On Tuesday, April 5, Milwaukee County residents will be able to vote on two contested races for circuit court judge. In both races, a recent judicial appointee of Gov. Scott Walker will face an attorney in private practice in elections for a six-year term on the bench. In Branch 31, Judge Paul Rifelj is running against Hannah Dugan, and Judge Michelle Havas is being challenged by Jean Kies in Branch 45.
Last Tuesday, the candidates faced off in a Milwaukee Bar Association-sponsored forum. For this article, the candidates’ responses to two questions are highlighted: the toughest decisions they’ve made and how they can address Milwaukee’s mass incarceration of African Americans.
Branch 31: Hannah Dugan v. Paul Rifelj
Hannah Dugan: Hannah Dugan runs her own law firm and has decades of experience as a leader of Legal Action of Wisconsin, Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee and Catholic Charities of Southeastern Wisconsin. She is a referee on attorney discipline cases for the Wisconsin Supreme Court and served as chair of the Wisconsin Judicial Commission.
Dugan said her most difficult decisions were those she made when then Archbishop Timothy Dolan asked her in 2003 to serve on the Diocesan Review Board, the local board set up by the Vatican to investigate claims of clergy sex abuse. As the only attorney on the board, she said she had to mesh together cannon law and civil law and review decades of evidence. “Nothing like this had happened in 2,000 years,” Dugan said. “Popes and bishops decided what happened to priests in ministry. Not laypeople, and certainly not women.”
Dugan said the time is right to address African American mass incarceration, since individuals across the political spectrum, nationwide, realize this is a problem that needs to be solved. She said reforms including banning the box on employment applications and more alternatives to incarceration should be considered. But changes can be made on the individual and local level, too, by addressing municipal ticket policies. “The key thing to making sure that justice happens is that we don’t create records,” she said. “Records are really problematic for people because it leads to more and more and leads to really unfair incarceration.”
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She said the community needs to have a larger discussion about race and racial disparities in the criminal justice system so that leaders and residents are united in seeking justice.
“We have a very serious problem that we don’t even talk about race enough, we don’t talk about racial inequity enough,” Dugan said.
To learn more about Hannah Dugan, go to hannahduganforjudge.com.
Paul Rifelj: Gov. Scott Walker appointed Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Paul Rifelj to the bench in December 2015 after Judge Daniel Noonan retired. Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, another Walker appointee, recommended Rifelj for this position. Rifelj is a former state public defender.
Rifelj said his hardest decision was abandoning his dream to work as a prosecutor in the office of former Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann. Instead, he accepted a job offer from the public defender’s office and later turned down an offer from the DA. “I just didn’t want to start my legal career being someone who was saying one thing and then doing another,” Rifelj said. “I did not want to go back on my word at the very infancy of my legal career.” He said working as a public defender brought him into contact with a wide swath of people he likely wouldn’t have encountered otherwise, which made him a better attorney and judge.
Rifelj said judges can help to reduce African American incarceration by distinguishing between violent and nonviolent crimes and providing appropriate sentences. He said last week a prosecutor asked to sentence a man accused of stealing a box of diapers to six months in prison. “How are we to justify that?” Rifelj said.
But Rifelj said that the policies that result in mass incarceration aren’t created at the circuit court level and need to be fixed on a systemic level. “We have to be very careful that we don’t try to solve it on our own,” Rifelj said. “We need to have a partnership with legislators. We have to have an ongoing dialogue with community members, with the people who are making the laws so that together as a system we can try and end this process.”
To learn more about Paul Rifelj, go to paulformilwaukee.com.
Branch 45: Michelle Havas v. Jean Kies
Michelle Havas: Walker appointed Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Michelle Havas to the bench in August 2015 to fill the seat vacated by Rebecca Bradley after Walker appointed Bradley to the Appeals Court. Bradley has endorsed Havas in this race. Havas spent much of her career as an assistant district attorney who terminated parental rights.
She said her most difficult decisions involved the parental rights termination cases she handled for the DA’s office. “It was very, very rare that I saw someone who wanted their parental rights to be terminated, but it was a necessity in some cases,” Havas said. “The saddest cases that I had were people who were simply not equipped due to cognitive delays, mental illness, to raise their children.”
On mass incarceration of African Americans, she said, “I’m not going to tell you that I’m not going to hold people accountable in my court, because I will on a case-by-case basis if that’s what it is. But I don’t do that with regard to, ‘Ooh, I’m looking at your skin color,’ because that would be a horrible injustice.”
She said that while she is aware of the state’s racial disparities in incarceration, the statistics shouldn’t affect her on the bench. “People look at this and say there are too many African American males that are incarcerated, and that’s absolutely true,” she said. “But on what case should I say, no you don’t have to go to jail because the numbers are too high? That’s not how justice operates.”
She said she would work in the community to encourage people to make better decisions so that they stay out of court.
“What I will do is what I’ve said, I want to work proactively to make people not be committing so many crimes, to not be making those bad choices,” Havas said.
To learn more about Michelle Havas, go to judgemichellehavas.com.
Jean Kies: Jean Kies has operated her own law firm for 23 years and represents a wide range of cases, including civil, family, juvenile and criminal matters, bankruptcy, and representing victims of sex trafficking. She has argued thousands of cases in courts at all levels, from municipal court to federal and state appellate courts.
“I want to be an instrument of justice,” Kies said. “I am fair and impartial. I want everyone to have a chance to be heard in the court of law and I want everyone to be treated with respect. Equality before the law isn’t just a legal principle to me—it’s the way that I practice law, it’s the way I live my daily life and it’s why I want to be a judge.”
Kies said her toughest decision has involved creating a work/life balance that allows her to be successful professionally while raising two sons. “I have two children and my decision and wanting to run has been delayed by virtue of the fact that professionally I wanted to be a good lawyer and I wanted to be a good advocate but I also wanted to be a good parent and community member,” she said.
She said the African American mass incarceration rate needs to be addressed, since Milwaukee has such a racial disparity in incarceration. She said that violent offenders need to go to jail when appropriate, but that those working in the criminal justice system also need to take into consideration other factors, such as poverty, education level, housing instability and employment.
Kies said that in her private practice she helps her clients get connected to mental health, substance abuse or other services when necessary so they can turn their lives around.
“When we have people who have hope and are positive contributors to our community, that’s how we end mass incarceration rate, by making people feel worthwhile and connected,” Kies said.
Kies has raised questions about Havas’ appearance at Republican Party events and for hiring a former GOP operative for her campaign. At one GOP event, Havas thanked “leadership here who has helped me and is helping me to get my name out,” according to a transcript of the event provided by Kies. Kies argues Havas is not independent enough for this nonpartisan position; Havas has denied that she’s partisan.
To learn more about Jean Kies, go to jeankiesforjudge.com.
