GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ) – A group of local lawmakers are asking Governor Tony Evers to utilize federal American Rescue Plan Act money to address a backlog of cases dealing with public defenders.
“Once COVID hit, a lot of private sector attorneys were deciding that they just weren’t going to take the cases, or at least not a significant number of them. A lot of them might’ve been older attorneys or maybe even retired attorneys that were doing this just kind of as a public service,” said State Representative Shae Sortwell.
Right now, Sortwell says there are a lot of people sitting in jail without any legal representation.
“We’re running up against a wall here where people’s constitutional right to a speedy trial is really getting threatened at this point,” Sortwell told WTAQ News. “They’re either sitting in jail for extended periods of time, waiting to get an attorney so that then they can go to their trial. Or sometimes, because they are so pressed for attorneys and they can’t let people sit in that jail into perpetuity…I know some some sheriffs and some courts are deciding to release people on bail that they might rather keep in jail.”
He says expediting the process is important to keeping the justice system moving.
“We want to make sure that threats to society are quickly convicted and sentenced to prison, and people who are falsely accused or innocent get their trial and get back to regular life as quickly as possible,” Sortwell said.
In the short term, Sortwell says the public defender’s office planned to request a significant amount of money from the governor to help mitigate the COVID-driven issue.
“The issue is the greatest in Brown County, but it has some of the same issues and some of the other counties as well. When I talk to the public defender’s office about it, I said; ‘Okay, we will craft a letter in support of what you’re asking for and send that to the governor to try to fix this issue’,” Sortwell said. “The governor’s office did reach out to us they didn’t get any specifics. Basically what they said to us, is they are in discussions with the public defender’s office about this issue, and they kind of left it at that.”
The letter to the governor reads, in part:
By utilizing ARPA funds to address the impact of COVID-19 on cases pending in the court system, the [state public defender’s
office] could provide the necessary relief through the use of limited-term employees over the next 18-24 months to alleviate this current, yet temporary backlog.
“They would be salaried employees that actually and now doing criminal defense for the public defender’s office full time rather than having lawyers take cases piecemeal from the community,” Sortwell said. “They believe they can get this backlog all dealt with that they get the money fairly quickly, so basically within the next 2 years.”
While Sortwell says he could simply write a bill to authorize the money, but the governor could also just send the money right away so they don’t have to go through the entire legislative process. He plans to introduce a bill if the money isn’t approved by fall.
