Marijuana Policy Project

A four-county court to handle drug-related offenses throughout southeast Nebraska is scheduled to be in session starting next month.

The Southeast Nebraska Adult Drug Court, essentially a coalition between Gage, Fillmore, Jefferson and Saline counties, is slated to begin next month in Wilber.

In the drug court, participants who have either committed felony drug-related offenses or committed crimes believed to have been connected to their drug addiction plead guilty to their offenses.

The participants then undergo an 18-month supervised probation period during which they are required to submit to drug testing several times a week and report to the drug court every week for a case review. If a participant successfully completes the probation, the offense in question will be removed from his or her criminal record.

During the court hearing, the participant will come to court and stand before either District Court Judge Vicky Johnson or Paul Korslund as well as an audience consisting of the other participants in the court.

If a participant is found to be in compliance with the terms of his or her case each week, rewards such as gas cards or movie passes are awarded as an incentive. Cases in which the participant fails to meet the court's guidelines are treated much like a probation revocation with the participant sentenced in district court.

"It is both court and treatment in one," said Gage County Attorney Randall Ritnour.

"We will staff these cases every week before going into court that day. What will happen is we will have already reviewed the case before the actual hearing and the judge may very well have already made a decision on the case before the court hearing even begins."

The drug court will be coordinated by Christina Lyons, who was hired on July 1. Her annual salary of $52,676 per year will paid through state funds and grants.

Each of the four counties is responsible for its share of the costs involved with training, office supplies and prosecutor and defense attorney mileage based on each county's population. For Gage County, this cost is $7,208.

The court will be located in Saline County with Ritnour and assistant county attorneys Rick Schreiner and Paul Payne serving as prosecutors. The defense attorneys will be from Fillmore County at first with these duties expected to be handled by all four counties in the future. Drug court cases may be heard in other counties in the future as well.

Ritnour said for the first year of the program, he expects there will be about 13 to 14 participants from Gage County and between 20 to 25 participants among the four counties.

While the drug court was originally slated to begin this month, Ritnour said there is still a lot of "footwork" remaining to be done, including screening offenders who have applied for the program. Even so, he said he thought the implementation stage of the program is developing rather quickly.

"Actually, the process is moving along pretty fast," Ritnour said.

"Since I've become the county attorney, it has really picked up speed. To see the drug court go from something that was theoretical in February of this year to having an actual drug court in operation in September is a pretty speedy process."

Most of the work that has been done already in the Gage County Attorney's Office involved Ritnour, Schreiner and Payne attending several planning meetings at which they gave their input as to how they would like to see the drug court operate.

"When we prosecute drug cases, there are really two types of individuals we come across — the criminal who just happens to do drugs and the addict who may be involved in various types of criminal activity to support their drug habit but is not a hardened criminal," Ritnour said.

"We have to identify through the screening process those people who are addicted and are agreeable to treatment."

John McCarty, District 12 state probation officer, said the screening process follows strict guidelines to determine whether an applicant is suitable for the drug court.

Among the criteria used is that the applicant must have a history of substance abuse and must be charged with a non-violent felony offense.

Another guideline McCarty mentioned is that no applicant will be accepted if he or she has been charged with distributing or manufacturing controlled substances. Also, if the felony offense is not directly drug-related, the applicant must show the crime was committed as a result of the person's addiction.

"Probably about 80 percent of the crimes are going to be (directly drug-related) but we did want to leave the door open if we could show the offense they committed was a contributing factor to their addiction," McCarty said.

McCarty said, if the drug court is successful, the drug court should mean less work for him and other probation officers.

"We're just hoping that the cases that are referred to the drug court and are successful are cases that we will not have to deal with from a probation standpoint," McCarty said.

Ritnour added while his job as a county attorney is to prosecute people who commit felony offenses, his goal with the drug court is rather to make sure people cure themselves of their addictions.

"It (the drug court) is a matter of supervision unlike anything anyone has ever seen before," Ritnour said.

"We recognize that treatment is the goal here and the goal is also that when the person gets out of the program, the person learns new habits and new abilities and is able to be a better member of society."