Supervisors receive update from attorney

The Board of Supervisors heard updates from County Attorney Jennifer Schwickerath on legal caseload, her office’s lease agreement, and a transition to new software during a presentation last week.From July 1 to Oct. 16 when she was asked to do the update, the County Attorney’s Office processed 471 filings in district court and 93 filings in magistrate and juvenile court.“Currently we have about 160 pending simple misdemeanors, 21 pending juvenile matters and 225 pending indictable [district court] matters … those are the number of trial informations or charging documents that have an actual case number, so one case number could have multiple charges.”The murder trial of Zachary Koehn, who is accused of killing his 4-month-old son in August 2017, started Monday in Mount Pleasant. The trial was moved out of Chickasaw County because of the pre-trial publicity the case received.Schwickerath thanked the board for amending the budget for the expert witness fees and said the defense strategy was still under way so fees were not finalized.‘The landlord did sign the lease extension back in September to extend where the county attorney’s office, emergency management and sanitation is currently located through … December 2019.”— For more on this story see the Oct. 30 New Hampton Tribune.