When Kelli Thompson started law school at Marquette University in the 1990s she had a clear idea of what she wanted. Specifically, what she didn’t want.
“I had one goal and it was not to practice law, not to be in a courtroom,” Thompson said.
It took just one day at her internship with the Milwaukee public defender’s office to turn that idea on its head.
“I walked in and it was chaos,” Thompson said.
That day, Thompson shadowed two public defenders, lawyers employed by the government to represent “indigent” clients in criminal cases, people who otherwise can’t afford a lawyer. She remembers the exact bench where she sat outside the courtroom while the attorneys discussed whether they should take the client’s case to trial.
“He had a family and we’re talking about life-changing options,” Thompson said. She saw firsthand how a public defender can greatly affect a client’s outcomes.
Kelli Thompson, state public defender and daughter of former Gov. Tommy Thompson, listens as her dad is interviewed during a WisPolitics luncheon at the Madison Club on March 8, 2022.
“You’re looking at losing your liberty… all of these things… that we’re trying to figure out on a bench,” said Thompson.
By the end of that first day, Thompson knew “this is all I ever want to do.”
Now, almost 30 years later, Thompson has spent the majority of her career in and around courtrooms. She is wrapping up her time as Wisconsin’s state public defender, the head of the agency with a mission to “zealously represent clients, protect constitutional rights, and advocate for an effective and fair criminal justice system.” Thompson has been in the role since 2011, leading the office as law enforcement technology and mental health and substance abuse issues have changed the nature of criminal cases, and through major disruptions like a pandemic and upheaval around racism and injustice in the law.
Thompson is retiring from the role Monday, Oct. 9. She’s leaving after a big win, getting the polarized Wisconsin Legislature to increase funding for the state’s justice system and specifically to increase pay for public defenders.
The job of state public defender is notoriously difficult and one Thompson excelled at, lauded by her peers and colleagues as an effective and empathetic leader.
“She’s smart. She’s nonpartisan. But she’s also very thoughtful and compassionate and I think she approaches everything she does with great integrity,” said Larry Martin, executive director of the State Bar of Wisconsin, who has known Thompson since 2013.
Martin said the justice system is the least understood branch of government, but it’s essential in upholding constitutional rights.
“What folks don’t fully appreciate is just the tremendous workload that the state public defender’s office and individual lawyers that are public defenders in our state carry,” Martin said, “and the work that they’d have to do in trying to ensure that everyone has representation in the justice system.”
Thompson may have made it look easy, but it wasn’t. She said she’s screamed, cried, and at times felt like she was losing her mind while doing this work. Her dedication and her colleagues kept her going.
“I’m surrounded by people that have given their whole commitment to helping those people who don’t have a voice in the system,” Thompson said.
A ‘monumental feat’ accomplished
According to the Wisconsin Policy Forum, until recently, public defenders in the state made, on average, half of what other lawyers did: $27.24 per hour or $56,659 per year. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics shows the median income for Wisconsin lawyers is $115,336 a year, or about $55.45 per hour.
On top of low pay, the workload is demanding. Last month, a Lee Enterprises report detailed how public defenders have caseloads much higher than standards suggest is reasonable. In Wisconsin, the average full-time public defender caseload is nearly two times more than national standards, according to the report.
Tracey Lencioni has been a trial attorney with the state public defender’s office for 20 years. She said the work is never-ending.
“You’re constantly juggling and strategizing on how you’re going to accomplish one-sixth of the things that you had set out to get done that day,” Lencioni said. She balances court appearances, reviews evidence, and takes calls from incarcerated clients.
Low pay and high caseloads contribute to burn out which leads to a shortage of attorneys to represent indigent clients across the state. That creates a backlog, delaying due process for those charged and justice for victims.
Lencioni credited Thompson for getting the public, and lawmakers, to understand the consequences of public defender challenges, calling the raise “a monumental feat.”
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul said low public defender recruitment and retention is a public safety issue.
“The public defender’s office has been very active during the time I’ve been AG in working with legislators and other stakeholders to make sure that folks know the importance of the challenges they’re facing,” said Attorney General Josh Kaul. “Part of the reason Kelli has been effective is she’s very engaged in the work that she does.”
“If lawyers can’t get appointed to represent defendants and defendants are just waiting for the appointment of a lawyer, that slows down the justice system,” Kaul said. “It means that justice can be delayed for crime victims and it can also mean that somebody who may need to get into a treatment program is delayed in getting the help that they need.”
Thompson worked to tackle this web of challenges during her tenure. The first step: convince the hyperpartisan Wisconsin government to increase public defender pay and funding for the department.
And she succeeded. In the most recent state budget, legislators and Gov. Tony Evers agreed to raise public defender pay from $27.24 to $36 per hour.
Adam Plotkin is the legislative liaison with the Wisconsin State Public Defender’s office. He started the same year as Thompson and has lobbied the Legislature for more funds alongside her. He said this budget success was six years in the making.
Traditionally, each department in the justice system would put together a budget request and lobby the Legislature for those funds. Sometimes those requests would compete with each other. A few years ago, Thompson got together with the leaders of the State Courts Office, district attorneys, and others to craft a unified message. They would decide on a budget package among themselves and present it to lawmakers together.
It was a more successful strategy, Plotkin said, and it emphasized how the system works as a whole.
“If we’re not funded for a particular piece, or if the DAs aren’t funded, or the courts aren’t funded, the entire system gets impacted,” Plotkin said. “Most policymakers simply have the impression that we’re adversaries all the time, and absolutely are in the courtroom.
“But again, that systemic need exists and it’s real.”
Kaul said the coalition has had success in the last three budgets but there is still a long way to go since the justice system “had been underfunded for decades.”
Kaul, and many others, credit Thompson’s leadership with the budget success.
“The public defender’s office has been very active during the time I’ve been AG in working with legislators and other stakeholders to make sure that folks know the importance of the challenges they’re facing,” Kaul said. “Part of the reason Kelli has been effective is she’s very engaged in the work that she does.”
Defending the rights of the accused
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn said Thompson’s retirement is “a real loss for Wisconsin.” In an earlier role as chief legal counsel for Gov. Scott Walker, Hagedorn worked with Thompson during the budget cycles in the Walker administration.
Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Brian Hagedorn said Thompson’s retirement is “a real loss for Wisconsin.”
Hagedorn said it’s not easy to advocate for “the constitutional rights of the accused and she was not unaware of the political realities and challenges she faced.”
Tough decisions need to be made when crafting a budget, he said, and Thompson was always looking for solutions.
“She built the case. She worked hard. She tried to be creative,” Hagedorn said.
Hagedorn said that, as a judge, he’s always impressed with the work of public defenders. Their zealous advocacy for their clients comes across in their briefs to the court.
“People who choose to go into that are people who really believe in making every argument they can to defend the rights, whether they’re statutory or constitutional, of those who’ve been accused of crimes,” Hagedorn said.
Hagedorn’s colleague, state Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, said she’s regularly run into Thompson in the Wausau area, where Walsh Bradley lives.
“Kelli is not a stay-at-the-desk administrator exclusively… one of the greatest impacts that she will have is how she traveled around the state meeting with her staff.”
Bradley said public service is part of Thompson’s DNA and she fought for her clients with a remarkable tenacity.
“In the last couple of years, Kelli has shared some experiences with me that just underscore that she is indefatigable in her commitment to her individual clients,” Walsh Bradley said.
Lencioni said Thompson “puts her head through a brick wall” for her clients and her staff.
As the daughter of prominent former Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson, Kelli “could have done anything” after graduating law school, Lencioni said.
“She chose to devote her energies and talents here.”
‘My clients are people’
Former Gov. Thompson said his daughter, Kelli, wears her heart on her sleeve. He said she’s been compassionate since she was a little kid, noting “anything that’s down and out or needs a home, Kelli was always there.”
Thompson recalled to the Cap Times his days in the Legislature when Kelli was a child. He said she regularly extended her compassion to stray animals, to the point that he never knew what he would be faced with when he got home.
“Sometimes it was rabbits, sometimes it was chickens, one time it was ducks,” Thompson said. “And the worst one was Billy the Goat. I came home and Billy the Goat was in the basement.”
When Kelli was considering her path after law school, he knew that compassion would come in handy in the legal field and recommended the internship with the public defender’s office in Milwaukee.
Wisconsin State Public Defender Kelli Thompson is wrapping up her time as the head of the agency with a mission to “zealously represent clients, protect constitutional rights, and advocate for an effective and fair criminal justice system.”
“I knew her motivation was to help people that needed help,” Thompson said. “I knew that would absolutely be her strong suit.”
Along with increasing resources for the state public defender’s office, Kelli Thompson’s other top priority during her tenure was to get the public and lawmakers to adopt a bit of compassion for those who end up in the criminal justice system.
In interviews, Thompson has regularly communicated the simple message, “My clients are people.
“My clients make mistakes. There’s no doubt about it. They sometimes make many, many, many mistakes,” Thompson said. “But these are individuals, these are people. The trauma that many of them have lived through is something that you and I can never understand.”
Along with leading the department, Thompson continued to take criminal cases herself the last 12 years. She said it’s been crucial to ensure she knows what her staff and her clients experience.
“For me to be able to say: I see it every day. I work with this. I know what’s going on,” Thompson said.
Mary Triggiano got a front row seat to the complicated nature of criminal cases as a judge in Milwaukee. She now teaches law at Marquette University and is the director of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, a field that aims to hold offenders accountable in nontraditional ways and bring healing for victims.
Imprisoning a criminal offender can often have negative ripple effects and doesn’t take into account the challenges the person may have faced that led to their situation, Triggiano said.
“What we see in the justice system often is people who are offenders actually have been victimized,” said Triggiano. “And if you don’t take that into consideration, and you don’t take into consideration their trauma, and the stories that they have, it’s really hard to move forward in a positive way and think you’re going to get positive results.”
Triggiano said one of Thompson’s best attributes is her ability to speak with people of differing opinions about justice and advocate for effective solutions that take into account a defendant’s trauma.
“We certainly need people like Kelli who can voice that opinion, right? Because she’s very well respected,” Triggiano said.
Shannon Ross received a 17-year prison sentence for a violent crime he committed at 19. While incarcerated, Ross earned his bachelor’s degree and started publishing articles about criminal justice reform. He now runs the nonprofit The Community, an organization that supports prisoners reentering society. Thompson serves on the board of directors.
Shannon Ross, who was formerly incarcerated and now is executive director of a nonprofit called The Community, speaks during a 2023 Cap Times Idea Fest session at Madison College’s Goodman South Campus. Ross works with Kelli and Tommy Thompson on criminal justice reform advocacy.
Often individuals who’ve spent years behind bars have a difficult time adjusting when they get out. They have no support system, no assets, no access to housing or a job. This can lead to reoffending and ending up back in prison. Ross said the justice system can make changes to set people up for success.
“There still is a very basic recipe for coming home and doing well,” Ross said.
Ross works with Kelli and Tommy Thompson on criminal justice reform advocacy. During his time as governor from 1987 to 2001, Thompson shepherded legislation that enforced stricter criminal penalties and expanded Wisconsin’s prison population.
Thompson said he has since changed his mind on that tough on crime approach.
By the end of his time as governor, Thompson realized the state was “spending more in corrections than we were at the University of Wisconsin and I thought, what a waste!”
Thompson now advocates for rehabilitation and education for Wisconsin’s incarcerated population, and is pushing for a program to turn one of the state’s prisons into a vocational school.
“I went from more of a strict law and order person to one that is looking at more common sense approaches,” Thompson said. “And I would have to give a great deal of credit to that to the discussions I had with my daughter Kelli because she would bring home problems that her clients were having with the judicial system and especially the prison system.”
Beyond the compassionate reasons for criminal justice reform, Kelli Thompson has been communicating the practicality of decarceration. Wisconsin’s population is aging and unemployment is low.
“Our workforce needs… my clients, and my clients are sitting in cages,” Thompson said.
Thompson has three daughters who grew up watching their mom work tirelessly for people who’ve made mistakes and committed crimes. She said it’s given them a nuanced view of the world.
Former Gov. Tommy Thompson credits his daughter Kelli for changing him “from more of a strict law and order person to one that is looking at more common sense approaches” to the judicial system.
“They look at life through a different lens, which I think is critically important,” Thompson said. “They have compassion for individuals… because they’ve listened to me talk about it for so long.”
What’s next?
Thompson hasn’t announced her next move yet, but she’s emphatic it won’t include running for office. She said she’d like to stay in her current field.
“Indigent defense and advocating for individuals who don’t always have a voice in the system is well, for me, it’s the most important work that I can do,” Thompson said.
Katie York will become acting state public defender when Thompson steps down. York’s background is a bit different: Her dad was a dairy farmer and her mom was a nurse.
“Growing up I didn’t know what a public defender was and I had no understanding of the criminal system,” said York.
She said she shares a passion for the job and, like Thompson, also plans to continue representing clients while taking on the administrative duties of state public defender. York said she hopes to continue the progress Thompson made.
“She is an incredibly compassionate person and when she talks about the clients that she has worked with, she does that in an authentic way,” said York. “And I think it really helps people that aren’t familiar with the criminal system to understand the important work we do and why it’s important to support the agency as a whole.”
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
