By Gretchen Schuldt

A County Board committee has recommended, 3-1, rejecting a proposal to support minimum bail for some people charged with crimes.

Instead, the Intergovernmental Relations Committee unanimously recommended the state adopt a program similar to New Jersey's, which allows preventive detention of people who have been found by a validated risk-assessment tool to pose a significant danger to the community, and allows release of defendants charged with less serious and non-violent offenses. 
 
County Supervisor Patti Logsdon sought support for bills in the legislature that would require a minimum $5,000 bail for anyone accused of a crime who had previously been convicted of bail jumping and a $10,000 bail for anyone accused of a violent misdemeanor or any felony.

"These people – they're not following the law," Logsdon told the Intergovernmental Relations Committee. 

"If you have a felony conviction in the past, you should have a bail set...They need to be put in our jail or House of Correction until we find the facts of it," Logsdon said.

She said existence of the minimum bails could also be "a good consideration for them to think before they do the crime."

If Darrell Brooks Jr. had not been released from the Milwaukee County Jail on $1,000 bail, she said, the six people he allegedly killed in the Waukesha parade tragedy "would still be with us."

Committee members agreed, as has District Attorney John Chisholm, that Brooks should not have been released.

Supervisor Anthony Staskunas said he believed the resolution supporting the New Jersey program would be a better way to deal with pre-trial defendants and any threat they may pose. That resolution was introduced by Supervisors Shawn Rolland, Ryan Clancy, and Willie Johnson Jr.

"These people aren't convicted of anything yet," Staskunas said. "They're presumed innocent."

The minimum-bail proposals, he said, are "unfunded mandates to stuff our House of Correction and stuff our jail when we don't have any room and not give us any money to do anything."

Clancy, who is not a committee member, spoke against Logsdon's proposal at the meeting, noting the need to look at data and "what actually works, rather than what feels like justice."

"I understand the desire for justice in this case (the Waukesha parade tragedy) in particular as well as in others, but this resolution does not get us closer to justice, but to vengeance," he said. The "people of Milwaukee County deserve safety, not punitive retribution." 

"Higher bails do not keep us safe," Mia Noel, founder and director of the Milwaukee Freedom Fund, told the committee. "They keep poor people in jail for months," she said. "Additionally, it costs Wisconsin taxpayers millions of dollars a year to keep poor people in jail."

Johnson was the only committee member to support Logsdon's resolution. Supervisors Joseph Czarnezki, who is committee chair and a WJI Board member, Staskunas, and Sequanna Taylor opposed it.

By Gretchen Schuldt

The Milwaukee County Board on Monday unanimously approved establishing a program to provide defense counsel to indigent defendants accused of violating county ordinances.

The measure, introduced by Supervisors Joseph Czarnezki and Ryan Clancy, picked up 11 additional sponsors during Monday's meeting. They were Board Chair Marcelia Nicholson, and Supervisors Priscilla E. Coggs-Jones, Eddie Cullen, Russell Antonio Goodwin Sr., Jason Haas, Willie Johnson, Jr., Patti Logsdon, Felesia Martin, Shawn Rolland, Steven Shea, and  Sequanna Taylor.

Czarnezki, during the Board discussion, noted that the county put significant resources into writing tickets, prosecuting their recipients, and collecting forfeiture amounts owed. Yet defendants are expected to represent themselves in court without assistance if they cannot afford it, he said. (Full disclosure: Czarnezki is a WJI Board member.)

Approving the pilot is a small thing the county can do to improve justice and equity in the county, he said.

"By providing funding for legal counsel for indigent individuals, County Board members showed they believe in justice for the most vulnerable in our community," he said after the meeting.

The 17-0 vote came during the County Board's deliberations on the 2022 county budget. The budget still must be approved by County Executive David Crowley.

By Gretchen Schuldt

A Milwaukee County Board committee on Tuesday unanimously recommended establishing a program to provide defense counsel to indigent defendants accused of violating county ordinances.

The county pays for sheriff's deputies to write tickets, lawyers to prosecute the cases, and agencies to collect overdue payments of forfeitures levied as a result, Supervisor Joseph Czarnezki, a sponsor of the measure, told the Finance Committee. (Full disclosure: Czarnezki is a WJI Board member.) Yet defendants are expected to represent themselves, even if they don't understand what is going on in the courtroom or how to proceed.

"This is not what I would call justice," Czarnezki said.

Under the proposed 2022 budget amendment, co-sponsored by Supervisor Ryan Clancy, the corporation counsel's office would seek proposals for a contract attorney to represent the defendants. The $50,000 program would be a pilot, and data would be collected to help determine if it should be continued.

The program would be patterned after one operated by Legal Action of Wisconsin that provides defense lawyers for indigent defendants in Milwaukee Municipal Court, which hears cases involving city ordinances.

While indigent defendants in criminal cases are provided with publicly-funded lawyers, poor people accused of ordinance violations are not provided with lawyers because the violations are considered civil, not criminal, matters. Generally, those wanting legal representation ordinance cases must hire their own lawyers.

State law mandates that people arrested for certain ordinance violations, such as controlled substance offenses or some gambling cases, have their personal and arrest information entered into the state's criminal database, where it is available to potential employers, colleges,  landlords, or anyone else with the $7 fee to get it, Czarnezki said. While those who are never actually charged or who are acquitted can request that their information be removed from the database, most people don't know how to go about doing that.

A lawyer, Czarnezki said, can help clients negotiate the court process. remind them about court dates, help them with payment plans, and help get records removed from the state database.

As a matter of equity, he said, "I think this is something we should do."

Clancy, who sponsored unsuccessful measures to reallocate some Sheriff's Department funding, said that having fewer deputies making arrests would be best, but the attorney resolution is "the second-best way to go."