we can get those, those positions that we really need.
So that's the next step is just continuing to talk to people, advocating for the positions that we need and explaining why those positions are so important.
All right. Great. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much.