DA HOPEFULS DIFFER POLITELY ON DRUGS

Stix: No Trials For Possession

For those who yearn for an end to gutter politics and the return of
candidates who treat each other with civility, Edgewood College was
the place to be Thursday night when Dane County's two candidates for
district attorney participated in a debate without name-calling and
acrimony.

Instead, Dane County District Attorney Brian Blanchard, a Democrat,
and challenger Sally Stix, of the Four Lakes Green Party of Dane
County, exchanged views and differences of opinions on issues without
engaging in the go-for-the-throat tactics that are so prevalent in
other races.

The forum was attended by 50 to 75 people of all age groups and was
sponsored by the Progress Dane Drug Policy Task Force, the Project on
Money, Education and Prisons, and the Edgewood social sciences
department. It featured a series of prepared questions covering a wide
range of topics about the judicial system. Those questions tended to
prompt thoughtful answers rather than heated debate, and they revealed
the similarity between the two candidates as well as specific differences.

The most pronounced difference seemed to be on how and when to
prosecute drug cases. Stix said she would not prosecute people for
possession of drugs, and would make careful consideration on when to
prosecute those who sold drugs. Stix said alcohol remains a bigger
plague for society and she accused legislators of engaging in
hypocrisy in dealing with drug problems.

"My own belief is drugs are a public health issue and should not be in
the criminal justice system," she said.

But Blanchard said programs such as the Drug Court and the Treatment
Alternative Program provide help to abusers after they are brought
into the system and the benefits "together are a life-saving program."

He also said he would continue to put more emphasis on prosecuting
such drugs as heroin, cocaine and Oxycontin than on marijuana, and
that his office would continue to make use of the so-called Len Bias
law. That law allows for the prosecution of those who provide drugs to
users who subsequently die "when the crime involved is distribution,"
and not just shared drug use.

Much of what Stix had to say was based on her 24 years as an attorney
involved in civil rights and labor law. She hit hard at the disparity
between prison sentences for blacks and whites, both nationally and in
Dane County. She said blacks make up 35 percent of the county's jail
population, although they account for only 4 percent of the population.

"Disparity of the criminal justice system is one of the major civil
rights issues of our time," she said. "It is one of the reasons I am
running for DA." One solution, she said, would be to carefully track
each case by race and gender to have statistics, open to the public,
to show how people of different races are treated.

Blanchard agreed that such disparity is a concern, but said he has
developed policies to make sure there is no racial profiling in his
office and has set up training sessions to combat the problem.

One issue on which the candidates were in agreement was the death
penalty. Although there was no direct question posed on the issue,
Blanchard and Stix, while talking about cases in which defendants have
been wrongly convicted, said they were pleased that Wisconsin does not
have a death penalty.