Dane County, state attorneys face ‘staffing crisis’ amid pandemic backlog, Marsy’s Law workload | Crime

Meanwhile, attorneys are facing higher case loads.

In-person jury trials were suspended from March 2020 until June 2021 due to the pandemic, causing hundreds of criminal cases to stall. The court system has started moving through the cases, but Plotkin said for many counties it could take years to address the backlog. 

“There’s so many pending and backlogged cases, but there aren’t enough existing resources to deal with it,” Plotkin said. “So we’re looking at, in some counties, two to four years, before we’re caught back up.”

Assistant state public defender Laura Breun, who represents adult defendants in the Dane County criminal court system, said normally she has around 90 to 100 cases, but right now she has more than 200. 

“It’s impossible to keep on top of all of them,” Breun said.

The temporary closure of in-person court decreased the amount of victim services and witness management the DA’s office had to provide, such as lining up witnesses for jury trials, giving tips for testifying, and making travel and work arrangements to get victims to the courthouse, Brown said. The pause on those services allowed staff to focus on Marsy’s Law, but now they have to do everything at the same time.