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Daniel Bice | No Quarter

Overdose death highlights deferred prosecutions in Milwaukee County

District Attorney John Chisholm supports diverting nonviolent offenders from the traditional criminal justice system to programs aimed at giving them a second chance, despite the threat of danger.

Kristyna Wentz-Graff


Chisholm sticks by plan as family says release led to 26-year-old's death

District Attorney John Chisholm has long been a proponent of diverting nonviolent offenders away from from the traditional criminal justice system. From the start, however, Chisholm realized these programs could have serious consequences. »Read Full Article

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  1. Unfortunately this article doesn't talk much of the situation that brought Cassie to Wisconsin, but I'd like to clarify something.

    Cassie is our sister.. She was raised as our sister, and she will always be our sister, and at the end of the day, Ann and Bob are her mom and dad. Physically she was born to someone else, but my parents, OUR parents, were the ones who gave her life. We were there for her every single day and we were her family.

    It's incredibly sad that her biological parents, and their family, were unwilling to be there for her. Perhaps if they had been, the circumstances may have been different, and her life might not have ended so quickly.

    However, Cassie belonged with us, while she alive, and she belongs to her maker now..
    Hide replies
  2. Judges and defense attorneys need to start being held to a higher standard. There has to be accountability in the court system. Glenn Yamahiro apologized, essentially saying the he screwed up. Look at the number of repeat DUI's that finally kill someone. Why are they not already in jail? Certain crimes demand mandatory maximum sentences period, no negotiating for a plea deal or reduced parole. If we need to build more prisons, where can I donate?

    It's true that this girl made some bad decisions, but those bad decisions can be turned around while you are alive. She had the family in place to help change her life.
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  3. My sympathies go out to the family members who have lost loved ones to drugs and alcohol, not only with this case. When dealing with addiction, any addiction, you can't save people from themselves. We make choices, and live with the consequence of those choices. If you drink and drive or use drugs, those consequences can be deadly. Users don't take into account the needs or feelings of others, only themselves. When people use drugs or alcohol, they often claim that they aren't hurting others. They are so wrong.
    Hide replies
    • Not only family, friends, and often co-workers are affected when it comes to who the victims are in heroin cases. All Americans and USA the nation are victims, too. How? Simple, most heroin sold/consumed in the United States is produced from opium grown by peasants in Afghanistan for the Taliban. The Taliban uses the money from opium and heroin sales to support itself as well as its international terrorism. I am a liberal on most issues fiscal and social, but when it comes to hard drugs, I take a much different approach. I agree weed should be legalized, TAXED like cigs, and regulated/sold like alcohol. Weed is neither addictive or toxic. Yes, some weed smokers graduate to harder drugs. But then some who start off drinking Miller High Life ultimately graduate to Jack Daniels and eventually become daily use alcoholics.
  4. My deepest sympathies go out to this poor girls family. However, our jails are filled with minor drug offenders who really don't belong there.

    The "War on Drugs" is an abject failure. DA Chisholm is right to support this program and should continue to do so.
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  5. My heart goes out to the family of this young woman. I totally understand the desire to find someone or something at fault. But these situations are complicated, and there are many ways to look at it. Perhaps this young woman needed her issues addressed more aggressively much earlier on--maybe there was an underlying trauma or mental illness that went undiagnosed despite the very best efforts of her family and her doctors. I have compassion for the drug dealer who wasn't in it for the money but to get support for maintaining his own addiction--and who clearly didn't want people to overdose based on the article's description of what was in his space. It is ugly, but none of the characters here is a stock bad guy, pure evil. And how can we not have compassion for the young woman's child? Or the father who has just gone through rehab and now has to be a single dad to a little one?
    Maybe what's to be learned here is we all need to do better at identifying what's going on underneath the surface and address it. Did the drug dealer have underlying, unprocessed trauma that led him to the life he led? Could we identify these traumas earlier and get better help? What about the money to be saved by investing in improving and updating our mental health care system?
    I wish there were easy answers, but I think we have to dig deeper.
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  6. There has been other women that everything the system could thrown at them to lock them up failed. I can speak to one of those cases because I had known the gal since we were kids. Nothing was going to stop her from her self destructive ways.

    The issue with Suzie Q was she never had any success in Milwaukee. She felt a failure and that drove deadly addictions. She had a dark, mean and very cunning side as a drunk and got very violent. Plea bargains for Suzie Q by themselves drove that dark manipulative side. She prided herself on going to court on drugs and felt empowered by the process. She physically pushed a prosecutor in plain sight and she was not charged. She should of been.

    Plea bargains and deferred prosecutions fail in dealing with addiction because they are legal jibberish missing the point that mental health professionals should assess the needs.

    Suzie Q was one of the offenders that didn't want to leave prison because she had strong attachments to staff. She wanted to see her doctors from prison on the outside.

    If you had known Suzie Q when we were teens her problems were apparent then. People turned their back on her because she was so violent and mean. Her abusive drinking got old fast. The system became her only friend and she was so strongly attached to the TY staff she use to drive up there to drink at the bars hoping to see them. Suzie Q had mental illness, multiple addictions and serious health problems from years of substance abuse. The addictions killed her by her own hand after decades of use.

    You have to be at peace with it all. I think everyone did all they could for her within reason. Suzie Q was a big dreamer that wanted the system to change for her. It might of worked for her to be an outpatient at the prison or maybe not. Part of her problem were those big dreams because they setup the failure. I think the fact the prison wouldn't change was a constant for her, something she couldn't manipulate.
  7. My heart breaks for this family and all the other families who deal with the drug use issues. If this young man had been in jail the young lady would have gotten the dope from someone/someplace else ...we can't lock everyone up who uses drugs ,we just can't !!!! drugs are a real and growing problem in our country that we need to get serious about doing something about..again we can't lock everyone up....we need to deal with this on multiple fronts including treatment and yes some people will need to be jailed ,but not like we're doing now...I don't have all of the answers but when we get the politics out of the equation and get the doctors and mental health professionals involved ....we'll make some headway...but this WAR on DRUGS has been a failure that has only served to make a few Drug Dealers Very RICH people,some families heartbroken and the public paying the tab in a WAR that we aren't fighting to win !!!! 35,000 a year to keep someone locked up...I wonder what treatment would cost ?
  8. Prisons are trying to be a one size fits all solution to house sexual offenders, car thieves, addicts and murderers in the same housing unit. Prisons are para-military organizations employing control as their primary and often only means of rehabilitation.

    We have lumped together the idea that purposeful serial killers like Dahmer are the same as the situational domestic killer. We have a chronic social problem that if they did it once they will do it again thinking. This is being reinforced in deferred prosecutions to once again support America building more prisons.

    I am very convinced the Milwaukee DA still has a scare them straight agenda and supports harsher sentencing.

    The deferred prosecution program is at best an educated guess of lawyers that have no training in AODA treatment. This leads to the bigger area of concern that the Milwaukee DA has a long track record of trying to be jacks of all trades, experts in everything.

    How did the white collar crime unit go for over a decade without having an accountant onboard? Prosecutors without no accounting training knew it all.

    Once again we have the magical solution to roll out deferred prosecution as a bias and prejudicial program because those that did not reoffend were not offered the right to set aside their convictions. Those folks did their time, completed their sentences and have no avenue to reduce their charges.

    Shouldn't the right to defer prosecution come later in the process of serving sentences when there is a track record to look at?

    The deferred prosecution program is budget driven quick fix. The sad reality is truth in sentencing has institutionalized one of the nation's largest offender populations requiring billions now to maintain.

    Like the addict the Milwaukee DA can't see its own failings that they are apart of keeping the ghetto going and old broken ideas of justice alive.
  9. Heroin has made a huge comeback in many parts of this state, and young people are dying because of it. Putting the blame on the deferred prosecution with drug court demands is misplaced, though. I live in a county that has a drug court. Drug courts don't just consist of lawyers and judges -- they also consist of AODA counselors and tight requirements for those enrolled in them. They're meant for the serious addict who has a felony hanging over their head, as a last ditch effort before a prison sentence.

    Addiction is tough, especially meth and heroin. It's terribly sad to lose a young person like Cassie, but she accepted the risk of death by shooting heroin. My heart goes out to her family, but this is not the fault of the DA or courts.
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    • KT, we understand hat Cassie took that risk. She carries a portion of the blame in this. But yes, it is partially the courts fault. They let that person violate the terms of his agreement, repeatedly, missing court appearances, not following the program rules... Cassie took that risk, and we know that. However, had he not been allowed to make a "deferred prosecution" agreement, on yet another drug case, while another was still pending, Cassie might still be here. He should have been in jail. If he was, maybe he wouldn't be looking at reckless homicide charges. He should have been put in jail after the first, second, third, time he violated the terms of the agreement. But he wasn't.

      No family, whether in St. Francis, or in Milwaukee on Atkinson and Teutonia, should have to lose a family member like this. Especially while with someone who should've been in jail for dealing drugs, keeping a drug house, and being a user of drugs.

      There are many people to blame here, many people need to take responsibility, and take a second look at this program AND the choices they make.
    • I think her family is part of the problem as well. Like I said above, it looks like they were in denial as well. I think the courts, the people that she was with, the crown she was running with, her family, as well as this girl, are to blame. Where were her friends in the 9 months that she was doing this? Where was her family? Where was her boyfriend prior to breaking up with her? Yes, she took that risk. As did the courts, that man that was arrested, her boyfriend, because it appears that he was part of the problem, her friends, and her family. How could they know she was doing this stuff and not do anything about it? Why didn't they help her? Maybe she wouldn't have been with this man had they helped her.

      For Chisholm to say that he knew that this would happen to someone, and since it's his program, maybe the weight should be shifted to him, and maybe they should sue him just based in his confession alone. It also looks that while this judge is apologetic for what happened,he's shifting the blame as well. So milwaukee is having a heroine problem. So that makes his judgement for this guy okay? Should've sent him to jail, because it could have been his kid. How would he feel then?
  10. Chisholm--like E. Mikie--two lefty goofs that are the problem--not the solution. Mc Goof was areal pieced of work. bice you must consider these looosers as real hero's!



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