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Only 7 of 71 seats in state contested in 2020. Impacts criminal justice reform. By Bridgit Bowden, WisContext - Jun 1st, 2021 05:24 pm //end headline wrapper ?>Courthouses from Wisconsin counties where district attorneys ran uncontested. Angela Major/WPR
Kimberly Lawton didn’t always want to go into criminal law. In fact, when she was in law school, she found it depressing.
“I just saw the sadness,” she said. “Victims that didn’t have resolution, and defendants or inmates that have just such trauma in their own lives.”
But after a few years of working in the legal system, she began to see potential for change, and she wanted to be a part of it. So she did something that few people do she ran against an incumbent district attorney.
For thousands of Wisconsin defendants accused of crimes, they need to put up cash to get out of jail.
When defendants â even ones facing serious charges with massive bail in excess of hundreds of thousands of dollars â have money or community support, getting out from behind bars can take just days or weeks.
But for those facing bail bonds of only a couple hundred dollars who donât have support or deep bank accounts, they can languish in jail for months, sometimes taking deals that donât serve them well in the long term simply because they want to end the court process, because they want to stop waiting, to get back home or go to prison quicker, to get out.
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