MILWAUKEE – Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm says an over-worked assistant didn’t have all the information that she needed when she set bail at $1,000 for Darrell Brooks earlier this year.
Brooks is accused of later driving an SUV through a parade in Waukesha, killing six and injuring more than 40.
“You had a young ADA trying to do the best she could under really difficult circumstances, and she made a mistake,” DA Chisholm said on Thursday.
Chisholm said a public safety assessment was done, and determined that a higher bail should be sought for Brooks, but said the information never made it to the assistant who was in charge of prosecuting the case.
“In talking with the ADA, what she indicated is that she did not have access to that public safety assessment. It’s not that it wasn’t done, it just hadn’t been uploaded into the case management system,” Chisholm said.
“Given the number of cases that she was dealing with, given her [other] jury trial that she was working on, she simply charged the case. She looked at the previous bail, saw that it was $500 and doubled it.”
Chisholm laid out two major factors which led to the information falling through the cracks: a lack of funding and a backlog of cases created by the pandemic.
“I have about 90 assistant DA’s that handle adult offenses that occur in Milwaukee County,” Chisholm said. “Population of about a million people roughly, and I have 90 prosecutors that are responsible for addressing any violations of the social contract.”
He said the backlog created by the pandemic made a bad problem much worse.
“Currently you have the jail that has over, I believe about 175 individuals in the jail just awaiting homicide charges right now,” Chisholm said.
“We’ve got another additional 100 or so awaiting first-degree sexual assault. We have an additional 70 or so who committed have serious crimes against children. And this doesn’t even include people who have non-fatally shot people, robbed people, people who have been driving on their fifth, sixth, seventh drunken driving offense.”
After he was released on $1,000 bail, Brooks is accused of driving an SUV through the parade in Waukesha, killing six people and injuring more than 40.
He’s currently facing six counts of first-degree intentional homicide in Waukesha County Court. He’s due back for a preliminary hearing on January 14, 2022.