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Bill would add circuit court branch to 7 counties

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//December 11, 2015//

Bill would add circuit court branch to 7 counties

By: Erika Strebel, [email protected]//December 11, 2015//

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Calumet County has just one circuit court judge – and it’s been waiting for a second one for decades, since well before the current judge even set foot in law school.

It was in 1992 that the Calumet County Board of Supervisors passed a resolution in support of establishing a second circuit court, said Judge Jeff Froehlich. Froehlich, who is now the county’s sole circuit court judge, was then in high school.

A proposal now before Gov. Scott Walker and lawmakers would give seven counties, including Calumet County, an additional circuit court judge each. If that were to happen, Froehlich’s caseload would be cut in half, he said. That would let him give cases more attention and eliminate the need for a judge from another county to be called in if a case needed to be reassigned.

Froehlich’s comments came as part of his testimony in favor of a bill that would create additional circuit court branches in Calumet, Wood, Marathon, Dunn, Polk, Jackson and Vilas counties.

The authors of the proposal — state Rep. John Murtha, R-Baldwin, and Rep. David Heaton, R-Wausau — said at Thursday’s public hearing that those counties have all passed resolutions in support of adding the needed judges, as well as paying for the related staff and other expenses.

The seven counties were chosen in part because they can accommodate the additional circuit court branches without having to undertake construction projects.

Froehlich was one of four circuit court judges who testified in favor of the proposal at Tuesday’s hearing. Support also came from  St. Croix County Circuit Court Judge Scott Needham.

“I’m sure you’re familiar with the phrase ‘Justice delayed is justice denied.’ In the counties that have excessive caseloads that is the result,” said Judge Scott Needham, who leads the 10th judicial district, which includes Dunn County.

Vilas County Circuit Court Judge Neal Nielsen, also the only judge in his county, estimated that he has a hand in between 1,000 and 1,200 cases a year. He manages to follow the Director of State Courts’ directive calling for judges to close one case for every case filed. But that accomplishment comes at price.

“The effect on the people we serve is significant,” Nielsen said. “Doing this job well and doing it right takes some time.”

However, Dunn County District Attorney Andrea Nodolf cautioned that lawmakers need to look not just at the courts, but the system as a whole. Unless lawmakers also hired additional prosecutors in the counties where they establish new circuit court branches, she said, prosecutors’ offices, many of them already straining under their workloads, would hit a breaking point.

Nodolf said that despite the backlog of cases in Dunn County, her prosecutors spend most of their work hours in court. In some cases, she said, her prosecutors end up doing pretrial work at home.

Nodolf said that having an additional circuit court branch in her county, and quite possibly others, would help speed up cases. She and other prosecutors would most likely end up being in court more often. The result would be less time for meeting with victims and answering calls from law enforcement officers.

“If an officer got tired of waiting and did a search without a warrant,” she said, “my case is toast.”

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