(File Photo by Kevin Mathewson, Kenosha County Eye)
KENOSHA COUNTY, Wis. — When Xavier Solis was sworn in earlier this year, he inherited an office in turmoil. The first Republican District Attorney in over a century, Solis stepped into a tough spot. Before he even took the reins, many liberal assistant district attorneys walked out in protest. More have since left, and others are preparing to follow.
That’s not Solis’s fault. But it is his problem to fix.
To his credit, Solis has focused on what matters most: prosecuting serious crimes. Unlike his predecessor, Mike Graveley, who often declined to charge significant felonies, Solis is taking them on — and winning convictions. Families who long felt abandoned by the old DA’s office are finally seeing justice in court. He has also hired many strong prosecutors who are working hard and doing well in the courtroom.
But justice is more than homicide trials and headline-grabbing prosecutions.
As William E. Gladstone famously said in 1868, “Justice delayed is justice denied.” That principle still applies in Kenosha County today.
KCE is seeing many criminal complaints filed months after the crimes occurred. These aren’t murders or robberies, but they are offenses that matter deeply to taxpayers — thefts, batteries, drug crimes, and other cases that impact neighborhoods every single day. To the victims of those crimes, the wait for charges feels like justice denied.
Adding insult to injury, many lesser offenses are being amended down to mere citations or outright “prosecution denied.” That’s not a police issue. Across Kenosha County, officers are doing their jobs — suspects are identified, cases are investigated, reports are written, and they sit ready for charging. Yet hundreds of those cases remain stuck in the DA’s hopper.
The charging process is the most important duty of a district attorney’s office. It determines who faces justice and who walks free. But for decades in Kenosha, charging has been treated like the least important task. Sloppy complaints get dismissed, good defense attorneys like Michael D. Cicchini and the State Public Defender’s Office capitalize on those errors, and prosecutors are forced to re-file cases that should have been airtight the first time.
This is no way to run a prosecutor’s office.
No one is asking Xavier Solis to create attorneys out of thin air. Staffing shortages are real. But the taxpayers of Kenosha County deserve a plan. They deserve a DA’s office that treats their cases — big and small — with the seriousness they deserve. They deserve swift justice, and they deserve it now.
The bottom line is this: Xavier Solis didn’t create this mess, but it’s his responsibility to clean it up. The success of his tenure will depend not only on high-profile felony convictions but on whether everyday citizens can trust that their cases won’t be delayed, diminished, or dismissed.
Justice delayed is justice denied. Kenosha can’t afford either.
19 Responses
Takes time and manpower to undo years of corruption and incompetence.
Now you have lost a loyal subscriber and reader.
Pfft grifter
Can I ask what you disagree with me with? Can you also explain why one small disagreement over 5 years of sharing similar beliefs would make you that want to read anymore?
Kevin, I can’t speak for this person. I know that I was happy that you wrote this opinion. It shows that you have some independence. That is necessary for you to be an effective journalist. People in power will use that power to manipulate and defang you. You have to resist that. Keep up the good work.
It’s an imperfect world and a very necessary tension. When he was Milwaukee’s mayor, Henry Maier had a running feud with the Milwaukee Journal which I once described this way: “It’s simple. The Journal wants to run he city and the mayor wants to run the Journal.”
The late Milwaukee Mayor Maier was simply superb. And so too was Police Chief Harold Breier (“Der Fuhrer”) during Mayor Maier’s long tenure. My late uncle was a Milwaukee cop then. Wow! The adventures he experienced! Both men were no nonsense conservative German centrist communist hating, Constitutional loyal (Original Intent) Democrats: 100% Alpha, 0% Beta. The current “Future is Female” crap would have not been even remotely tolerated. Dictatorial? Only to the beta weak, morally compromised, criminal class, welfare freeloaders, and 1st Amendment high horse types that think they control civil life. Kenosha could only be so fortunate today to have “a pair” like that “package”. The 2020 riots and the Rittenhouse trial would have never happened. Kyle would have been given an award for demonstrating excellent citizenship and would today have his autograph etched into special edition AR-15 barrels.
Why would you drop your subscription over a fair opinion piece that focuses on a very real and troubling problem in Kenosha County? And, once again, it’s only being reported on this website. Just because the reality of the situation doesn’t match your beliefs or hopes is no reason to drop a publication, regardless of beliefs. And Kevin not expressing his valid opinion on the issue isn’t going to make it disappear. Is there a local Echo Chamber Chronicle publication or something along those lines? If so, that would probably be your best bet for a subscription.
He prob ignores the fact that Trump pushed the gene juice on us too.
There needs to be an attachment (put into law) that the court has to post the criminal complaint, the arrest charges requested, a
Booking photo, and outcome of all criminally charged suspects for the public to see just how many cases are plead down to disorderly conduct. If you have something to lose, you get hammered usually. If you’re a career criminal, you get a series of easy plea deals and dismissals. It’s not fair, and it’s not justice.
It’s called a FOIA request. Anyone can do that.
The Kenosha County District Attorney’s office, even when fully staffed, still has more work that people to do it. That’s not unique to Kenosha.
The DA must prioritize and give first priority to violent crimes where the offenders are in custody and then violent crimes in general. With an uptick in violent crime, that will take a lot. What people may not understand is that nonviolent cases may require more work and resources but must wait in line behind emergencies. A DA’s office is a legal emergency room and that’s a good parallel. Unfortunately — and it is unfortunate because victims deserve better — the emergencies come first, just like in the ER. Having staff turnover and inexperienced staff doesn’t help. It will take time to recover and then again violent crimes come first.
It should also be remembered that just because someone has been arrested doesn’t mean they are guilty or that they should be charged. It would be a foolish use of resources for the DA to spend $10,000 of resources on a $300 case. The DA needs to be selective in which cases to pursue and to what extent. And, yes, that’s the law.
Given how people comment on the subject, maybe it would be helpful to know what the standards for prosecution are according to law and the Wisconsin Supreme Court:
“a prosecutor is not obligated to bring all possible charges merely because there is arguable evidence to convict, it is an abuse of discretion to charge when the evidence is clearly insufficient to support a conviction. It is also an abuse of discretion for a prosecutor to bring charges on counts of doubtful merit for the purpose of coercing a defendant to plead guilty to a less serious offense.”
“The diversion of a case to noncriminal channels may in many instances substantially further the ends of justice. . . Diversion properly employed has had substantial success in avoiding recidivism and that rehabilitation may, in some cases, be accomplished much more successfully by a diversion of a putative defendant and at far less cost than a substantial period of incarceration. Prosecutors are encouraged in the proper case to exercise their discretion to divert possible criminal defendants to noncriminal rehabilitative channels. The decision to divert or to prosecute remains a discretionary one and…that discretion ordinarily will not be set aside. A district attorney has at his command the investigative resources of the police and is able to familiarize himself with the personality and history of a prospective defendant and to appraise the likelihood that he can obtain rehabilitation by other than the criminal process.”
“A prosecutor, although subject to little control by other state officers of the decisions within his discretion, is nevertheless periodically answerable to the people. For a limited time he is the trustee of the public’s law enforcement conscience. It is his duty to refrain from instituting criminal charges unconscionably or unnecessarily. In the exercise of that public conscience he is neither the puppet of the law enforcement authorities nor of the courts.”
The state’s highest court adopted with approval these recommended guidelines for prosecutors:
“Discretion in the charging decision.
“(a) In addressing himself to the decision whether to charge, the prosecutor should first determine whether there is evidence which would support a conviction.
“(b) The prosecutor is not obliged to present all charges which the evidence might support. The prosecutor may in some circumstances and for good cause consistent with the public interest decline to prosecute, notwithstanding that evidence exists which would support a conviction. Illustrative of the factors which the prosecutor may properly consider in exercising his discretion are:
“(i) the prosecutor’s reasonable doubt that the accused is in fact guilty;
“(ii) the extent of the harm caused by the offense;
“(iii) the disproportion of the authorized punishment in relation to the particular offense or the offender;
“(iv) possible improper motives of a complainant;
“(v) prolonged non-enforcement of a statute, with community acquiescence;
“(vi) reluctance of the victim to testify;
“(vii) cooperation of the accused in the apprehension or conviction of others;
“(viii) availability and likelihood of prosecution by another jurisdiction.
“(c) In making the decision to prosecute, the prosecutor should give no weight to the personal or political advantages or disadvantages which might be involved or to a desire to enhance his record of convictions.
(d) In cases which involve a serious threat to the community, the prosecutor should not be deterred from prosecution by the fact that in his jurisdiction juries have tended to acquit persons accused of the particular kind of criminal act in question.
(e) The prosecutor should not bring or seek charges greater in number or degree than he can reasonably support with evidence at trial.”
Every day Kenosha County Eye publishes a boatload of stories about people committing serious crimes in our community. The Kenosha News rarely reports even a fraction. This illustrates how busy the DA’s office is in dealing with emergencies. Like it or not, less urgent cases may have to wait their turn and/or be diverted to alternate dispositions. The worst thing we want is a DA’s office spread so thin that it can’t do adequate justice for the most vulnerable victims of crime.
If there was a CliffsNotes for that I probably still wouldn’t read it.
Do You think anyone wants to read all that?
People who are interested, extremely interested want to not just know why but how things work.
If you see long letters here on a story you are interested in then you are thankful someone took the time to give insight.
Many people once they read the story will come back here just to see the comments.
Can’t get this kind of back and forth anywhere else on these local stories.
Kevin’s decision to let virtually any comment thru is what makes his site so appealing.
If you see a long response that taxes your brain, then don’t read it. But to comment that others aren’t interested, why do you care ?
Maybe, maybe not but the job of a prosecutor is way more complicated than those few paragraphs. If you’re going to judge someone’s work then you should at least have the criteria.
DA Solis needs to establish guidelines and prosecution policies after consulting with law enforcement and community leaders. It would save a lot of unnecessary work if it was clear up front how cases should be handled, i.e., which ones should get a municipal court citation.
I guess I’m confused. He is either doing a good job or he isn’t. This site seems to change their mind every single week…..it’s weird.
So in your view I’m only supposed to support everything he does or oppose everything he does? I can’t call balls and strikes? Isn’t that with the new stats? I think your question was disingenuous