Madison NORML

Source: Capital Times
Pubdate: February 15, 2007
Author: Mike Miller

JUDGE OPENS DOOR TO FELONY IN POT CASE

A minor drug case in which a Madison man faced a misdemeanor for passing a marijuana joint during a pot rally could soon escalate to felony charges.

Dane County Circuit Judge Patrick Fiedler has granted a prosecutor's request to dismiss a misdemeanor marijuana case Wednesday so that it can be refiled as a felony.

Fiedler, citing previous rulings by the Wisconsin Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court, said prosecutors have broad discretion over filing charges and can use any statute that is applicable to the facts.

Chris Lankford, 31, of Madison, was charged with misdemeanor possession of marijuana at last fall's Great Marijuana Harvest Fest after a UW police officer saw him pass a joint to a friend during a parade.

When searched after his arrest, Lankford was found to have another five joints in his pocket along with one partially smoked joint.

After Lankford turned down a plea bargain offer, Assistant District Attorney Karie Cattanach moved to dismiss the misdemeanor charge so she could file a felony charge against Lankford for delivery of marijuana.

Defense attorney Peter Steinberg tried to stop that Wednesday, but Fiedler ruled the decision of what to charge was up to the prosecution.

After the hearing Steinberg issued a statement saying: "I will not comment on the specific facts of Mr. Lankford's case, but I will say this: The time is long overdue for the Hillary Clinton liberals to admit that the Dirty F--- Hippies are right - marijuana prohibition is dumb."

He also said he may try to appeal.

- Mike Miller

A little over a month ago on January 7th, the Cap Times published an article, "District attorneys outnumbered by growing caseloads" click here.

The article includes the following:

Since taking the job as Dane County district attorney, has become used to making do with less.

Now the District Attorney's Office is getting hit with yet another staff reduction. Four of Blanchard's most experienced prosecutors -- Gretchen Hayward, Jac Heitz, Meryl Manhardt and John Norsetter -- are retiring, and a loss of federal money means they won't all be replaced.

"Assuming that we don't lose any more grants this year, we get to hire two to replace the four," Blanchard said.

With the number of cases coming into the office unabated at more than 40,000 a year, Blanchard sees tough times ahead.

"Handling the existing caseloads with fewer attorneys is going to be a unique problem," he said. "It's going to be a problem on a scale that this office has not faced ever before."

Until he can hire the two new attorneys in June and July, Blanchard said he has tapped state funds that will allow him to hire two temporary special prosecutors.

When the dust settles, Blanchard expects to have a staff of 29 attorneys, four fewer than he had when he was first elected to the job in 2000, and the same number the county had in 1988, when the county's population was just under 340,000. It's now over 460,000.

With the population growth comes more cases. Law enforcement has kept pace, growing from 674 sworn officers in 1985 to about 1,200 in 2005. So there are more officers shoveling more cases to fewer prosecutors.

Blanchard said it's affecting the quality of justice.

"As our resources shrink we're charging less," he said. "What we charge is being changed to some degree by our resource problems. This is particularly true in areas like domestic violence where there are a lot of judgment calls to be made and there are only so many hours in the day."

Wise words. There are only so many prosecutors and so many hours in a day. This case should have never been filed and has already consumed far too much of the DA's admittedly strained resources. If the case is refiled, Blanchard's comments ring pretty hollow.