In judge’s race, Sowinski stresses independence, community values

Oneida County assistant district attorney Mary Sowinski, a fifth-generation resident of Oneida County from Sugar Camp, says that generational continuity and the community values it represents is a huge reason she is seeking a seat on the Oneida County circuit court as judge this spring.

Add in her many years of legal experience, and Sowinski says she is the best choice for the open circuit court seat on the April 2 spring ballot in Oneida County.

“I was born and raised here, and I grew up on a farm in Sugar Camp and certainly was raised with the values of this community — self-sufficiency, hard work, personal responsibility, and accountability,” Sowinski said in a recent interview with The Lakeland Times. “I love this community and I have a strong family tradition of trying to contribute where you can and how you can to your community. And so if I can do some small thing to help continue those values and traditions into the 21st century, I certainly want to do that.”

Sowinski attended Sugar Camp Elementary, Three Lakes High School, and then she worked her way through both her bachelor’s degree and Juris Doctor at UW-Madison. 

“I started waitressing at the Oneida Village and the White Stag and working at a camp when I was 14,” she said. “And then when I ended up at Madison I had a couple of different part-time jobs.”

One of those jobs was as a page in the state legislature, which Sowinski said led to other legislative positions and eventually to lobbying with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.

“So I figured out pretty quickly when I was a lobbyist that the lawyers ran the show,” she said. “They knew stuff that no one else did and could certainly use the rules to their advantage, and I wanted to know what they knew. So I started law school part-time, while I was still working full-time as a lobbyist for the school boards association.”

Sowinski says she took extra credits and worked part-time jobs so she could finish law school in two-and-a-half years. Along the way she worked as an intern for justice David Prosser at the Supreme Court, in addition to an internship as a prosecutor for the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office.

When she was sworn into the bar in January 1999, Sowinski said she was immediately offered a position in the Milwaukee County district attorney’s office. Her career blossomed in Milwaukee.

“Fortunately, since I was still paying off my law school loans, I had a relative, my mom’s sister actually, who let me stay with her for a bit,” she said. “So I had a free place to stay and in a job that I loved, and almost immediately was transferred from the misdemeanor team to the Child Protection Unit at the Children’s Court Center in Wauwatosa.”

Sowinski spent more than a decade moving up the ladder.

“And that’s where I ended up spending my career, about 12 or 13 years there, moving up from just handling foster care cases to then doing termination of parental rights trials and then being the team captain of the termination of parental rights unit,” she said. “Ultimately the team captain of the entire foster care unit. And that’s the position that I had as a member of the executive committee when I left to finally come back home. And the transition was professionally to the Vilas County corporation counsel’s office for two-and-a-half years.”

Sowinski said she was anxious to get back home to Oneida County.

“I loved my job and there are still days that the absurdity and chaos and energy of that I miss, but I was spending all of my time driving back and forth and spending every weekend up here,” she said. “And that made no sense for years. It was time. It was time to come home.”

After the two-and-a-half years in the Vilas County corporation counsel’s office, Sowinski said she decided to hang out her own shingle.

“And right after I’d given my notice, actually to now judge [Martha] Milanowski — she was the corporation counsel at the time — I found out that there was a part-time position available in the DA’s [district attorney] office in Oneida County,” she said. “So I interviewed with then DA [Michael] Schiek, who offered me the position, and I worked part-time until this past year when the position then transitioned to full-time.”

Judicial philosophy

When it comes to judicial philosophy, Sowinski takes issue with squeezing all judges into binary categories, but she says she has no interest in legislating.

“Many people perceive that question [about judicial philosophy] to mean you have one of two choices because, of course, everything in our world is bifurcated,” she said. “You can either be a minimalist or an activist. I will say that I have no interest in writing the law, and, if I did, I wouldn’t be running for this position. I would run for a different position.”

What she is interested in, Sowinski said, is applying the law as it’s written. 

“That is my only interest,” she said. “Whether people consider that minimalist or activist, I will leave to them to decide. I will say, though, that the rules of judicial ethics in Wisconsin really lay out three roles of a judge.”

The first is how you live your professional life, and that really needs to be done in an exemplary way, Sowinski said. 

“Secondly, how you decide cases, and it needs to be primarily independent and impartial,” she said. “And obviously there are lots of rules around due diligence and treating people fairly and with respect.”

And finally, Sowinski said, the rules make it pretty clear that judges are to be leaders of a justice system and thus are required to provide input and feedback to policymakers about how the court is best run. 

“And so in that respect, I will obviously apply independence the way the judicial rules require, but I think it requires a thoughtful approach certainly, but also that you speak up when you feel like the system isn’t working, isn’t fair, isn’t achieving the results that it should, isn’t efficient or effective,” she said. “And certainly I have no problem speaking my mind when it comes to those issues.”

Sentencing and drug convictions

Sowinski was asked about appropriate sentencing for drug dealers, such as those who peddle methamphetamine, as well as for users. It’s a complicated question, Sowinski said, and it depends on the individuals involved.

“First of all, because of the particular role of judge and because of my experience, I think it’s important when you refer to the individuals who have the meth and who are selling the meth, how important it is that you have experienced people who understand the history of how it has developed and how bad it is now,” she said. 

Judges must be able to take individuals who are brought into the system with a drug offense and treat that individual based on where they are in their use-abuse addiction cycle, as well as consider the positive things they have going for them that can be leveraged to help them get out of their addiction, Sowinski said.

The starting point is diverting the people who are first-time users, she said. 

“You have to as a system distinguish between individuals who may have just entered or are just entering their drug use and those who are repeat offenders who have not taken advantage of the opportunities that they’ve been offered to deal with their abuse and addiction or who are greedy enough that they’re actually exploiting the abuse and addiction of others to make money for themselves,” she said.

There is a huge spectrum of cases, Sowinski said, and, to its credit, Oneida County is trying to recognize that. 

“Just before DA Schiek left office, we along with the sheriff’s department and others, started a diversion program so that we can begin to try to provide really good services, really good structured, monitored services to enforce abstinence while someone is getting treatment and give people the opportunity to deal with their addiction, or abuse if it hasn’t reached the stage of addiction yet, before they begin to accumulate multiple criminal cases,” she said. 

The problem is, Sowinski says, there are many people now who do accumulate multiple criminal cases, some with dozens of criminal convictions, who are still not sent to prison or who are going to prison for short periods of time. 

She also says it is critical that a judge be able to recognize predatory behavior when it develops.

“There are folks who are predatory in their behavior even without addiction issues, which is a totally separate category of people who need to be dealt with very harshly,” she said. “What unfortunately we’re seeing now as a result in many ways of the opioid epidemic is people who became addicted to prescription medication, who have transitioned now that the legal opioid sources have dried up. Many have switched to alternative sources of drugs.” 

And many have reached the point where they have become predatory, Sowinski said.

“They’re stealing from mom and grandma and grandpa and boyfriend in order to feed their addiction or they’re even escalating beyond that into thefts, random burglaries,” she said. 

Sowinski says an experienced judge who has experience in criminal prosecutions is critical to recognizing that behavior.

“I’m the only candidate in the race who’s ever prosecuted a criminal case, first of all, but secondly, who has ever handled any kind of criminal case in Oneida County,” she said. “… Predatory behavior is not acceptable in this community. And the advantage that I have with voters because of my experience here is that you can see me in court, you can look at the cases where I’ve advocated for lengthy prison sentences for drug dealers.”

On more than one occasion, Sowinski says, she has said to the courts that community options for certain offenders have been exhausted.

“That we have no choice but to go to a prison sentence because we cannot keep the public safe with this person in the community,” she said. “And so I don’t think there’s any question that I have a record of doing that with drug offenders, sexual assault defendants, burglary defendants.”

That said, Sowinski continued, the power the government has to prosecute a person in this country and in this state is incredible. 

“The application of that power you really need to think about and focus on your most predatory offenders, in my view,” she said. “The question about whether something is punitive or rehabilitative certainly is both individual and relative to the crime they’ve committed because really good people do really stupid things every day. And it’s so important that a judge have the experience necessary to apply [it], for this individual person, this person sitting in front of me today, not some abstract objective person who may have committed X crime.”

In addition to a decision to send someone to prison, Sowinski says she believes it’s in everyone’s interest to ask what happens when the prison sentence is over.

“And we need to be able to rely on both community correction services and the prison system to play a rehabilitative role so that individuals who are willing and able to conform their behavior to our community expectations can reintegrate and get jobs and have families and live in our community following the rules of behavior that we all expect,” she said.

Sowinski said a judge’s role in that process is critical.

“First of all, you have to have the experience and the concern for your community that when you look at that person in front of you, you don’t want to send them to prison if that’s not necessary,” she said. “You want them to be able to support their family and pay their child support and keep their family housed.”

But in those cases where a prison sentence is necessary and you have no choice, the judge must ask, how long should it be or should they be eligible for programming? For example, Sowinski said, a court can require a person to finish a certain number of years of a sentence as a punitive measure before programming kicks in.

“If you’ve never prosecuted a criminal case, if you’ve never handled a criminal case in Oneida County, and criminal cases are half of your caseload, how do you immediately on day one start making those really important decisions?” she asked. “And I obviously believe that I have the experience to do that.”

Mental health

Sowinski says mental health issues take up a huge amount of space in the judicial system, and the courts have to be open to change and new ideas to address those problems. Society has for a long time perceived behavior that is perfectly normal for someone going through a mental health crisis to be negative and criminal, and the courts have punished it accordingly, Sowinski said. 

“But as the old adage goes, when all you have is a hammer, everything is a nail,” she said. “And having options for trying to remedy that behavior is going to be a huge part of addressing those behaviors so that we can focus more of our time on folks who are truly predatory and damaging this community.”

You have to be willing to admit what you don’t know, Sowinski said. 

“You have to be willing to do things differently tomorrow than you did them today and than you did yesterday and say, ‘You know what? Maybe that did work yesterday, but tomorrow we’re going to do it differently,’” she said.

Problems with mental health and addiction, or a dual diagnosis, accounted for anywhere from 60 to 90 percent of her caseload at the time when she litigated foster care cases, Sowinski said.

“So I absolutely agree that we need to be more cognizant of mental health issues,” she said. “Again, at some point, if a person is incapable after you’ve given opportunities to learn how to live with their mental condition in the community, public safety has to prevail. And hopefully because this community is incredibly generous, we all realize that everyone deserves a chance to deal with whatever issues that they bring to life in this community so that we can all live together.”

Sowinski says she is optimistic that as people and the courts become more aware of mental health issues, positive change will come.

“And I think that as the public learns more about mental health issues and they have more family members and neighbors and friends who are diagnosed and learn to deal with those issues in a productive and healthy way, the tide will turn in a way that allows criminal court systems to really focus on the predatory behavior that is more evil and dangerous and not caused by these underlying conditions,” she said.

Sowinski says one of the most important state Supreme Court cases, in her estimation, was a 2017 case, Gabler v. the Crime Victims’ Rights Board, involving a case where the legislature set up a forfeiture process by which judges and other public officials could be punished by that board for violating victims’ rights. 

Specifically, the board filed a formal complaint against judge William Gabler based on the judge’s decision to postpone sentencing in a criminal case, concluding there was probable cause that Gabler violated the complainant’s statutory and constitutional rights by postponing the sentencing. 

“Ultimately, the state Supreme Court decided that that was an inappropriate breach of judicial role because a judge in deciding a case has to be limited to deciding the case on the merits of the law and the facts of that case and not be incentivized or discouraged by some fine they might have to pay because a victims’ rights board decided that a crime victim’s rights were violated,” she said. “So that’s relevant here because, as I said earlier, there are three roles as a judge. First, how you live your professional life, second, how you decide cases, and third, how you advocate for improvements to the court system.”

One of the main tenets of that decision is that extraneous government agencies cannot invade the purview of the court in deciding a case, Sowinski said. 

“And, as in that third role, we become activists, so to speak — and I’m using your quotes here for purposes of the recorded record — activists working with policymakers to try and improve the work that we do to really better people’s lives, which this community expects us to do,” she said. “But it still can’t invade the purview of what happens between the judge and the parties in the courtroom.”

As such, Sowinski said, a judge needs to be able know where the boundaries of each role are.

“If you’re going to have an independent judicial system that works, you have to have judges who understand the difference, who know the difference, who have the experience to apply the law to the people in front of them based on the facts in front of them, regardless of what’s happening in their personal life or in the context of the public conversations they’re having about improving the court system,” she said.

Other issues

Without seeing actual language, Sowinski said she would not take a position on so-called red flag laws, or extreme risk protection orders, which allow law enforcement or family or friends to petition for the temporary confiscation of an individual’s firearms if that person is deemed to be a risk to Sowinski or to others. A judge makes the call after petitioners present evidence about the risks the person poses.

But Sowinski did say there are all sorts of areas of the law where judges make temporary orders.

“In fact, I’m going to be in court this morning on a juvenile case where the county is asking for a juvenile to be held in secure custody at the Marathon County juvenile facility because of behavior that juvenile was engaged in,” she said. “The temporariness of the order is what’s concerning, how long is temporary, number one. Number two, what future consequences that person is going to face because of that one decision. Is that going to end up on their record for what was a temporary issue that could have been addressed in a less invasive way?”

There are all sorts of questions the legislature must consider in crafting a red-flag law, Sowinski said. She also countered the notion that state law already allows for homicidal and suicidal ideations to serve as the basis for a detention or placement under some kind of custodial care. 

“I think there are people who would argue that removal of weapons is a less invasive government approach on a temporary basis to ensure that that person was not a danger to himself or herself or others,” she said.

The bottom line is, Sowinski said, she would encourage lawmakers to be clear in the law.

When it comes to cases involving administrative agencies and due deference — the U.S. Supreme Court is considering a challenge to “due deference” doctrine that accords judgment to government agency interpretations of law if the interpretation is considered reasonable, whether or not a judge thinks it is a correct interpretation — Sowinski said she would let the Supreme Court decide the matter but in any case would apply the law as it is written.

“If the law that I’m applying requires the circuit court judge to show due deference to reasonable decisions, then that is the law that I will apply,” she said. “Now, how reasonable is defined is impossible to say without the facts of the case. I can only tell you that I believe very strongly that protection of the individual is a basic tenet of our judicial system and the rights of individuals will be respected in my courtroom.”

Sowinski also said open records and public meetings are incredibly important.

“If citizens can’t vote, they can’t advocate with their policymakers,” she said. “They can’t do anything if they don’t have information. And it shouldn’t cost them a fortune to get it.”

Sowinski says part of the reason the open records law is so important is that the information people need about the operation of government can be extremely difficult to understand. 

“But unless you can get access to it, there is no way to understand it,” she said. “And people who are trying to explain it to the larger public can’t do that unless they can get the information.”

Sowinski said it’s really two-pronged — getting access to the information but also a privacy issue that the government collects so much information. 

“I would use this opportunity to just advocate for victim privacy as part of that conversation,” she said. “I don’t think the general public needs to know every intimate detail of the family’s life to understand what crime was committed and whether it was committed, for example.”

As election day approaches, Sowinski says she wants to emphasize her 25 years of experience — more than 20 as a prosecutor and eight years of experience as a prosecutor in Oneida County — and her lifelong connections to the county.

“I live my life with the values of this community, and that is what I will take to every case I decide,” she said. “And whatever the law is, whoever is in charge, the person, the people in front of me, will have someone who will take that experience and my commitment to this community to each and every case.”

Sowinski said the most important personality trait for a judge is independence. 

“You need to be willing to think for yourself, and I have no problem doing that,” she said. “And secondly, I hope if nothing else, voters know and see how much I care about this community and want to see what’s best for this community. Not only is it my home, it’s where my husband and I make our home, obviously, but it’s about generations that have come before and the generations yet to come that we have an obligation to try to resolve and solve.”