{"id":31101,"date":"2025-03-03T08:47:46","date_gmt":"2025-03-03T14:47:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=31101"},"modified":"2025-03-03T08:54:47","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T14:54:47","slug":"witnesses-and-recalling-michael-ash-and-jo-kolanda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2025\/03\/witnesses-and-recalling-michael-ash-and-jo-kolanda\/","title":{"rendered":"Witnesses\u2014and Recalling Michael Ash and Jo Kolanda"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Michael
Michael Ash, ca. 2008 (courtesy Godfrey & Kahn)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Now that I have introduced myself in my first blog post<\/a>, let me make good on some of my promises to look back on\u2014and forward to\u2014the criminal justice system in this region and beyond. This is an appropriate place to do so: Marquette University and the Milwaukee County District Attorney\u2019s Office played a significant yet mostly unknown role in improving how witnesses in criminal cases have been treated in our country during the last 50 years.<\/p>\n

The heart of the adversarial justice system in the United States is the direct involvement of citizens in a structured process that peacefully resolves conflict by balancing the rights of individuals with the collective needs and responsibilities of the community. People reluctantly encounter the criminal justice system in four general categories: as defendants, victims, witnesses, and jurors. Each category shares one thing in common: almost no one volunteers or wishes to be so identified. And while the resources directed toward victims and witnesses and defendants have improved over time, a strong need persists to reexamine and refresh how we treat our community members in the contemporary court system. A new generation of lawyers should embrace that challenge, because how we treat people in our justice system is among the clearest mirrors of who we are as a community.<\/p>\n

In 2008 Professor Dan Blinka moderated a panel at the Law School that discussed criminal plea bargaining in Wisconsin and asked about the role of victims in that process. One of the panelists, recently retired Milwaukee County District Attorney E. Michael McCann, answered a question about the victim\u2019s role in plea negotiations and how much things had changed in his 38 years as District Attorney, by saying<\/a>, \u201cI recommend that you read an article out of the Notre Dame Law Review <\/em>from about the early 1970s.”<\/p>\n

Mr. McCann was referring to an article authored by then Milwaukee County First Assistant District Attorney Michael Ash in 1972, when Ash was only five years out of law school. On Witnesses: A Radical Critique of Criminal Court Procedures<\/a>, 48\u00a0Notre Dame L. Rev.\u00a0386 (1972), was a scathing assessment by Ash that, despite longstanding calls for reform of how witnesses were treated in criminal court systems, \u201cthe witness, especially the witness in criminal courts, is more abused, more aggrieved, more neglected, and more unfairly treated than ever before.\u201d Id.<\/em> at 388 (footnote omitted).<\/p>\n

Ash called for action and focused on seven possible areas of reform, many of which are now standard practice in court systems and district attorney offices throughout the country\u2014and arguably others that should<\/em> be. They included:<\/p>\n