Sara's Law intended as a deterrent in assisting attorney safety - WSAW

WAUSAU, Wis. (WSAW) – It has been nearly four years since Sara’s Law, Wis. Stat. 940.203(3), was signed in inside the Marathon County Courthouse.

There are existing laws protecting court employees like judges and prosecutors already, but it is the first law in the country to make threatening or harming corporation councils, guardian ad litems, and attorneys generally, or their families a felony.

For that reason and for the horrific targeted mass shooting that inspired it, Sara’s Law gained a lot of attention in the legal world when it was introduced in 2018. According to Stephen Kelson, an attorney with Christensen & Jensen Attorneys in Utah, attorney safety, especially in the roles this law protects, is understudied. The only consistent report of threats to some legal professionals is laid out in the U.S. Marshal Services’ Annual Report, which has seen a rise in threats and inappropriate communication between 2017-2021.

As he was going through law school, his professors knew of only one study on the topic done in the 1990s. So, he began doing small surveys with attorneys in his county and researched incidents that rose to the level of getting into news coverage. Eventually, he worked with the American Bar Association to do a statewide survey, then worked with about 30 other states, including Wisconsin. He said the results are consistent across states.

Of the members who responded to the survey, legal professionals in criminal and family law reported the highest rate of threats or violence to them or their families. He said it is likely due to the elements those areas of the law manage, with family law having a distinctive difference compared to criminal law.

“You’re talking about life, liberty, and property,” he said about family law, noting that criminal law largely only deals with life and liberty. “Everything changes in a divorce: Where you’re going to live, how you’re going to live, the property – who is going to own what. The house, the car, every little thing that you own is going to be divided and separated and then you also talk about children. The family, the pets, where they’re going to be and there’s restrictions that can occur as to what time you’re going to have with children, and even with pets, that can be divided among the individuals involved.”

“It raises a lot of high emotions and we have a tendency to put blame when relationships come apart,” he continued. “And when you deal with those things and the high emotions that come with a breakup of relationships, you’re also dealing, at times, with underlying problems. There can be severe power imbalances that occur. There can be issues that might be arising from mental imbalances. There could be chemical imbalances. There could be issues of underlying abuse and when those arise, they can become exacerbated by a divorce and then they look for somewhere to take out the aggression. An individual which has those kinds of backgrounds, often they have what’s called a spillover effect: If they’re stopped from being able to take out the threats and violence on the person historically which they would take out those threats and violence against, they go to the next person and, often, that ends up being an attorney.”

He noted a law may not stop an individual who would be in such a state to be capable to carry out such violence, especially if it is not a law that is made well known. He said it would be tough to measure how well it does deter people from committing such crimes.

However, those who were close to Quirt-Sann and helped to write the law said that it is a tool that they can use at the beginning of these relationships with clients as a way to deter threats and violence. They also said they were happy to have the law in place should it be needed, as there was little recourse previously.

After reaching out to the American Bar Association and Shepardizing the law, it does not appear to have been replicated or adopted in other states. As for its use in Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Bar Association could not find any instances that it has been used, however, Marathon County District Attorney Theresa Wetzsteon said it has been cited once in the county.

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source: https://www.wsaw.com/2022/03/21/saras-law-intended-deterrent-assisting-attorney-safety/

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