Here & Now

Bridget Krause on Wisconsin's Public Defender Staff Shortage

Frederica Freyberg:
Our attorneys are drowning. That’s a quote from the Wisconsin state public defender after the state Senate adjourned without taking up a bill to fund 52 new positions, including 18 additional attorneys. The agency says a staff shortage leaves defendants waiting for representation and a backlog of cases in the courts. Here to talk about it, Deputy State Public Defender Bridget Krause, and thanks very much for being here.

Bridget Krause:
Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:
So how has the shortage of support staff and attorneys grown?

Bridget Krause:
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’s 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are the consequences of not having enough people to timely defend everyone who needs it?

Bridget Krause:
People waiting in 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 ten days if they’re in custody. Twenty 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 are waiting longer to resolve or longer to even get an attorney. So there’s a lot of delay in both getting 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
What are the frustrations like inside the courtroom, inside the criminal justice system?

Bridget Krause:
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 have 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
The state did authorize new prosecutor positions. How does that exacerbate case delays?

Bridget Krause:
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 defender’s really go nowhere because of the increase in the number of cases coming into the system.

Frederica Freyberg:
So you spoke to private bar attorneys who can be appointed, and are they at all helping to offset this shortage?

Bridget Krause:
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 are also saturated with representing clients. And it’s not just a warm body next to a client, right? A client has a right to effective 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.

Frederica Freyberg:
Your agency calls this an unfunded mandate. What’s the mandate?

Bridget Krause:
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 in court if necessary. And when you don’t have that, the entire system fails.

Frederica Freyberg:
We leave it there. Bridgette Krause, thanks very much.

Bridget Krause:
Thank you.