Court Opinion

ID: 9528610
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 03:42:28.475192+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:27:06.541449
License: Public Domain

CALLOW, WILLIAM G., J.
(concurring). I concur with the majority and write to emphasize the need for chief judges to require the original commitment judge to hear the case at any subsequent recommitment hearings. Circuit court judges are periodically rotated among different circuit court branches (e.g., family branch, juvenile branch, criminal branch). Section 51.20(13)(g)3, Stats., provides for a hearing when an application for extension is filed. Inevitably, cases will arise where the original committing judge has been transferred from the probate branch into another branch of the circuit court. In these cases, the chief judge should endeavor to assign the recommitment hearing to the judge who ordered the original commitment (even if he or she has been transferred to another branch). The committing judge originally addressed the substantive issue, and if he or she also hears the recommitment proceeding, this avoids the problems inherent in a request for a substitution of judges. (See majority opinion at 160.)
I am authorized to state that Justices Roland B. Day, Donald W. Steinmetz and William A. Bablitch join in this concurring opinion.