From: Patience Roggensack
Date: June 22, 2020 at 2:54:42 PM CDT
To: Circuit Court Judges
Subject: Racial concerns
In these historic times, I wanted to pass on to you the results of a several year
project. I called it my “summer project.” It consumed many summer months for 4
years and employed the services of a privately paid statistician. Please see the
attached article that I submitted to the Marquette Lawyer and which was published
in the fall 2016 edition.
In the research that underlies this article, I attempted to ascertain whether race
affected judicial sentencing in Wisconsin. I did so because of media articles that
stressed the disproportionate percentage of African Americans in Wisconsin prisons
and I was concerned that the inference from those articles was that Wisconsin
courts were biased.
You may have already seen this article in the Marquette Lawyer, but if not, you will
see that I was not able to fully answer the question. However, I did make
considerable headway in that effort. We got stuck on comparing consecutive and
concurrent sentences for the same level of criminal conduct in mid-level felonies.
After this study was completed, the Supreme Court Office of Judicial Operations
hired Dr. Michael Thompson, a statistician who now heads the Office of Research
and Justice Statistics for Wisconsin Courts. Dr. Thompson continues research on
race and Wisconsin courts. He also works on other projects to determine whether
Wisconsin Courts are serving the people in a fair and even-handed way, for example
in proceedings that involve children and families.
I have the utmost confidence in the Wisconsin judiciary. My research and that of Dr.
Thompson have shown that my confidence in Wisconsin’s judiciary is well placed.
Wisconsin has judges who show repeated concerns for the challenges that those
who come before Wisconsin courts face.
On another matter, my thanks to each of you for all the extra time that you spent in
making Wisconsin courts available during the COVID-19 crisis. I know it has not
been an easy process, but your efforts kept Wisconsin’s courts running.
Happy summer.
Pat Roggensack