DROPPED THE BALL

District Attorney Blames Waukesha Suspect’s Paltry Bail on ‘Overworked’ Assistant

The young assistant district attorney didn’t bother looking at Darrell Brooks’ pretrial risk assessment because she was swamped.

A young assistant district attorney was so swamped with cases that she didn’t bother looking at a pretrial risk assessment and set Darrell Brooks bail at just $1,000 days before the Waukesha Christmas parade attack. Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm said Thursday that the assistant DA had been on the job for two-and-a-half years and was handling a huge caseload. She saw that Brooks’ bail had been set at $500 in a pending case for allegedly firing a gun at his nephew, so she simply doubled it. Brooks’ trial on the endangerment charge had been delayed due to a pandemic backlog, so his bail had been reduced from $7,500 to $500 because he wasn’t afforded his right to a speedy trial.

“That’s human error,” Chisholm said. “It set in motion a chain of events that resulted in a tragedy. Again, I’m not trying to lessen our responsibility for that, but that’s it. In essence, that’s what you had here, a young ADA trying to do the best she could under tough circumstances and she made a mistake.”