New chief judge takes over Milwaukee County court system
In an interview with WISN 12 News, incoming Chief Judge Carl Ashley and outgoing Chief Judge Mary Triggiano discussed the top issues in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. The two transition into their new roles this weekend.
In an interview with WISN 12 News, incoming Chief Judge Carl Ashley and outgoing Chief Judge Mary Triggiano discussed the top issues in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. The two transition into their new roles this weekend.
In an interview with WISN 12 News, incoming Chief Judge Carl Ashley and outgoing Chief Judge Mary Triggiano discussed the top issues in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. The two transition into their new roles this weekend.
Friday was the final day for Chief Judge Mary Triggiano serving in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.
Starting Saturday, Judge Carl Ashley will take over the chief judge role.
"She's the best. It's a tremendous honor to follow Judge Triggiano. She's been a great mentor and her ability to handle things, particularly during COVID, is just outstanding," Ashley said. "I think from my standpoint, I'm anxious and I'm looking forward to the opportunity, but I have huge shoes to fill."
Triggiano is leaving to take on the director role at Marquette Law School's Andrew Center for Restorative Justice. She said she has amazing respect for incoming Chief Judge Ashley.
"I feel really confident that Judge Ashley is the best one to take over at this time, because I worked with him so closely, not even just as deputy chief judge. We've worked together for years on a variety of projects in the justice system. Short of that, it's it's a little bittersweet for me," Triggiano said. "I really love what I do. Someone asked me the other day, 'If you knew there was going to be a pandemic and then a labor shortage and then all those other crises that came in, would you have said yes?' I would not hesitate to say yes. I've had the privilege to be chief. I enjoy this job. I love collaborating and problem solving."
Both Triggiano and Ashley are longtime Milwaukee County Circuit Court judges. Triggiano served as chief judge since February 2020 and first started in Milwaukee County courts in 2004. Ashley has been a Milwaukee County judge since 1999 and served as Triggiano's deputy chief. He will be the first Black man to serve as chief judge in Milwaukee County.
Both judges are looking deeper into issues that Ashley will now need to take on full time, like Milwaukee's youth crime crisis.
"The fact of the matter is, we need to go further upstream to really deal with this problem. If we think we're going to lock our way out of this, that's not the solution," Ashley said. "If we really want to stem the degree of violence, which I think is higher than I can ever recall. The types of things going on out at Children's Court, for example, with the youth and doing these things, it's sort of unheard of, but the criminalization of these youth is not necessarily the answer, if you're talking about really stopping it."
"We have to look to the core roots of what's going on that's in our school, that's education, that's housing, fundamental things for kids in their families," Ashley said. "If we really want to do something different, we've got to go upstream and provide people an opportunity to have better outcomes and even envision better outcomes."
Triggiano agreed.
"I spent nine of my 19 years at Children's Court and I do believe this is probably the worst that I've ever seen," Triggiano said. "Our juvenile justice system, with the kinds of crimes that are being committed by very young, young children. I think over the course of the last two and a half years when the pandemic hit, I think the stressors in our community increased without that level of a safety net there to help pick up from where those young children needed help the most."
Both judges praised grassroot and city-led organizations helping solve the problem at the root cause.
"Building relationships, creating mentors, being in school. I think we have to support our community organizations that really tend to help families, especially our youth. Diverting them from crime, reckless driving, those kinds of things. I do agree with Judge Ashley. There are root causes where the justice system is not equipped to take care of these kinds of issues and significant mental health concerns," Triggiano said. "There's an amazing amount of people working on this issue in the community, it's all grassroots and I really appreciate that. I also think our county executive, our mayor and others are really focusing on what are those stressors in the community that we can alleviate, to help alleviate the crime, the harm, the homicide rate of reckless driving."
Triggiano said collaboration is key to the problem.
"As a group, we sit on violence reduction, public health and safety team. It's about 40 people come together monthly to talk about what are those root causes, what can we do using credible messengers or mentors for our youth so that we can steer them in the right direction? We're looking at data very creatively to see where we might be able to address issues," Triggiano said. "I'm excited about becoming the director of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice because it's another way of centering victims, supporting offenders, but bringing the community together to help do both and with a goal of really looking at how we can repair harm that has been committed in the community."
As for the courts, Triggiano and Ashley said they still have a little over 1,400 backlogged felony cases to get through. The backlog started during the pandemic and continues now, largely because of a staffing shortage.
"We have to be willing to spend money on the front end to address some of these problems," Ashley said "We need money to support the court system. The clerk's office, the district attorney's office, public defender's office, those folks who are working sheriff's department, to give them the resources to help us do more effective work with proper staffing levels."
"We do not have proper staffing level, which stops us from doing some of the things that we have money to do, but we don't have the staff to do it," Ashley said.
"I think that just about every organization that touches the justice system in some way and provide support is, probably anywhere from 30 to 40% down in their staffing levels," Triggiano said.
Triggiano said they hope to have the backlog in cases solved before the end 2024, but staffing levels will impact that goal.
"We have to figure out ways to pivot and do things differently. We always talk about the justice system as being an ecosystem. We found out over the last three years how interconnected we are in a variety of ways. That's why the relationship piece is so important, where one person or one organization had limited staff. It impacted everything we did, including the backlog."
Both judges also discussed the scrutiny they sometimes face.
"I don't think its wrong to scrutinize some of the cases that have outcomes that we are not happy with, but you got to understand, when a judge is making a decision based on the information given to them and making the best judgment they can, if people wanted to lock up everybody for offenses, we don't have any place to put those folks," Ashley said.
"I think judges are used to having a microscope on them, but it's certainly been more so lately. I think it has become part and parcel with, again, the increase in the homicides, reckless driving," Triggiano said. "We take it seriously. Every time something happens in the community, a homicide, a death, where somebody was touching the justice system already, we sit down, we take a look at it. We determine, could we have done something differently? Was there some other organization that could have done something differently, so that we can support each other in really trying to figure out what's the right way to deal with tragedy in our community?"