Two state parole agents are each facing up to nearly two years behind bars and a $15,000 fine after an all-night party last year on Madison's Far East Side in which prosecutors say they bought and used cocaine with three men, including one who was on probation at the time. Paul N. Marx, 27, of Marshall, and Bobbi J. Knar, 24, of Sun Prairie were charged Friday with possession of cocaine and obstructing an officer. They are to appear Monday in Dane County Circuit Court on the charges, which are both misdemeanors. [continues 805 words]
Winnebago's drug court is definitely a step in the right direction, but an arrest should not be a necessary prerequisite for drug treatment. Would alcoholics seek help for their illness if doing so were tantamount to confessing to criminal activity? Likewise, would putting every incorrigible alcoholic behind bars and saddling them with criminal records prove cost-effective? The United States recently earned the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world, with drug offenses accounting for the majority of federal incarcerations. This is big government at its worst. At an average cost of $26,134 per inmate annually, maintaining the world's largest prison system can hardly be considered fiscally conservative. [continues 82 words]
Each morning, nearly 300 people file into a nondescript building on East Washington Avenue to receive their daily dose of methadone, a synthetic form of heroin used since the late 1950s to treat opiate addiction. For them, this daily trip helps arrest the indignities that come with being a drug addict. "I've tried going off it several times, but I always go back to heroin," says Roman, a recovering addict who asked that his last name be withheld. "I can get a year or two clean, but something goes wrong in my life, and I go back. I relapse here and there, but my life goes pretty good on methadone." [continues 1107 words]
Winnebago's drug court is definitely a step in the right direction, but an arrest should not be a necessary prerequisite for drug treatment. Would alcoholics seek help for their illness if doing so were tantamount to confessing to criminal activity? Likewise, would putting every incorrigible alcoholic behind bars and saddling them with criminal records prove cost-effective? The United States recently earned the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world, with drug offenses accounting for the majority of federal incarcerations. This is big government at its worst. At an average cost of $26,134 per inmate annually, maintaining the world's largest prison system can hardly be considered fiscally conservative. [continues 76 words]
WAUSAU -- A state appeals court today reversed the drug conviction of an Algoma man who dropped a bag of marijuana in front of a police officer, saying the officer didn't have enough reason to detain him. An Algoma police officer followed Christopher Konkol, 22, to his home on Sept. 17, 2005, because he suspected there was an outstanding warrant for Konkol's arrest, court records said. Konkol denied there was an outstanding warrant. As he waited for the officer to do more checks, Konkol dropped a small bag containing a "trace amount" of marijuana to the ground and covered it with his foot, court records said. [continues 98 words]
Milwaukee Police Lacked Warrant Taking aim at a tactic used by Milwaukee police, a federal court found that officers and federal drug agents violated constitutional protections when they broke down the door of a north side home in 2005 in a search that led to 500 grams of cocaine and a gun. The 7th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals reversed the decision to allow the drugs and gun as evidence against Darnell Ellis, who was sentenced to nearly six years in prison, according to the ruling released this week. "The problem in this case is that the officers and agents lacked a warrant when they approached the home and utilized tactics that, if allowed to go unchecked, would eliminate the Fourth Amendment warrant requirement for a home with any connection to drugs," the opinion written by Appeals Court Judge Michael Kanne says. [continues 462 words]
In a county-by-county level, Wisconsin is starting to "think outside the jail cell" with evidence of success. We can be proud to say Winnebago County is among the leaders in the innovations. State Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson told Northwestern editorial board members last week that she has been citing Winnebago County's Safe Streets Drug Court - a year-old restorative program for nonviolent drug felons who avoid costly prison time by staying clean and complying with treatment - as a model for other county's to emulate. She is "using it across the state," Abrahamson said. [continues 404 words]
How Should the City Respond to West-Side Crime? Blaska Says a Strong Dose of 'Law and Order' Is Called For My family had just moved into the Orchard Ridge neighborhood on Madison's southwest side when it came time to put No. 1 son at the controls of the lawnmower. Boy One loaded his boombox with a We Must Be Giants cassette tape. Not on my watch. That would violate the neighborhood compact that we had tacitly accepted before moving in: Anything louder than a lawnmower was verboten. [continues 569 words]
News reports say nearly a quarter of a trillion dollars is needed to fix structurally deficient U.S. bridges and highways but that states and the federal government have been unable or unwilling to come up with the money. While ensuring the safety of our nation's infrastructure has become a luxury we can't afford, there is always more money to pour down the bottomless pit of marijuana prohibition. Even cancer and multiple sclerosis patients are fair game. Thursday, Aug. 2, marked the 70th anniversary of the date President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Marijuana Tax Act into law. Ruled unconstitutional in 1969, marijuana prohibition was continued under the 1971 Controlled Substances Act. [continues 120 words]
Two? Three? Even more? There's no final tally, but the number known to be under investigation is growing. Last month, No Quarter told you about the Milwaukee County sheriff's deputies who turned up 44 1/2 pounds of marijuana - with a street value of $30,000 - in the trunk of an Oldsmobile Aurora that had been pulled over on I-94. The two guys in the car were arrested, and Sheriff David Clarke Jr. put out a press release in April highlighting the effort. [continues 589 words]
Dear Editor: I had to laugh when I read Ron Brownstein's puff piece about Rudy Giuliani respecting states' rights, "On divisive issues, Giuliani says let states decide." When it comes to states' rights, Giuliani is adamantly opposed to medical marijuana, now the law in 12 states and supported by an overwhelming majority of Americans. "You can accomplish everything you want to accomplish with things other than marijuana, probably better. There are pain medications much superior to marijuana," Giuliani recently said in New Hampshire. [continues 310 words]
West Bend - A West Bend woman has been charged with physical abuse of a child after her 2-year-old daughter ate two LSD-laced candies the woman allegedly purchased and brought back to their apartment. According to a criminal complaint filed Thursday in Washington County Circuit Court: The mother, Donielle M. Maki, 23, and a friend, Valerie J. Anderson, 19, went to a house in the 500 block of Oak St. in West Bend on Tuesday and bought 10 drug-laced candies that looked like SweeTarts for $7 each from a man at the house. [continues 364 words]
Internet crimes, the advent of methamphetamine, the use of DNA analysis and surveillance systems and other changes in law and society have led to more work for Wisconsin's prosecutors, the district attorneys in Columbia and Marquette counties say, but the number of assistant district attorneys in the state has not increased accordingly. Columbia County District Attorney Jane Kohlwey said her office doesn't have the staff it needs to prosecute offenders under new laws and sentencing guidelines enacted by the state Legislature, adding that while caseloads haven't changed much since 1993, the severity of crimes and potential sentences have risen dramatically. [continues 1131 words]
Marijuana activist Ben Masel filed a lawsuit Wednesday claiming his rights were violated when he was arrested at Union Terrace in June 2006 while collecting signatures to get his name on the ballot as a U.S. Senate candidate. The suit, filed in Dane County Circuit Court , seeks unspecified monetary damages and asks the court to find a policy prohibiting people from soliciting signatures in specific areas of Memorial Union unconstitutional. Defendants include UW-Madison Police Officers Mike Mansavage and John McCaughtry, whom the suit alleges "brutally manhandled" Masel and sprayed him with pepper spray. [end]
Many Medics Hired After Being Disciplined One doctor was sanctioned by the Wisconsin Medical Examining Board for causing brain damage to a 16-month-old boy as she was administering anesthetics during a tonsillectomy. Another wrote phony prescriptions to get drugs, the board found. Still another repeatedly handed out pain medications to patients without bothering to diagnose a sickness. These are among the physicians employed by the Wisconsin Department of Corrections to care for the state's prison population. A Capital Times review of prison doctors' licenses showed that of the 23 physicians employed with the department in April of this year, four, or 17 percent, have been disciplined by the state Medical Examining Board for incidents that occurred before the department hired them. Of 37 physicians on the department's payroll since the beginning of 2002, eight, or nearly 22 percent, have been disciplined for incidents that happened either before they were hired or during their employment with the department. [continues 1772 words]
It was obvious the wound in Ronnie Russell's arm was not healing. Obvious to Russell, who endured constant pain as it worsened. Obvious to the nurses who, suspecting an infection, meticulously documented the appearance and size of the oozing hole. "It was going on for weeks," says Russell, an inmate patient at the Dodge Correctional Institution infirmary in Waupun. "My arm was turning black. There was a real lot of black stuff there and a real lot of nasty smells." [continues 4090 words]
I'm writing about your thoughtful editorial: "Supreme Court protects megaphone." (7-9-07). Obviously, our so-called conservative Supreme Court justices felt high school students should not have freedom of speech when they talk or write about our sacred war on drugs. "Bong Hits 4 Jesus" brings into question one of America's most sacred institutions: our war on drugs. Without our sacred war on drugs, America would not be the most incarcerated nation in the history of human civilization. And we would need far fewer law-enforcement personnel, far fewer prison and jail guards, and no prison or jail builders. Kirk Muse Mesa, Ariz. [end]
"Speech with which this court agrees must be afforded the highest level of protection." That exact phrase wasn't used in either free speech ruling handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court last month, but it summarizes the majority opinions. On the same day, the court upheld the business transactions that amplify speech but ratified censorship of free speech itself. The two cases -- Morse v. Frederick and Federal Elections Commission v. Wisconsin Right to Life -- exposed a court that appears more eager to defend political constituencies than a coherent view of the First Amendment. [continues 326 words]
Although the manufacturer of OxyContin has agreed to hefty fines for lying about the drug's addictive properties, law enforcement officials in Wisconsin and elsewhere are left dealing with a rash of pharmacy robberies by people apparently desperate for the drug. The city of Waukesha alone has had four pharmacy robberies in recent months. Also, police in Germantown, Hartland, Plymouth and West Allis are each investigating recent pharmacy robberies. Authorities can't link the robberies with any common thread other than that the robbers were looking for OxyContin or its generic equivalent oxycodone. [continues 616 words]
There are drug busts, and there are drug busts. And then there are the drug cases that go bust. On Friday, April 13, two Milwaukee County sheriff's deputies pulled over the driver of a white Oldsmobile for a driving infraction on northbound I-94. One thing led to another, and the deputies soon discovered 44 1/2 pounds of marijuana - with a street value of $30,000 - - in the trunk of the Oldsmobile. The cops then arrested the driver, a 23-year-old Milwaukee man, and the passenger, a 22-year-old from South Milwaukee. [continues 657 words]
Inside Wisconsin
