Wisconsin Supreme Court details rural lawyer shortage in matter where

The Wisconsin Supreme Court decided State v. Ramirez last week, a matter about a criminal defendant who experienced a 46-month delay in being tried for an alleged crime. The court upheld his conviction, in part because he waited 32 months to assert his right to a speedy trial. This is one of the first cases in which I've seen a court acknowledge the legal relevance of the rural lawyer shortage.  Some excerpts follow:

¶1 Our federal and state constitutions guarantee criminal defendants the right to a speedy trial. The Sixth Amendment of the United States Constitution provides, "[i]n all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial," and Article I, Section 7 of the Wisconsin Constitution says, "[i]n all criminal prosecutions the accused shall enjoy the right . . . in prosecutions by indictment, or information, to a speedy public trial." Luis A. Ramirez, as an inmate already serving a lengthy sentence for felony convictions, attacked and injured a corrections officer.  After a series of continuances and rescheduled trial dates, Ramirez was finally tried and convicted by a jury 46 months after he was criminally charged for the attack.

¶2 Ramirez moved for postconviction relief, alleging the 46-month delay violated his constitutional speedy trial right. The postconviction court denied his motion, and Ramirez appealed. The court of appeals reversed and ordered the only remedy available for constitutional speedy trial violations—dismissal of the charges. The State sought this court's review of a single issue: Whether Ramirez's constitutional right to a speedy trial was violated. We conclude it was not and reverse the court of appeals.

What follows is an excerpt from the concurrence by Chief Justice Ann Walsk Bradley, with whom Judge Janet Protasiewicz joined.  

¶80 In this case Ramirez's claim was doomed by his 32-month delay in asserting his speedy trial right and his failure to persuade that the 14-month duration from his assertion of the right to his trial violates the constitution. However, I cannot join the majority's approach because it could give the State a pass in cases involving delays even longer than the 46 months at issue here.

¶81 At a time where defendants are experiencing significant delays in appointment of counsel, this concern is especially acute.[5] Delays due to the lack of available attorneys can stretch into the triple digits. See Lee, 401 Wis. 2d 593, ¶6 (Dallet, J., dissenting) (setting forth that the defendant was held in custody "for 113 days before a preliminary examination, 101 of which were prior to the appointment of counsel").[6] In 2022, the state public defender opined that it would "take several years to clear a backlog of roughly 35,000 cases because of a shortage of public defenders."[7]

¶82 In Wisconsin's vast rural areas, especially in the northern part of the state, the problem has reached crisis levels. Although the data is admittedly at least seven years old, an article published in 2018 describes how "[o]ver 60% of the state's attorneys practice law in major urban areas, leaving some counties in rural Wisconsin with attorney-to-resident ratios as high as 1:4,452." Lisa R. Pruitt et al., Legal Deserts: A Multi-State Perspective on Rural Access to Justice, 13 HARV. L. & POL'Y REV. 15, 81 (2018) (footnotes omitted). In comparison, the statewide ratio is about 1:389.[8]

¶83 Additionally, the population that is practicing law in the rural north is rapidly aging. As of 2018, "[a]cross the northern half of the state, only six of the forty attorneys in Vilas County are under the age of fifty, and Florence and Pepin counties have no lawyers under fifty. Oconto County has two, and no new attorneys have moved into the county in the last decade." Id. at 81-82 (footnotes omitted). In total, as of that time, "[n]ine counties in northern Wisconsin ha[d] ten or fewer active attorneys." Id. at 82 (footnote omitted). Although this data is now seven years old,[9] the problem has certainly not abated. In fact, it has only worsened.[10]

¶84 As of 2024, the number of active attorneys in Wisconsin had dropped four percent over the last four years, while the number of attorneys in rural Wisconsin had plummeted by seven percent.[11] Eight counties have no certified private bar attorneys to take cases when the state public defender cannot represent a defendant.[12] Such a shortage "not only impacts the constitutional rights of defendants—it also affects victims and our communities."[13] Despite intervening attempts to address the root causes of the shortage, the problem persists.[14]

¶85 The shortage of lawyers in rural areas is a systemic problem, not an intentional one, putting it at risk of being termed "neutral" in the parlance of the majority's speedy trial analysis.[15] It is possible that a defendant could spend months or even years awaiting the appointment of an attorney, a necessity for any trial, much less a speedy one. And as the majority opinion demonstrates, when a delay is termed neutral, good luck to a defendant in succeeding on a speedy trial claim.

¶86 This court should not give its seal of approval to such an approach. Rather, the court of appeals approached this case the right way by breaking down the periods of delay and determining the reasons behind them and the weight to be given in the Barker analysis. The analysis conducted by the court of appeals represents a more nuanced approach that is better suited to the fact-specific nature of a speedy trial determination. See Urdahl, 286 Wis. 2d 476, ¶11.