E. Michael McCann

Few citizens are more familiar with what happens when people slip off the legal track and into criminal behavior than E. Michael McCann. Until his retirement a few years ago, McCann, now seventy two, had been the nation’s longest-serving prosecutor as the district attorney of Milwaukee County. He still looks like a prosecutor, with the demeanor of someone you wouldn’t want to cross. He had a reputation for being rumpled at the courthouse, and you get a sense that at least part of this image was cultivated because he didn’t want anyone to think he was putting on airs. He lives in Milwaukee, a couple of blocks from the Brewer’s ballpark, in a house where he and his wife, Barbara, a former newspaper reporter, raised their two children. He decided to live modestly years earlier when he realized that a county prosecutor might need to be able to walk away from a job for a variety of reasons.