County to allow for more virtual hearings
Allowing for more virtual court hearings may be one way to address Marathon County’s shortage of public defenders, county administrator Lance Leonhard told the Public Safety Committee last week Tuesday.
Leonhard, a former county prosecutor, spoke to committee members about recommendations coming out of the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, which includes a local judge, district attorney Theresa Wetzsteon, Sheriff Scott Parks, and representatives of various county departments involved in the criminal justice system.
One way to make it easier for attorneys to take on court-appointed cases is to increase the use of remote court appearances using video technology, Leonhard said. He said this could be done in the case of writs, when someone in custody in another county is ordered to appear in-person at the courthouse in Wausau.
Leonard said the coordinating council identified several instances where defendants were required to come to court “unnecessarily,” increasing the workload of the sheriff’s department, jail staff and attorneys representing their clients.
“One of the things we learned through the pandemic is that we can do a lot more things virtually for court appearances than we have in the past,” he said. “However, there are still things that we actually need to have the person physically come back to court for.”
Circuit court judges have established a policy for requesting virtual court appearances, giving attorneys from outside the area, or locally, the opportunity to save precious time on hearings that address “relatively mundane” issues, Leonhard said.
The court system is also looking to decrease the amount of time between when a defendant makes an initial court appearance and when he or she has an attorney appointed, he said. Currently, when someone is charged with a crime, they are given information about how to contact the state public defender’s office and see if they are eligible for an appointed attorney. Oftentimes, however, Leonard said a defendant won’t make it to the public defender’s office before they show up for their pre-trial conference.
“Sometimes, they don’t even have the evaluation completed at the public defender’s office to know if they’re entitled to one,” he said.
Leonard said DA Wetzsteon has also been working with a representative of the public defender’s office to have attorneys available in the courtroom when defendants make their initial appearance. He said the county has had a lot of success doing this with ATTIC Correctional Services, which provides alternative justice opportunities.
“I’m confident that it’ll have signifi cant improvement on our case processing results,” he said.
Addressing the public defender shortage is an outcome measure suggested by the Public Safety Committee for inclusion in the county’s strategic plan, with a goal of having a “whitepaper” written by December 31, 2023.
_ Leonhard said Marathon County recently got a “shout-out” from state supreme court Justice Patience Roggensack for having the secondmost cases cleared from its backlog following the COVID-19 pandemic.
_ Committee members Jean Maszk and Stacey Morache volunteered to serve on a work group to update the county’s special events ordinance, which currently applies to events with 3,000 or more people lasting eight hours or more.
_ Committee chairman Matt Bootz said he would like to speak to representatives of The Women’s Community and Judicare about the work they do for the county. His request comes after an attempt was made during the recent budget process to cut funding for those nonprofi ts.
“I want to make sure we start looking at these things right away before the next budget process,” he said.
_ Maszk said she would like a presentation on the county’s uniform addressing implementation from several years ago, and whether it has improved emergency response times.
