Lincoln County's District Attorney's office is, like so many in the State, understaffed. A 2007 report from the Legislative Audit Bureau said that with only 2 full-time prosecutors, Lincoln County should have additional full time, and one part time assistant district attorney to keep up with their cases. Since that report, the number of cases they handle has risen.

One of the ways they're working to keep up is by assigning the county traffic citations, a task ideally handled by prosecutors, to a member of the clerical staff. "She talks to the defendants to see if they can settle", District Attorney Don Dunphy said. "Which saves a lot of time on court trial days."

Their office is also one of 24 in the State who has hired an outside agency called Financial Crimes Services to take care of all their cases involving bad checks. That agency tells me they recover the money for businesses about 60% of the time. But the other District Attorneys in our area who prosecute the bad check cases themselves tell us they recover between 80 and 95%.

And there are some crimes in Lincoln county that aren't being charged at all. Dunphy recently set a blanket policy not to charge for Operating After Revocation. "Our policy basically is if its a first or second offense and theres no other traffic crime related to the operating after revocation, then we want law enforcement to issue a ticket rather than a criminal charge", Dunphy said.

Merrill Police Chief Ned Seubert says a citation is not as much of a deterrent for offenders. "Its not the same charge, but were seeing some consequence for the violator - it's a whole lot less than if it was a criminal charge", he said. "We have a lot of people who are driving without a license here in Lincoln County, here in the City of Merrill, and if our hands are tied and were not able to charge those out, people are going to continue to drive."

Bail jumping charges are also rarely prosecuted, and the County has a policy not to collect on broken signature bonds. They're moves that save the D.A. time, but frustrate the Sheriff's and Police Departments.

In addition to charges declined on policy, officers are seeing more cases are being passed over on an individual basis too. "By the number of declined prosecutions, I think they're more surprised if a case goes through sometimes", Chief Seubert said. Officers from the Sheriff's department and Merrill and Tomahawk Police Department acknowledge the increased workload on the District Attorney's Office, and say the number of cases being declined for prosecution has risen while Dunphy's been in office. It's a trend that's weighing heavily on those who work hard to investigate a case - but never see it charged. "The common complaint I hear back from the officers, and even when I was in investigations, why put the work into it?", said Seubert. "If you know its not going to be charged out, why are we even trying and devoting our time to investigate this thoroughly? We have to sell to our officers: do your job, and if we do our job here, we cant worry about what happens across the street."

Officers receive constant reminders of their fruitless work in the form of memos sent to them by the D.A.'s office whenever one of their cases has been declined. Reasons cited include anything from a case not being worth the County's resources to pursue to the statute of limitations running out because the case was under review for months, or even years. But most often, the memo simply says they're not sure it's a case they can win in court. "I'm sure the investigating officers are always frustrated when they send a referral over and the charge is declined", Dunphy said. "But we have to face practical realities, and what fits probable cause doesn't always arise to being able to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt, and I don't think we decline an unreasonable number of cases."

But we found the District Attorney's Office has been unable to produce records that show how many cases were declined in the past, even during just the most recent year. Records in most District Attorney's Offices in the State are kept in a computer system called 'Protect.' Initially, Lincoln county's records appeared to show nothing out of the ordinary. But their records aren't complete. After paging through memos sent to Merrill Police in 2009 declining charges, we discovered a majority of those denied cases, more than 70%, were what the District Attorney called 'log-in memos' - those reports forwarded from law enforcement that were never assigned a D.A. case number, and never entered into Protect. Dunphy says those 'log-in memos' are cases in which Officers don't neccessarily expect charges, but are looking to find out whether there is enough evidence or what crime should be charged. The Office has been unable to produce any records of those cases, "We decline those and there really isn't much of a record kept of them, because once they're declined that's it", Dunphy said. "I don't think they even go on Protect. No, they don't as a matter of fact."

There's no Statewide mandate for how district attorneys must track their cases, but all the other D.A.'s we spoke with say they enter every case into Protect. Langlade County District Attorney Ralph Uttke says that makes for easy record-keeping. "When it comes to our office, we put it into our system so we can keep an accurate record of what cases come in and when they come in", Uttke said. When asked about files being missing from the Protect system, Uttke said, "Well, that's scary because then we don't have a true accurate basis for determining what their caseload is if they're not considering those."

One thing about the caseload in Lincoln County is clear: it has the District Attorney's office stretched to the limit. "We'll most certainly continue to do the best we can with what we have", Dunphy said.