Cook said the Department of Corrections asked Attorney General Brad Schimel to specify for the Department what “multiple convictions” means. Schimel, in a letter dated October 2017, said that multiple convictions would be anyone with more than one count of sexual assault.
Two former prosecutors told Madison365 that there is a difference between multiple counts and multiple convictions. If you get in a fight on State Street and hit the person in the face twice, that’s two counts. But we all understand it to be one fight. Each blow of the fight was not a separate criminal incident.
In any case, Schimel’s opinion was not acted on for a full year by the Department of Corrections. Department of Corrections Secretary John Litscher did not take action, but when he retired, new secretary Cathy Jess did. Finally, in October 2018, just weeks before Governor Scott Walker and Schimel were up for reelection, the Department reviewed hundreds of offenders and sent letters to Braam and 180 others.