Court Opinion

ID: 9706465
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 01:44:15.911456+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:22:22.972302
License: Public Domain

WILLIAM A. BABLITCH, J.
{concurring). The majority in the trilogy of cases decided today, State v. John T. Williams, 198 Wis. 2d 516, 544 N.W.2d 406 (1996); State v. Terry Akins, 198 Wis. 2d 495, 544 N.W.2d 392 (1996); and State v. Scott E. Williams, 198 Wis. 2d 479, 544 N.W.2d 400 (1996), puts forth a highly commendable effort to reconcile the nearly irreconcilable. In these efforts, the majority is forced to wrestle *539with the language of two specific statutes which on their face seem to contradict their conclusions.
Wisconsin Stat. § 971.01(1) states in relevant part: "The district attorney shall examine all facts and circumstances connected with any preliminary examination . . . and . . . shall file an information according to the evidence on such examination . . . ." (Emphasis added.) In Scott E. Williams, absolutely no evidence was introduced regarding whether these drug offenses occurred within 1000 feet of a school yet the majority allows those four counts to stand.
Wisconsin Stat. § 970.03(10), involving multiple count complaints, provides in relevant part: "The facts arising out of any count ordered dismissed shall not be the basis for a count in any information...." In John T. Williams, the facts arising out of the count dismissed at the preliminary are the exact same facts which are the basis for count three of the information. The majority's interpretation changes a proscription of authority ("shall not") into a grant of authority. It is undisputed that the facts arising out of count three in the complaint which was dismissed are the basis for count three in the information. In Akins, a challenge to equal protection is avoided only by utilizing the same interpretation.
Consistency in the interpretation of these statutes, and other statutes such as Wis. Stat. § 970.04, is achieved in a far less tortuous manner by simply requiring a factual basis in the preliminary examination for each crime charged in the information. This was the course urged on the court in the dissent filed by Justice Abrahamson in State v. Burke, 153 W. 2d 445, 451 N.W.2d 739 (1990), in which I joined. The reasons expressed in that dissent are as valid today as they were then. Burke is the underpinning of each of these *540cases. Without Burke, each would fall. Given the choice, I would overrule Burke. However, the majority refuses to do so. Thus, Burke remains the law today. Because it is the law, I concur.
I write only to express a deep concern. I fear we have not heard the end of the problems that have consistently come before this court since Burke. For example, this trilogy of cases and its progeny will allow the State to charge a defendant with second-degree recklessly endangering safety, put in evidence at the preliminary to show probable cause as to that charge, and then charge the defendant in the information with sexual assault, kidnapping, and attempted murder. These cases will allow this type of charging as long as the additional charges are transactionally related to a count on which the defendant was bound over. Any criminal justice system so utterly replete with plea bargaining (as is ours) that allows this type of charging to occur is clearly subject to abuse. Extraordinary power has been placed in the hands of the district attorney with these decisions. In the present day atmosphere where plea bargaining is the rule rather than the exception, the state holds all the levers; the defendant can be coerced into a plea beyond the bounds of fairness.
That this is true is due in no small part to another facet of these cases: judicial review of the state's final charging decision has for all intents and purposes been abolished. The only judicial review is confined to the question of whether the additional charges are wholly unrelated in terms of the parties involved, witnesses involved, geographical proximity, time, physical evidence, motive and intent. Burke, 153 Wis. 2d at 457. There is no judicial review as to whether any evidence *541even exists to believe the defendant is guilty of the additional crimes charged.
As a former district attorney, this writer can attest to the power that rests with the decision to charge. No one can deny it. But it can be abused, intentionally or unintentionally. The State should not resent judicial review of its charging decisions, it should welcome it. It serves as a check on human fallibilities, on the pressures of an overcrowded calendar, on the pressures emanating from outside forces. It may be inconvenient, but checks and balances are frequently inconvenient, particularly on the person or the institution being checked and balanced.
Unquestionably, the system now set in place by these cases is efficient. But efficiency should never yield to basic notions of fairness. Efficiency is hardly the only sought after objective in a democratic society.
I am authorized to state that Justices Shirley S. Abrahamson and Ann Walsh Bradley join in this concurrence.