PAIR SEEN AS MARTYRS IN EFFORT TO LEGALIZE POT

Arrests, Forfeiture Action Led To Suicide, Their Children Say

Four of the Schilling children showed up for their parents' funeral wearing
T-shirts bearing messages such as, "Dare to know the truth about marijuana."

To them, Dennis and Denise Schilling are martyrs to the cause of legalizing
the use of marijuana, particularly for medicinal purposes. Their parents,
they say, were driven to hang themselves in a Madison motel last month
under the threat of prison and forfeiture of their Big Bend home, the
result of being accused of growing marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms
there with one of their sons, Joshua.

In the couple's death notice, the children included: "Taking care of your
health should not be a crime," a reference to their mother's use of
marijuana, which she said in a suicide note helped her fight mental illness
and chronic pain from a back injury.

But Dennis Schilling's brother, William, said such an attempt to politicize
the deaths is hogwash.

"I think that their children have turned them into martyrs for this drug
cause," he said. "Drugs lead to no fruit. They only lead to being a vegetable."

William Schilling said he was outraged by the spectacle of the funeral,
where many visitors donned the same pro-marijuana T-shirts that four of the
couple's five adult children wore. Mourners were asked to sign a petition
pressing for the legalization of marijuana.

"I flipped out," William Schilling said.

Waukesha County District Attorney Paul Bucher said, "I'd hardly describe
them as martyrs. Any time you have a tragedy like that, you look for
scapegoats.

"They obviously had significant problems. I'm sorry that they felt they had
no way out. I'm very sorry for the family. Of course we don't want that to
happen. It's a tragic case."

To those who would say marijuana should be legalized, prosecutor Lloyd
Carter replied: "Go talk to the experts on drug addiction and treatment and
ask them what drug they say their clients started with. The ones using
cocaine and heroin."

But Denise Schilling wholeheartedly disagreed with that viewpoint.

Drug use defended

In a suicide note, she wrote that marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms
were the only things that helped soothe her mental and physical anguish.

Denise Schilling wrote that her 20-year-old son had nothing to do with her
drug operation, although a criminal complaint charged him with selling
marijuana to undercover agents.

She said that she turned to illegal drugs after traditional therapies
failed to relieve her pain.

"I had tried every politically correct route, from religion to psychotropic
drugs, and none of these avenues had helped me in any way," she wrote.

"Perhaps someday people like me will not be so persecuted. Perhaps someday
it will not be a crime to take care of your health."

Joshua Schilling apparently takes no offense at having to face the music
alone, now that his parents are dead.

After a court hearing Monday, he echoed the message from his parents' death
notice.

"Supporting your health should not be a crime," he said, before a relative
persuaded him to refrain from further comment.

But his brother Caleb said he blamed the legal system for pushing his
parents to suicide.

"We're being screwed by all these people," he said.

Forfeiture action debated

Denise Schilling's attorney, Martin Kohler, said the couple were distraught
after deputies from the U.S. marshal's office hand- delivered a notice of
the forfeiture action against the couple's home.

"What pushed them over the edge was the house," Kohler said. "She
emotionally couldn't deal with it."

Kohler said the authorities were overzealous.

"Do we really want to punish a mom-and-pop operation?" he said. "Everything
is by the book, and we don't stop and really see who some of the people are
in the criminal justice system.

"And that's too bad because everybody's not evil, and the Schillings
certainly weren't evil and didn't have to be crushed like this."

But U.S. Attorney Steven Biskupic, whose office filed the forfeiture action
against the Schillings' home, said Kohler and the Schilling children have
misplaced their anger.

Biskupic said there was "substantial drug activity linked to the house."

"There wasn't just one joint in the house. This was a grow operation," he
said. "That was the allegation."

The Schillings - both 48 - received the notice of the forfeiture action
against their $118,000 home on Sept. 20, five days before their bodies were
found hanging in a motel room on E. Washington Ave. in Madison.

They left notes containing "suicidal comments" on the door and on the bed,
said Madison police Officer Larry Kamholz, the department's spokesman.

According to court records:

The Waukesha Metro Drug Enforcement Unit received a tip earlier this year
that there was a marijuana growing operation at the Schillings' property.

An undercover officer and a confidential informant bought a total of
one-quarter of an ounce of marijuana for $120.

Officers searched the home and found 21 marijuana plants being grown, 12.1
grams of mushrooms and drug paraphernalia.

Joshua Schilling told police he had been selling marijuana over the past
year, including to some of his father's close friends. He told police he
had been smoking marijuana since seventh or eighth grade and he had smoked
pot with his parents.

The three were charged June 27 and released on $3,750 bail. The charges
included maintaining a drug house, manufacturing marijuana and mushrooms,
and possession with intent to deliver marijuana and mushrooms.

The executive director of the NORML Foundation, an arm of the National
Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said the Schillings'
suicides could have been connected to the forfeiture action.

"I'm never amazed to hear that people sunk to the level of committing
suicide" after getting forfeiture notices, said Allen St. Pierre, executive
director of the Washington, D.C.-based group.

He called the forfeiture law in cases involving small amounts of marijuana
an "overbearing" tentacle of government.

St. Pierre said murderers, rapists and white-collar criminals who embezzle
millions don't face similar forfeiture actions.

"You can use alcohol until you drink yourself into a coma. You can die from
tobacco use. . . . All that is OK. But as soon as you use marijuana, you
feel this incredible weight of the government," he said.

Biskupic discounted those assertions.

"I've been prosecuting white-collar cases for more than a decade, and
whenever possible, we try to seize as many assets as we can," the U.S.
attorney said.

In the case of the Schillings, Biskupic said, the government had only just
begun forfeiture proceedings.

"In this case, nobody seized the house yet. We were not locking them out of
the house . . . That was a long way off. They certainly had the right to
come to court and challenge it," Biskupic said.