Prosecutors in peril: Dangers of job don’t deter attorneys in public eye

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Assistant Attorney General Karie Cattanach has seen some unsettling things in her line of work, but it was a doctored photo of her 18-month-old daughter that shook her to the core.

The image, made to look as if her daughter had been abused, bore the words “They shake me” and was posted online by the husband of a woman whom Cattanach had helped convict of child abuse.

“I left work, and I immediately called my husband,” Cattanach said of seeing the altered photo. “I was truly terrified he was going to harm my daughter.”

The image was posted by Michel Moller, whose wife, Lynn, was convicted of three counts of child abuse and sentenced to six months in jail in a case Cattanach prosecuted while serving as an assistant district attorney in Dane County.

Moller befriended Cattanach’s cousins on Facebook to gain access to her family photos, and then went online to post images that had been altered to show guns, ghost masks and satanic symbols.

Then there was the picture of Cattanach’s house, which she was certain, but could never prove, that Moller had taken in person, as well as the map giving directions to it.

The harassment gave Cattanach pause, she said, as well as reason to consider switching to a different practice area. She had felt threatened in her work before, she said, but this time the danger seemed realer than ever.

“It was one thing when I didn’t have children,” she said, “but not when I was putting my family at risk.”

Recent years have seen no abatement in the number of threats being made against lawyers working in the public sector in both Wisconsin and throughout the country. In May, the state Department of Justice held a Statewide Prosecutor Education and Training conference in Elkhart Lake to discuss prosecutor safety. The speakers included Douglas County DA Dan Blank, whose house was firebombed in 2000 as retaliation for his prosecution of a gang leader.

Yet personal safety did not even rank on a recent list of reasons why attorneys leave public employment, according to the State Prosecutors Office. Indeed, the biggest reason cited was to take up a job in the private sector.

“In this business, they can go out and make money in the private sector with much less hassle,” said Winnebago County DA Christian Gossett. “I don’t know if personal safety is really on their mind.”

Given the safety risks, long hours and ongoing debate about sometimes low pay, Cattanach and others have questioned their role as public lawyers.

But it’s their belief that prosecutors contribute to society’s betterment, Cattanach said, that keeps them in the profession.

“I don’t think any prosecutors are paid enough for what they do,” she said. “Very few prosecutors do it for the money. You do it for what you believe in. You do it for the victims of crimes.”

But, while putting on a brave face, public prosecutors remain well aware of the dangers of their profession. At the May training session, prosecutors were schooled by David Erwin, chief of the State Capitol Police, on the importance of being aware of one’s surroundings.

Among those listening was Waukesha County DA Brad Schimel, who has had reason to fear retribution on several occasions.

The worst of the threats came from a man wrongfully arrested for threatening his wife, who later said she had called police in an attempt to force the man into mental-health treatment. After learning the facts of the case, Schimel declined to press charges against Adam David Kane, a former Oconomowoc resident.

But that didn’t stop Kane from believing Schimel was part of a conspiracy against him, one that also extended to Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and Gov. Scott Walker, Schimel said.

“Most people don’t hold animosity toward us for doing our jobs as long as we do it in a reasonable way,” he said. “But if there are mental issues, then everything is off the table.”

Soon enough, Schimel and Waukesha County Circuit Commissioner Linda Georgeson began receiving threatening emails from Kane. In one, Kane said he would sodomize Schimel with a broom handle. In another, he wrote, “Do you wonder where I am when your are walking to your car at night??”

In response, Schimel said, he went out and bought a handgun. He also got a small safe, which allowed him to keep the firearm in his bedroom without fear of its getting into the hands of his two young children.

Kane eventually was found guilty of sending threatening messages and violating a previous restraining order. As part of his sentence, he was ordered not to have any form of contact with Schimel.

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Although he has not heard from Kane since, Schimel said, those trying days left their mark. Now if someone rings his doorbell in the middle of the night, Schimel said, “I’m probably not answering that door unarmed.”

“But nobody’s going to scare me out of doing this work,” he added.

One place where Schimel said he does feel close to being completely safe is the Waukesha County Courthouse, which the public cannot enter without going through metal detectors.

Gossett, Schimel’s counterpart in Winnebago County, cannot say the same thing. Winnebago County officials have talked for years, Gossett said, about making the county’s courthouse safer but have always concluded doing so would cost too much. That means the public can still enter the building without passing through a metal detector.

Prosecutors there don’t have a separate entrance or parking lot and are regularly brought into contact with the same people they are working to convict.

Gossett said some of his employees no doubt wish they could take advantage of Wisconsin’s concealed-carry law, but a judge’s order explicitly prohibits them from doing so. That, in many ways, he said, leaves them at the mercy of member of the public, who also aren’t supposed to carry guns into the county’s courtrooms but face little impediment to doing so.

Still, even the best precautionary measures can only go so far, he said.

“If you secure the courtrooms,” Gossett said, “they’ll just wait for you in the parking lot.”

And while the dangers of the job might always be present, there are steps lawyers can take to mitigate them. When Cattanach was being harassed, for instance, she said she began to alter her schedule to ensure she wasn’t always coming and going from the office at the same times.

She and her husband, who also works in law enforcement, installed a security system in their house and developed a safety system that included the use of code words that could be spoken to sound an alarm if a threatening person should appear at the door at an odd hour.

“It is a dangerous profession,” she said. “It’s not law enforcement, but you are still faced with some of the worst of the worst.”