ANTIGO — Monday evening, several prominent court officials provided a broad overview to the county board on recent business at the Langlade County Courthouse.
According to Langlade County Circuit Court Judge John Rhode, from May 2023 to May 2024, charges were brought in a total of 557 criminal cases. Felonies, misdemeanors, and criminal traffic cases — mainly involving drunk driving and operating a vehicle with a revoked license — are included under the umbrella of “criminal cases.”
Rhode said that in the past year, court officials have been attempting to lighten a backlog of cases that developed during the COVID pandemic, which temporarily caused courthouse business to stagnate.
“We did have a couple months this year so far where we were right around the 100 percent case closure rate, which means we closed just as many cases as we opened in a 12 month period,” Rhode said. “This last one, I was kind of disappointed to see, went back down to 94 percent. That doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but it has to be above 100 percent for a while in order for us to make a significant dent in the backlog.”
Both Rhode and District Attorney Kelly Hays said the hiring of additional personnel — such as two assistant district attorneys and court commissioners — has lightened their loads.
“Both of our ADAs are doing well,” Hays said. “One started in September. The other started in February. So there is still some training going on that is expected to continue at least quite a while for attorneys to be 100 percent, but they’re both handling full case loads — about 350 cases apiece, so certainly not low at all.”
Rhode said in the past 12 months, more criminal charges were filed in neighboring counties, a discrepancy he hypothesized could be due to crime simply falling in Langlade County, or the approaches to charging crimes by each county’s district attorney.
“Lincoln County, our neighbor to the west, had 700 cases in that 12 month period, or just a little over 700,” Rhode said. “Oneida County in 2023, our neighbor to the north, had 870 cases, so quite a bit more than us. Finally, Shawano County, which is known to be very aggressive — people joke around a lot that bumper stickers from Shawano County should say, ‘Come on vacation, leave on probation’ — but they’re very aggressive. They have a very high-charging DA and maybe they just have higher crime there, but they were over 1,250 criminal cases in 2023 of all types, so that’s how we compare to some of our neighbors who are of similar size to us.”
Rhode also provided an assessment of the type of grip drugs currently may have over Langlade County in particular compared to in the past.
“My observation is, it does seem like the meth numbers are going down a little bit. There’s still plenty of it and it’s terrible and it’s a tragedy, but it seems like it’s less than it was in the last five years at its peak,” Rhode said. “Unfortunately, I’d say we’ve seen a little bit of an uptick in some of the other types of drug charges — the opiates, the fentanyl — not drastic, but that seems to me to be trending up, and meth is trending down. I don’t have the actual data on that, but that’s just my guts from watching what’s going on.”
Rhode added that in the past 12 months, 138 civil cases — which include disputes such as personal injury, contracts, real estate, and mortgage foreclosures — were opened, and 144 were closed, a 104 percent closure rate.
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