Series: Part 1D

A Shattered Life

METH'S GRIP DERAILS WOMAN'S DREAM

Jail Stalls Plan To Practice Law

MURRAY, Ky. - When Catherine Noe left home in Western Kentucky for law
school in 1999, she took with her a dream of practicing law, a criminal
record and a new recipe for making meth.

All three would come together to bring her to where she is now.

Noe earned a law degree in August 2002, but she lost her job as a law clerk
for a Paducah judge in March because of her methamphetamine use and is
serving six months in the Marshall County Jail for meth and other drug
convictions.

Still, she clings to her dream of being a lawyer and denies she is an addict.

"Most meth addicts and cooks do it for the money, and that's why they can't
stop," Noe said recently by telephone from jail.

"I'm going to have my law degree, and I won't need the money."

Prosecutors say they hope Noe's time in jail will wean her from meth and
the other drugs she says she has used heavily since her undergraduate days
at Murray State University.

"I can tell you my three-step program for recovery," said assistant
commonwealth's attorney Victor Cook, who helped prosecute Noe.

"Step one: You got to get caught. Step two, you tell on all your friends,
so if you get back on the streets and want something, they won't give it to
you. And third, you have to spend at least six months in jail."

Now 28, Noe has managed the first step easily enough - she has been
arrested on meth or other drug-related charges four times since 1994,
including twice since March.

It is the third step she is having trouble with, she said.

Jail has been rough so far, Noe said last month. Her cellmate is a meth
addict who can't stop talking about using, she said.

"It's not the best place for me right now."

The Fall

Two Arrests Shatter Law Clerk's Deception

Late last year, McCracken Circuit Judge Jeffrey Hines told Noe that
investigators had information about drug dealers who claimed to be her friends.

"I told her, 'I don't know anything about this or these people, but let me
tell you this, 'They are not your friends,'" Hines recalled telling his law
clerk. "I thought that was the end of it."

It wasn't.

And after a second report, Hines fired Noe. When police searched Noe's home
in Calvert City that same month, they arrested her on charges of attempted
manufacture of meth, first- and third-degree possession of a controlled
substance, and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Hines said he realized the extent of Noe's drug abuse only when arresting
officers told him about needle marks on her arms.

"Who uses it? People assume it's only long-haired people that live in
mobile homes, maybe, but that is not true," Hines said. "People with the
highest income to the lowest income, to no income - it's everywhere down here."

He called Noe's drug involvement a tragedy.

"She would produce good work," Hines said. "She is skillful at research and
good on the law."

Noe's first chance to use those skills on a client of her own came just
days after she was fired. In the Marshall jail, Noe wrote a legal motion on
her own behalf, urging the judge to lower her bond.

District Judge Jack Telle reduced the bond to $25,000 property, from
$100,000 cash. He said in an interview that the change was routine given
her charges and because her previous drug charges were nearly 10 years old.

Noe posted her home as security on March19 and was released on bond.

But Noe was arrested again when city police officers raided her home
June28, and pressed marijuana and prescription drug possession charges.

Noe was released in August after she agreed to a plea deal. In return for
guilty pleas, Noe's five-year sentence would be suspended if she served two
years of probation, Cook, the prosecutor, said.

Noe accepted the offer, but just before she was to plead guilty last fall,
she twice tested positive for drugs and was sent back to jail.

Noe remains in jail today, serving six months that Cook added as a result
of the positive drug tests.

She is due to be released in February.

Even now, she is mapping out how she could still become a lawyer.

Kentucky Bar Association officials would not comment on Noe's case but said
a felon seeking admission would have to show 'present moral fitness' after
a period of provable rehabilitation.

College Turmoil

Meth Offered Energy As Work Overwhelmed

Noe said her trouble began as a Marshall County High School senior when she
was arrested in November 1994. She pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession
of marijuana and a pipe.

Two months later, however, she was indicted with her boyfriend and other
friends on felony charges of belonging to a criminal syndicate, a group
dealing meth and other drugs. She says her involvement was minuscule.

Noe served 60 days on the pot charges, missing school.

The felony charge was suspended, and later dismissed, as part of a pretrial
diversion program.

She said she took correspondence classes and graduated in 1995. By that
fall, she entered Murray State on a Pell Grant, determined to be a lawyer.

Schoolwork kept her mostly sober for her first two years, she said, but by
her junior year she found she liked meth.

Working two jobs in addition to going to school, Noe said, she told herself
she needed meth to help her stay awake to study.

"I thought, 'Some people like to drink to have fun.' I was just relieving
stress. It gave me extra energy, and I was losing weight."

By the time she applied to the Salmon P. Chase College of Law at Northern
Kentucky University, Noe was on drugs - often meth - almost every day, she
said.

When Chase accepted her, Noe felt that her previous decisions had been
validated, she said.

And before she left for law school, her then-boyfriend gave her a gift - a
recipe for meth.

By November she and her boyfriend had split, but Noe said she had met
another drug partner back home.

"We'd cook all weekend, and I'd come back to school on Monday with enough
meth to last me the week," she said.

Noe said her law school grades suffered but she did not fail. By the end of
the spring semester, she said, she had switched to cocaine, which she said
was easier to find in the Cincinnati suburbs.

She graduated with her class in May 2002, and on the day after she turned 26.

But two weeks before Noe was scheduled to take the Kentucky bar exam in
February 2003, officials told her she had not been honest on her
application to the bar about the charges she faced as a teenager, she said.

Despite hiring a lawyer for $5,000, she was told she had to wait until the
next year to reapply.

Meanwhile, she went to work for Hines as a law clerk.

"She told me, 'I had some problems passing the character and fitness
board,' Hines said. "She didn't give me any specific details other than to
say it had been a drug deal and said it was due to the company she had kept."

"She had put herself through school working at convenience stores and Shell
marts - so I thought any young person with that kind of work ethic deserved
a second chance."

Noe conceded she has been given many second chances already, and she said
that has afforded her time to think about how much she risked this summer
by using drugs between court dates.

"I jeopardized my plea agreement and that could have sent me to jail for
five years," she said.

When she is released, she plans to sell her home, move out of Kentucky and
wait two years to apply to take the bar exam.

She said she wants to be a prosecutor.

{Sidebar}

How To Spot A Meth Lab Watch For These Signs, Police Say

Strong chemical odors coming from the house.

A large collection of containers for items such as antifreeze, lantern
fuel, drain cleaner, STP/Heet and propane.

Evidence of red stained coffee filters, lithium batteries and cold
medication or diet aid packaging.

Windows obscured by aluminum foil, blankets, sheets, newspaper or cardboard.

Outdoor video cameras, reinforced doors or electric fences.

A small trailer or outbuilding with a generator running in the middle of
the night.

No one appears to be living in the home, because of no furniture, no
newspaper delivery or mail delivery.

Different people coming to the house at odd hours.