L.A. Law (Review) and Wisconsin Prelims

Check out my new article on preliminary hearings, titled The Preliminary-Hearing Swindle: A Crime Against Procedure, just accepted for publication in the Loyola of Los Angeles Law Review.

I’m very happy that this article will be published in a California journal, as Cali stands in stark contrast to Wisconsin when it comes to prelims.  My favorite example is The People of California v. Frank Carson, et al., where a California prosecutor charged multiple defendants (including a prominent criminal defense lawyer, Frank Carson, his wife and daughter, two local business owners, and, most bizarrely, several police officers) with the murder of a petty scrap-metal thief. 

In the Carson, et al. case, the district attorney’s unhinged conspiracy theory led its prosecutorial crazy train clear off the rails of sanity.  The prelim, though, did its job and saved the day for the defendants.  The hearing took months to complete and some defendants had their entire case dismissed, others won dismissal of their murder charge, and others had their bail dramatically reduced.  (All defendants who had any charges remaining, post-prelim, were ultimately acquitted at jury trial or the prosecutor finally saw the light and dismissed their charges.)

But in Wisconsin, things are quite different.  In stark contrast to California’s prelim—a hearing with some teeth that can actually prevent baseless prosecutions—Wisconsin’s prelim and surrounding activities (such as the appearances, arraignment, and the scheduling of future court dates) have literally been completed in five minutes!  Worse yet, the result is a foregone conclusion, as the defendant has a near zero (if not literally zero) chance of winning or gaining any other benefit from the hearing.  It’s an absolute joke.  Yes, Wisconsin prosecutors and judges have made a laughing stock of our state’s criminal procedure—and I explain it all in my new article.

After the jump, you can read my favorite quote from the article, as well as the article’s abstract.  At the end of this post is a link to the pre-publication draft of the full article.

Where does all the money go?

Sass is looking for the money

Whenever a defendant gets convicted of a crime in Wisconsin, the judge will soak the defendant with seemingly innumerable fines, costs, fees, and surcharges.  There’s the DNA surcharge (even if the defendant has already given a DNA sample and has already paid the fee in a previous case), a Domestic Violence surcharge in many cases, “victim-witness” fees, of course fines, and a plethora of other financial hits.  These things will appear on the judgment of conviction in acronym form—no one even knows what the acronyms stand for, and few people care because there’s not much we can do about it anyway.  In addition to fines, examples include the imposition of the CCFP, CLD, VW, DNAAS, GT, SFOTH, PEN, and DOMAB costs, fees, and surcharges!

What?!  What the hell are those things?  But, more importantly, where does all of that money go?  Are our criminal courts actually profit centers?  Does that create a conflict of interest?  I don’t know.  But I did just learn where the money goes when Louisiana’s criminal courts impose such financial hits.