October 6, 2014 at 4:27 p.m.
Prosecutor treats heroin defendants with tough compassion
Prosecutor treats heroin defendants with tough compassion
Schiek and his assistants must determine what type of charges the evidence warrants.
When it comes to heroin cases especially, Schiek not only has to be concerned about protecting the public, he must also take into consideration whether the person charged is a simple addict or a major player in bringing illicit drugs to the Northwoods.
Prosecutors must also decide whether to recommend incarceration or drug treatment in the event of a conviction.
Schiek, who was served as district attorney since December 2012 and was a defense attorney for 11 years before that, got a crash course in weighing all those concerns when he prosecuted one of his first heroin cases - the prosecution of two individuals charged in connection with the death of 29-year old David Stahl from an overdose in his town of Crescent residence.
When Stahl died on Dec. 8, 2012, investigators from the Northcentral Drug Enforcement Group (NORDEG) quickly determined that the two empty bindles of heroin found near his body arrived at his apartment in a FedEx package sent from Illinois.
They also determined that the heroin was intended for Richard Lewis, then 28, and Jennifer Heiting, then 26, both of St. Germain, who gave Stahl the two bindles as payment for accepting the package and giving them the rest of the drugs that were in it.
Since the drug dealing resulted in a death, Schiek quickly decided to use the Len Bias Law to charge the pair with first-degree reckless homicide including the delivery of heroin.
Named after the University of Maryland basketball star who died of a cocaine overdose in 1986, just two days after he was drafted by the Boston Celtics, the law was passed by Congress in 1986 to hold suppliers of drugs criminally responsible when a "customer" dies. Wisconsin passed its own version of the law in 1988.
"It's essentially to reach out and punish the person that delivered the drug to someone and they took it and it killed them," he said. "It's not a new law, but it is one we can use to charge people with in certain situations."
For Schiek, the decision to charge the pair with homicide was a no-brainer, although as a defense attorney he had little experience defending heroin suspects.
"I don't know if I did more than just a handful of heroin cases," he said.
Schiek said that unlike on television where a case gets wrapped up in an hour, drug cases can be very complex to prosecute.
"The easiest cases are those where they are caught with it on their person, or it's in their vehicle or in their house or something, those are simple possession cases," he said. "Delivery cases and conspiracy cases get a little more complicated because there is much, much more involved than just one person. It usually ties into more than one person. Those are the cases where, as a prosecutor, you try to identify the person who is most aggravated, the one who is bringing it into the community."
He added that sometimes the district attorney's office has to cut deals with other people in order to get them to testify.
"That's sort of how the process works. If we want the person we feel is most in charge, we need to be able to get a conviction on them. We will work our way down again, the middlemen, we identify who they are having dealings with. Then there is the person who is even further removed, the user, who they don't care where it's coming from. It doesn't take an hour to get these cases done," Schiek said.
An additional complication in the prosecution of drug cases is that sometimes a person is operating in more than one county and ends up facing charges in more than one county.
"Many people that we know about don't necessarily stick with just Oneida County as their spot. It's the whole northern area of Wisconsin. That is what they target and that is what we have to deal with," he said
When several counties have charges pending against one individual, the cases are often consolidated and prosecuted in just one county.
"You pick one county where maybe you have the strongest case, where the most transactions have happened in and you prosecute there. You say, that you want to have a particular say in what happens in your cases," Schiek said. "It's not easier, but it does cut down on the cost of trials and transporting prisoners to other counties for them. It can be cumbersome, but it is in the interest of justice."
In cases where a plea agreement is reached in a multi-county case, it is referred to as a global resolution. This type of agreement resolves all charges in all counties.
"If they try to fight everything, then we have to have individual trials in each of the different jurisdictions that they have been charged in," Schiek said.
Schiek says treatment should be a component of any punishment of a heroin defendant, especially for first-time offenders.
"The way we look at this, and I've talked to NORDEG and (Detective-Sergeant) Sara (Gardner), they do a fantastic job of weeding these people out. But what happens when it gets to my desk (is) I want some input from them," Schiek said. "What we try to do is determine are these people users, are they little people or are they the person who is actually transporting the drug to our community. That's kind of how we start. If we think that a person is just a user, then we charge them. We have to have some incentive for them to want to get treatment and maintain sobriety."
If the person involved fits into that category, perhaps it's their first offense or their second, Schiek will recommend treatment in addition to probation.
"In those types of circumstances, we hope that will alleviate the problem," he said." It's not a perfect way to do it, but that is where we start from."
The middle level people who both use and sell a little bit to continue their habit, who are more involved than just a user, are often offered treatment in addition to some jail time. These people can sometimes give investigators information on their suppliers in exchange for a more favorable sentencing recommendation to the judge.
"Then there are the people who are actively bringing it up from somewhere else to our community, those are the people who get felony convictions and probation is off the table right away. It becomes an argument of how long they are going to go away to prison for," Schiek said. "But we have to look at the strength of the case and all that, as well. That's all part of the formula that we use. We work with the people who are users and go after the people who are actively transporting and delivering it in Oneida County."
Schiek echoed the statements of other people knowledgeable about the heroin problem in the Northwoods when he said that the abuse of prescription medication is what primed the area for the heroin invasion that has followed.
"It seems that heroin is becoming more prevalent up here. Before that, it was the painkillers, the oxycontins, the oxycodones, the expensive stuff," Schiek said. "And this heroin is a 10th of the price of that stuff (prescription medication). Once we got a handle on the prescriptions, once we started doing a good job on those, they (dealers and addicts) started switching over."
Oneida County, and Rhinelander specifically, is lucky to have Koinonia, a drug and alcohol treatment facility, Schiek said.
"I think that the treatment centers need to shift their focus to whatever is the drug of choice. It used to be marijuana, and who knows what is going to happen with that now that it is becoming legalized all over the country. It's kind of taken a backseat to the more serious drugs," he said.
Schiek said while the members of the seven-county NORDEG task force are doing the best they can against the tide of heroin in the Northwoods, the drug is all over the area.
"We're really trying to keep up on this, but it really is a daily struggle. If there is a demand for it, then someone is going to take a chance and try to supply it up here. We're doing the best we can to deal with it," he said.
Jamie Taylor may be reached at [email protected]
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