JUDICIAL  Jackasses

Wantland & Wantland

 

Our jails are overcrowded and in Oklahoma it is determined that prison populations will quadruple in the near future according to a recent Oklahoma newspaper article circulated via C.U.R.E., an organization attempting to implement the job of the Department of Corrections to more closely correspond to the gilded title Corrections than their focus on pure punishment.  Citizens United for Rehabilitation of Errants. 

 

No one is advocating that jails and prisons are not necessary for some errants.  And they have come a long way from public whipping stakes and pillories of the past.  Still, the foundation of treatment in jails and prisons is based more on fear and violence than anything else. 

 

Fear is a valid factor.  We have no present alternative but to cage up those we fear. John Allen Muhammad is a good example.  Jeffery Dahmers, Jeremy Jones and his boss.  There is a long list of violent offenders that cannot be trusted not to harm us or even kill us should they ever get out. Some simply cannot be rehabilitated.

 

Incarceration did not rehabilitate Martha Stewart.  She still uses too much salt in her recipes.

 

 

 

 

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May first, 2006, I observed a “Sounding Docket” in Craig County Oklahoma.  There was a wide range of charges, including minor traffic violations.  Two dozen ‘accused,’ one at a time, were called by Judge Goodpaster for disposition.  Those with attorneys were scheduled and released on bond.  Some, who had posted bond, had not been able to hire an attorney.  They were ordered confined in the Craig County Jail where they were to remain until arrangements for an attorney could be made.  And, as we all know, “If you can’t afford an attorney one will be appointed for you.” 

 

We are all guaranteed the right to an attorney.  That’s the law.  Money, or lack of it, is not a deterrent to Justice.  That’s the law. 

 

One by one they came before the Judge.  Ten, one by one, were asked the same questions concerning “attorney” and ten responded “Tim Wantland is my attorney.”  Tim Wantland of “Wantland & Wantland” in Claremore Oklahoma.  “Where is he?”  “I don’t know.”

 

Ten accused were ordered confined in the Craig County Jail because their attorney, Tim Wantland, did not show up.  Ten are being punished in a cage that has been condemned by the Federal Bureau of Prisons because their attorney, paid by the State, was a ‘no-show’ with something better to do than his job the State is paying him to do!

 

It was alleged that Tim Wantland was in Trial in Clarmore.  Maybe so; that, if fact, does not excuse absence abandonment of other clients; especially when he has associates that are available to stand in for him. 

 

 

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Because Tim Wantland decided to neglect his obligation to ten accused, these ten accused will wait at least one more month [they were re-scheduled for June 5] in an overcrowded condemned facility.

  

Note:

There is no criticism for Craig County, Sheriff or jailers.  They cannot help it because the electrical system is far below NEC standards, a plumbing system banned decades ago, the parapets are crumbling with age and falling on the sidewalk and steps to the antique Court House.  Craig County is building a long overdue new Courthouse. 

 

One of the accused confined in this condemned jail is Brenda Dilbeck.   She has been confined in this jail, with Tim Wantland, as her attorney, for six months!  When Tim Wantland did not show, Ms. Dilbeck commented to Judge Goodpasture that Mr. Wantland promised he would present her Pro-se Motion for dismissal that date. 

 

Judge Goodpaster did not volunteer that, in accordance with Faretta vs. California, 422 U. S. 806, she could proceed on her own at that point as her own attorney and ask that the Motion be ruled on.  And, of course, the prosecutor would not volunteer help for her.  This is a problem with our adversarial system.  “Winning” is more important than seeking justice.  It is more profitable.  The State [prosecutor] gets paid to keep Ms. Dilbeck in jail; the State appointed attorney [Wantland] gets paid as long as Ms. Dilbeck [and his other nine abandoned clients] remain in jail; profit for both sides while ten accused remain caged.

 

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With this as an example, is it any wonder why our jails are overcrowded?

 

I did not delve into the charges of the other nine accused; be they felonies or misdemeanors.  Brenda Dilbeck’s charge I have knowledge of:

 

Three cocaine addicts and pot-heads, being up to no good,  were arrested for “Possession of drugs” [cocaine] in the city of Vinita.  Perry Schenk, Randy Langley and Steve Langley.  The arresting Officer was Mike Langley.  The coincidence in the name is blood linked.

 

Perry Schenk stated, when asked, that he had “a smoking pipe” at his house and he and his co resident Randy Langley, gave permission to search their residence. 

 

When County Officers went to the Schenk/Langley residence to search it, the front door was locked; Brenda Dilbeck was outside.  She had come to retrieve some property that was stored at the residence.  She opened the unlocked back door and led an Officer through to the front door where the other Officers entered and searched the house finding the container in which was the smoking pipe that Perry Schenk said was there, with his marijuana. 

   

Brenda Dilbeck, not a resident, was arrested and charged with possession of paraphernalia.    “Close proximity does not constitute possession.”  This is in Title 21 of the Oklahoma Statutes and was determined by the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals as long ago as McBride v. State, 508 P.2d 63, [1973] and recent as Crase vs. Oklahoma, F2000-365 [2001].

 

 

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I cannot fathom the Craig County Prosecutor or Tim Wantland as being unaware of these two case laws that will clearly overturn any conviction on the charge of “Possession of paraphernalia” that Brenda Dilbeck is likely to be convicted of because of  incompetent inattentive representation.

 

April 15, 2005, in Tulsa, our past U.S.Attorney General Janet Reno gave a talk titled “Wrongful Convictions.”  The percentage she estimated was 10%.  As I commented, I do not know the circumstances of the other nine of Tim Wantland’s clients that were sent to jail because Tim Wantland neglected his duties to them as their defender.  Assuming these nine charges valid, Brenda Dilbeck is the 10% in Craig County May 1^st, 2006 that has been wrongfully confined and likely will be wrongfully convicted.  She will languish the average of two more years behind prison bars before her appeal is heard and the wrongful conviction overturned because she is indigent, and to say the least,                  

        “Close proximity does not constitute possession.”

Shame on you, Mr. Tim Wantland.

 

 

 

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