By Gretchen Schuldt

The estates of a man and a woman who hung themselves in the Wood County Jail filed lawsuits last week against the county, alleging officials knew the two were at risk of attempting suicide but did nothing to prevent it.

The suicides occurred after the victims were unrepresented by legal counsel during their separate preliminary hearings, held about eight months apart.

Trequelle Vann-Marcouex, 18, hung himself Aug. 15, the night after he was forced to represent himself at a preliminary hearing because there was no defense lawyer available to take the case. Wood County Circuit Judge Todd P. Wolf decided not to wait for the State Public Defender's Office (SPD) to assign a lawyer and did not appoint a lawyer at county expense, which would have been proper procedure.

Vann-Marcouex died Aug. 18.

Casey Teskoski, 28, hung herself Dec. 22, 2017, the day after Wood County Circuit Judge Gregory J. Potter held a preliminary hearing in her case. She also was not represented by a lawyer, according to online court records.

She died Dec. 29, according to the suit.

Potter is the chief judge of the state court system's District VI, which includes Adams, Clark, Columbia, Dodge, Green Lake, Juneau, Marquette, Portage, Sauk, Waushara, and Wood Counties.

By Gretchen Schuldt

State legislators have introduced a package of drunk-driving proposals that would increase minimum prison terms for people with five or six drunk driving convictions and criminalize first-offense drunk driving, which now is considered a civil ordinance violation.

Another bill would impose financial penalties on some alleged first-time offenders that are not levied on those charged criminally with operating while intoxicated second offense or greater.

Currently, those convicted of their fifth- or sixth-offense drunk driving offense face a minimum of six months' incarceration and a $600 fine. The bill would  require a prison term of at least 18 months. 

​By Gretchen Schuldt

​The number of possession of marijuana cases filed in Milwaukee Municipal Court fell 17 percent from 2017 to 2018, court records show.

There were a total of 994 adult and juvenile possession of marijuana charges opened in 2017 and 824 in 2018, according to the figures. That is a year-to-year decline of 170 cases.

The caseload reflects police activity, but is not a total count of arrests, as some cases may get dismissed before they get to court. 

In November, 75 percent of City of Milwaukee voters supported legalization of recreational marijuana. Some 52 cases were filed that month. In December, however, 134 cases were filed, the most since November, 2017.

By Gretchen Schuldt​

Wisconsin keeps more people on parole longer than most other states, and more parole terms end with incarceration here than in other states, according to a report released Tuesday by the Columbia  Justice Lab.

“Our report contains troubling findings that Wisconsin is wasting money and wasting lives by supervising and violating thousands of people not for new crimes, but for technical violations of supervision,” Vincent Schiraldi, co-director of the  Justice Lab and former Commissioner of New York City Probation, said in a prepared statement. “Wisconsin should now follow the example of dozens of states and focus community supervision resources on those most in need of it, stop returning people to prison for ‘ticky-tack’ rule violations, and use the savings from such reforms to fund programs and opportunities that help people turn their lives around.”

Below are highlights from the report, "The Wisconsin Community Corrections Story." The language generally taken straight from the document (omitting citations). 

The facts

• ​As of 2016, there were 64,900 people under either probation or parole supervision in the state, just shy of the population of Oshkosh.
• In 2016, 988 of every 100,000 adults in Wisconsin were under probation supervision, and another 453 adults in that 100,000 were under parole supervision.
• Wisconsin's probation rate remains below the national average. Probation supervision rates in Wisconsin have roughly followed the national trend, declining slightly over the past two decades.
• Wisconsin's parole rate is about 1.5 times higher than both its next highest neighbor (Illinois, at 298 per 100,000 adults), and the national state average (303 per 100,000 adults). Nationally, Wisconsin has the seventh highest parole supervision rate. (Parole includes extended supervision.)

By Gretchen Schuldt

All they want to do is get married, but those wedding bells have been tough to come by.

Wendy Sisavath and Victoriano Heredia, an inmate at Wisconsin's Fox Lake Correctional Institution. have been trying for almost a year to get someone at the prison to get involved so they can do what they need to do to get down the aisle and exchange vows.

No luck.

They filed the original paperwork in February or March of last year and are no closer to the altar than they were then.

"We are banging our heads against the wall," Sisavath said.

DOC spokesman Tristan Cook said in a November email that the agency was actively reviewing the wedding request.

'"Inmate Heredia’s social worker is working with him," Cook wrote. Cook has since left his job.

​DOC did not respond to a follow-up email sent Friday.

Heredia got a new social worker in November, his third since June. This latest social worker, Sisavath said, insisted "'I don't do the marriage thing. It goes through the chaplain.'" 

Getting hitched in prison is way more complicated than getting married on the outside; the Department of Corrections' inmate marriage policy is five pages long. Among other things, it  requires extensive counseling for every couple. Officials at the prison must approve the counselor. 

Sisavath said she and Heredia first were told they would have to undergo six months of marriage counseling. Then, because Heredia is a lifer, prison officials changed the requirement to 12 months.

Heredia is required to have $2,000 on hand to cover counseling costs, including the cost of guards at the counseling sessions, even though the area is guarded anyway. That $2,000 is a problem in itself. Heredia doesn't have it in his available prison account, and if Sisavath were to give it to him, she would be unable to get it back if something happened and the marriage did not come off.  Inmates are not allowed to send money from their accounts out of the institution.

By Gretchen Schuldt

​A Forest County deputy overstepped when he searched a vehicle because the driver turned the car around at night within a mile of where another person fled a traffic stop, a Court of Appeals judge ruled Tuesday.

"We cannot conclude that (Brady R.) Adams’ driving late at night, one-half hour or more after a suspect had fled the scene of a traffic stop within the vicinity of an active police search for that suspect, paired with Adams’ turning around on a street with a dead end, would lead a reasonable officer to suspect that Adams had committed, was committing, or was about to commit a crime, or any wrongdoing for that matter," District III Court of Appeals Judge Mark A. Seidl wrote in his opinion.

In reversing Forest County Circuit Judge Leon D. Stenz, Seidl threw out Adams' conviction for second offense drunk driving and sent the matter back to Circuit Court.

Sheriff's Deputy William Hujet testified in Circuit Court that he was looking for a person who fled a traffic stop when another deputy passed the word that a car was approaching. Adams was that car's driver.  Hujet began to follow him.

By Gretchen Schuldt
​
Correctional officers and sergeants logged 1.8 million hours of overtime at adult facilities last year at a cost of almost $51 million, according to a new Department of Corrections report.

That amounts to 34,714 hours a week, or 3,001 hours more per week than the overtime worked by all DOC workers in 2015-16, according to a 2017-19 budget paper prepared by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. Security staff worked an average of 28,235 hours per week overtime in 2015-16, according to the LFB.

Almost half of last year's overtime was attributable to employees plugging holes when positions were vacant, according to DOC. The new figures cover the year ending July 1.

Correctional officers and sergeants at Dodge Correctional Institution, a maximum-security prison for men, recorded a total of 212,734 overtime hours at a total cost of $6.2 million, tops in the adult system, according to the report. Some 67 percent of that was due to staff vacancies, the report said. 

​Overall, system wide, position vacancies required 844,195 hours of overtime at a cost of $24.6 million, according to the report.  That is 47 percent of the hours and cost of overtime.

Other reasons for overtime including sick leave, construction project detail, assisting inmates with medical visits, trips, and training, according to the report.

Gov. Tony Evers took office this week vowing to reduce prison populations. Some legislators want to build additional facilities, though the state cannot staff the ones they have.

In May, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 920 jobs at state prisons were empty, a 12.5 percent vacancy rate. 

By Gretchen Schuldt

​Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Kristy Yang will move at the end of this month from presiding over misdemeanors to handling juvenile cases, Milwaukee County Chief Judge Maxine White ordered Friday.

Yang's tenure in misdemeanor court was marked by a large number of substitutions filed against her. For the year ended July 31, for example, 227 substitutions were filed against Yang, while just five were filed against Circuit Judge Jean Kies and 40 were filed against Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan, both of whom also served in misdemeanor court.

New judge Daniel Gabler, meanwhile, will spend just a few weeks in Children's Court before taking over Yang's misdemeanor calendar. His stint in Children's Court begins Monday and ends Jan. 28, when he takes over Yang's misdemeanor calendar.

Paul Dedinsky, a former Children's Court prosecutor, will return as a judge to that same court. 

Gabler and Dedinsky were appointed to the bench by Gov. Scott Walker.

Gabler, a former assistant district attorney,  ran unsuccessfully for judge as a tough-on-crime candidate in 2009. He won the primary, but lost support when he ran an ad accusing judges of being lazy and portrayed two election opponents – one a career prosecutor – as having records of defending accused criminals. 

He also ran into trouble when he failed to show up for court on a case, leading to the dismissal of felony drug charges against the defendant. Gabler said he was busy with another case, but others said he may have been involved in a non work-related matter. There were two other court cases where Gabler-related errors got the DA's office in hot water, according to the MIlwaukee Journal Sentinel. 

Gabler lost the general election to J.D. Watts. 

Walker appointed Gabler to head the Parole Commission in 2017. Under Gabler's leadership, the commission was best known for its stinginess in granting parole. In 2017, for example, 181 inmates were released on parole, according to the Department of Corrections.

Dedinsky has worked since May 2017 as chief legal counsel for the State Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection. He was a Milwaukee County assistant district attorney for 20 years prior to that, a job that included serving as the Milwaukee Public Schools restorative justice coordinator from 2008 to 2014.

White's order Friday follows an earlier shuffling announced in November.

By Gretchen Schuldt

​District Attorney John Chisholm says he will push for a statewide initiative that would increase state aid to counties that successfully reduce the number of people they are sending to state prisons.

He also said that the high turnover rate among attorneys and support staff in his office "is the single biggest administrative challenge I face."

On the prison alternative initiative, Chisholm, the Milwaukee County prosecutor, said that other states, such as Minnesota and Oregon, "have engaged in this work and have seen dramatic improvements in their criminal justice systems."

Minnesota had about 10,000 prison inmates as of July 1, 2018; Oregon had about 15,000; and Wisconsin had about 24,000, according to figures from each of those states.

The initiative, if it is to work, would require more equitable state revenue sharing and commitments from counties to develop alternatives to incarceration, Chisholm said. 

Under the plan, the state would absorb the cost of a certain number of new inmates from each county.

"If they (the counties) send more than their share, then they have to pay the costs associated with it," he said. A state-county cost share already exists in the juvenile corrections area. 

By Gretchen Schuldt

​District Attorney John Chisholm said this week that he favors marijuana legalization if there are adequate implementation and regulatory structures in place.

"Let's come up with the best legal framework for allowing people to possess marijuana much as they do alcohol and tobacco," he said during an interview. 

If he can find the funding, Chisholm said, he would like to hold a one-day symposium in Milwaukee to explore how other states handled legalization implementation, the challenges they faced, and what they learned from their experiences.

Thirty-three states and the District of Columbia have legalized cannabis to some extent. 

Wisconsin still is a full prohibition state. Second offense possession of marijuana of any amount still is a felony in the state.

Voters in 18 November referendums around the state indicated they favor cannabis legalization. Milwaukee County voters in every municipality favored legalization of recreational marijuana for adults. 

Chisholm says he favors full legalization over an incremental approach. The state should ensure, before legalization takes effect, that the infrastructure is in place to ensure successful implementation and that cannabis tax revenue is distributed as intended. 

Downsides to legalization, he said, could include impaired driving, and negative impacts on school performance and health, he said.

"We just have to be cognizant of that," he said.

In the meantime, he said, his office will continue to use alternatives to prosecution, including diversion efforts and defaulting to municipal tickets instead of criminal prosecutions, to reduce the number of marijuana cases flowing through the court system.

He said he would prosecute some cases, though, "until the law is changed." 

As a prosecutor, he said, he has significant discretion, but "it's got to be based on a rational basis." 

He can't decide simply to not enforce the law, he said.

"I'm not a super legislator," he said.