Judge warns of ‘crisis’ due to lack of attorneys
By Kevin O’Brien
A Marathon County judge earlier this month warned that a lack of local attorneys willing to take court-appointed cases threatens to undermine the way the county’s judicial system currently operates.
“It’s not going to last,” said Judge Greg Strasser. “It’s going to collapse in on itself.”
Judge Strasser made the comments during an Aug. 6 discussion with the Public Safety Committee about continued county funding for the Judicare Legal Aid program, which provides mediation services for small claims cases that would otherwise take up additional court time and resources.
With just three attorneys in the county willing to accept clients who don’t qualify for a state public defender, Judge Strasser said the circuit court system is headed for a “crisis.”
Judge Strasser said he and the county’s other five judges support Judicare as a way of clearing their calendars so they can focus more on criminal cases, but the mediation services are just “part of the solution” to a larger problem. He noted that each judge has about 320 to 400 criminal cases assigned to them, and the goal is to continually reduce that number. That goal is difficult to reach when only three attorneys are accepting clients who do not have the financial resources to hire their own attorney, but have some limited assets that preclude them from getting a public defender through the state, he said. In these cases, the county pays an attorney $100 per hour to represent the defendant, who must pay that money back in installments once their case is concluded, Judge Strasser said.
Once those three attorneys get burned out and are no longer willing to take additional clients, Judge Strasser said “we’re going to have a problem.”
“You’re going to have people who are incarcerated, and the question becomes, if you can’t get them counsel, what do you do?” he said. “If they don’t have attorneys, no matter what type of case it is, can you continue to keep them incarcerated?”
Judge Strasser said judges, public defenders and others throughout Wisconsin are discussing the issue, “but they have not come up with an effective solution as of yet.”
“This is not a Marathon County problem,” he said. “This is a state problem, and it’s extremely serious, and the courts are aware of it.”
Randy Westgate, director of Judicare Mediation, said 2,516 small claims cases were filed in Marathon County last year, and about two-thirds of those resulted in a default judgment because the defendant didn’t show up to court. Of the remaining 859 cases, he said Judicare mediators were able to resolve about 93 percent of them before they were litigated.
Westgate said mediation works particularly well in eviction cases, where the parties can come to an agreement that may not be possible through a traditional court proceeding.
“A judge can either evict or not evict,” he said. “We get to operate between those lines. We can work out pay arrangements, pay-andstay arrangements and move-out arrangements to avoid the evictions.”
Just 14 eviction hearings had to be held in Marathon County last year, and in many of those cases, the tenants end up homeless if arrangements cannot be made, Westgate said.
“Our job is to prevent that eviction if we can,” he said. “I can tell you that the landlords are extremely helpful in this. We have a very good set of landlords here.”
The mediation services are also credited with minimizing the number of small-claims cases that need to go through the court system, with just 63 out of 2,516 cases requiring a trial in 2023, Westgate noted.
Following the presentation by Westgate and Judge Strasser, the committee voted unanimously to recommend that the county continue providing $15,000 in funding for Judicare in 2025.
Other business
■ ■ The committee recommended $55,000 in continued county funding for the Women’s Community, a non-profit that works with the district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s department to provide support for the victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking.
Jane Graham-Jennings, executive director of The Women’s Community, provided committee members with an annual report of the group’s services, which included 173 contacts with victims through the DA’s office, 79 responses to calls from the sheriff’s department and 531 hours working with 132 child abuse victims.
Supervisor Jean Maszk made the motion to continue funding at the same level for 2025.
“Knowing how much good they do in saving people’s lives and helping people move forward, it would be a sin to ever not finance this program, at least at where it’s at right now,” she said. “I firmly believe it’s a very good use of our money.”
■ ■ The committee recommended approval of a proposal to eliminate a full-time investigator’s position in the district attorney’s office and create a similar investigator’s position in the sheriff’s department that will assist the DA. Sheriff Chad Billeb said his investigators have more statutory authority to work outside county limits if needed, so transferring this position would reduce the county’s legal liability. The investigator would still be assigned to the DA’s office, but an additional $13,000 in salary will need to be found within the sheriff’s budget starting in 2025. The full board approved the proposal on Aug 20.
Judge Strasser
