The trial of a man charged with brutally murdering two people near Green Bay has been pushed back at least three months.

People who should be in state prison will stay in county jails, while others who were ordered to spend nights and weekends in jail will spend them at home in ankle bracelets.

Some county jail inmates will be booked into jail and go immediately into a medical quarantine area, where unless they can be released on bond, they'll stay for 14 days with limited contact with most other inmates.

Welcome to the Wisconsin criminal justice system during the COVID-19 pandemic, where:

» Most court hearings during the pandemic will happen by phone, if at all.

» The right to a speedy trial will come with a "once the coronavirus scare is over" disclaimer, and

» Protecting the public will sometimes mean keeping criminals out of prisons and jails for weeks or months.

"Everyone is trying to adjust, but it requires everyone to take it one day at a time," said Donald Zuidmulder, a longtime Brown County judge who previously was the district attorney.

While officials say it's too early to know how these changes could affect local budgets, some of the adjustments already made — such as moving some inmates to other counties and housing more state-ready inmates than usual — could mean there's less money for other things later in the year. The longer parts of the system are shut down because of the coronavirus, the more challenge and uncertainty Wisconsin's sheriffs and prosecutors will face.

In Manitowoc County, for example, the key question initially was how its jail would handle additional inmates, Sheriff Dan Hartwig said. Now his concerns are longer-term.

"It'll be fine if we only have to worry about the next two weeks," he said. "But if it lasts longer than that, we're going to have to find new solutions."

Surprise decision

For sheriffs in northeastern Wisconsin, change began in earnest at 5:12 p.m. Friday, when a Department of Corrections official emailed 17 county jail administrators, saying prisons would close to new inmates until further notice. The reason: Pausing the flow of new inmates would reduce the chances that someone might bring the COVID-19 bug from outside the walls into a population where it could easily spread to staff and inmates.

Similar emails went to jail officials in Wisconsin's remaining counties.

"This decision was made out of an abundance of caution as part of the statewide efforts to mitigate the spread of COVID-19," the Department of Corrections said in a Saturday news release. "DOC takes the responsibility to protect staff and persons in our care seriously."

A corrections spokeswoman's response to follow-up questions, posed Tuesday, was to say the department was preparing answers.

DOC closed prisons to new inmates days after the discovery that two people who work in maximum-security prisons had tested positive: a doctor at Waupun Correctional Institution southwest of Fond du Lac, and an employee at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, north of Madison. No positive tests of inmates have been reported.

Sheriffs say they understand the state's plight but are frustrated that they had little notice, and have limited options for reducing the impact on their own jails.

"I don't think the closure of the prisons was a big surprise, but the timing of it was," Sheboygan County Sheriff Cory Roeseler said. "There could have been better communication with the sheriffs … not something over the weekend that we have no time to react to."

Some sheriffs, fearing there would be a temporary halt to prison admissions, had taken preemptive steps to create room in their jails, ease burdens on staff, or reduce the flow of people moving in and out of their facilities.

Brown, Door and Manitowoc counties reduced their numbers of Huber inmates — prisoners let out during the day to work at their jobs, but spend nights in the jail. In Manitowoc, the move opens beds in case the jails need to house more inmates they can't ship to state prison.

Brown County's switch of Huber inmates to electronic-monitoring bracelets didn't increase jail capacity — the county is barred from housing regular inmates in its downtown Green Bay Huber jail — but reduced the chance an inmate could bring the virus into the facility, Sheriff Todd Delain said. Door also made the move to reduce the number of people moving in and out of the jail, Chief Deputy Pat McCarty said.

Brown County, which is building a jail addition that will allow it to house more than 750 inmates, also moved about 28 inmates to other counties in case they get stuck with large numbers of state inmates. Portage County, which has some inmates who have been convicted but not yet sentenced to state prison, also shifted some inmates to a nearby county, Sheriff Mike Lukas said.

Brown's moving inmates seems to be paying off. The county's jail houses 19 prisoners it had planned to send to Dodge Correctional Facility on Monday. Delain said his staff read DOC's Friday email that said prisons would close to new inmates on Tuesday, so it notified the state this weekend that he would send prisoners to Dodge on Monday.

But a Sunday night phone call with state Corrections Secretary Kevin Carr brought bad news. While Carr was sympathetic, Delain said, he said the order to bar new inmates, signed by Gov. Tony Evers, would go into effect early Monday.

"It was close; we were ready to go," Delain said of the prisoners. "The secretary was clearly very sympathetic to the situation the counties are in. He said, 'I'm sorry, but I have bad news for you … the order goes into effect Monday at 12:01 a.m."

The prisoners remain in Brown County indefinitely.

Delain also instituted a rule that all new inmates would be quarantined in one area of the jail for their first 14 days in the facility to reduce the chance that any have brought the virus into the facility. They'll be allowed the minimum daily exercise time allowed by law, but otherwise will be isolated from inmates who've been in the facility longer term.

Murder trial delayed

Brown County District Attorney David Lasee expected that he and his staff would be prosecuting a homicide defendant April 20. It will be at least July 13 before a jury will determine if Jacob Cayer is responsible for fatally stabbing his former girlfriend, Sabrina Teague, 25, and beating to death her mother, Heesun “Sunny” Teague, in Hobart in 2016.

RELATED:Jacob Cayer to be tried in murders of Sabrina, Heesun Teague

Instead, Lasee and the almost two dozen attorneys and 18 support staff from the Brown County District Attorney's Office, working from home, will tackle backlogged cases in the hopes that some charges can be filed once the court system returns to normal.

Prosecutors also have been speaking with police officials and judges to continue the work of the justice system while limiting the flow of inmates into the county's jail.

Brown County's eight circuit judges have targeted similar goals.

"Limit the people we order into custody, maximize (the use of) signature bonds, delay hearings where we can — anything that can help reduce the risk of spreading this stuff," Judge Marc Hammer said. "We talk about it on a conference call every couple days."

Prosecutors and police, Lasee said, have agreed that people who previously might have faced arrest for a nonviolent offense like failing to pay a fine will now simply be issued a court date. The thinking: The risk of exposing people to coronavirus by moving them in and out of jail outweighs any benefit of locking someone up for a fairly minor offense.

"The last 10 days has been nothing but 'how are we going to sort the various pieces out and still get essential functions done," Lasee said. "We agreed that a person who owes $300 or something, they don't have to spend two nights in jail. If you have discretion, you don't lock them up."

Job 1 was to ensure that initial court appearances will happen within the legally mandated 48 hours of a new arrest. Those can be done remotely; defendants in Brown County already make initial appearances via a video conference with a prosecutor and a court commissioner. Scheduling conferences and some minor hearings also can be done electronically.

Once the court system can return to normal, Lasee said, look out.

"After a couple months of no court," he said, "our workload will be at least double."

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin reporters Christopher Clough, Diana Dombrowski, Karen Madden, Chris Mueller and Alisa M. Schafer contributed.

Contact Doug Schneider at (920) 431-8333, or DSchneid@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @PGDougSchneider