As we reported last week, Governor Tony Evers along with members of the Wisconsin Public Defender Board, have been hit with a lawsuit from several inmates in Brown County.
They say that people are waiting more than 14 days to be assigned a public defender, to which Kelli Thompson, Wisconsin State Public Defender, said there is a backlog of 35,000 cases.
She said that would take years to clear with their current number of public defenders.
Representative Shae Sortwell of Two Rivers commented on that suit, saying that he and some of his colleagues had “sent a non-partisan letter to the governor’s office requesting him to send ARPA funds to Brown County and aid the public defender crisis…The State Public Defender Office requested similar assistance weeks prior and asked for our support.”
That money was never issued, to which Sortwell said, “As our absentee governor violates the Constitution, our court system continues to be bogged down so justice cannot be achieved. We warned him, and he fails, yet again.”
Click here to view the full lawsuit.
