Morin comes full circle to Waukesha public defender’s office

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Kelsey Morin has a special connection to the office where she works.

While an undergraduate, Morin was initially a pre-med student. But after deciding she didn’t want to become a doctor, she spent a summer volunteering in the Waukesha office of the State Public Defender.

“When I changed I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do or where I wanted to go,” she said.

She figured it couldn’t hurt to introduce herself to the legal field.

That summer had a great influence on Morin, who now works as an assistant state public defender in the same Waukesha office.

Since taking the job in 2014, Morin has already worked on several significant cases. Sam Benedict, who supervises Morin, noted Morin’s involvement in the homicide case of State v. Floyd Smith.

Since two attorneys typically work on homicide cases, Benedict asked Morin to be his partner on this one. Morin had then been there for only a few months.

Morin said their work started with getting the various counts of homicide alleged against their client reduced down to just one. They then went to trial and successfully defended Smith, receiving a not-guilty verdict.

“It was very straightforward to us,” Morin said, noting that Smith had really been acting out of self-defense after intruders had broken into his home.

Morin got to display her ability to question witnesses in the homicide case; Benedict said he quickly saw that that was one of her strengths.

“I just noticed right away that she was pretty good at it early,” he said. “Definitely earlier than most.”

The Floyd Smith case was not the only to bring her before a jury. Last year saw her working on three more that led to jury trials. Two of them were complex operating-while-intoxicated cases involving difficult expert witnesses, Benedict noted. She also volunteered to help a colleague with a difficult sexual-assault case.

Outside the courtroom, Morin is a member of the Victim’s Rights Subcommittee on the Waukesha Evidence Based Decision Making Task Force and also volunteers on the Waukesha Intervention Committee, which works to prevent domestic violence.

Above all, Morin said she enjoys working as an assistant public defender because she gets to help those who need it most.

“Not everyone has $1 million to hire an attorney,” she said. “It’s probably the people who have been railroaded by the system … are the people who need us the most.”