Oconto woman gets 3 years in prison in meth cases

OCONTO – An Oconto woman received a total of 3½ years in prison in separate cases of selling and possession methamphetamine.

Joyce A. Madison, 55, will then serve another seven years on supervised released, Judge James Morrison decided on Aug. 2.

Morrison noted that Madison continued to be involved in drugs even after she was convicted in a 2008 Brown County case in which she supplied the drugs that led to a man’s death.

“There’s no reason in the world for me to think after a human being died because of your conduct, anything I would say or anything I would do, would have any more impact on you than that death,” Morrison said. “If that death didn’t do it … it takes a power higher than anybody on Earth to change that.”

Madison was accused selling 3.4 grams of meth to a confidential informant for $175 on April 8, 2020. But she wasn’t arrested until Nov. 4 of that year, when she was charged with possession of methamphetamine.

She pleaded no contest to both charges on Oct. 1, but her sentencing was delayed after she recovered from surgery.

As part of plea agreement, Assistant District Attorney Larry Lasee recommended a total of two years in prison and five years of extended supervision.

Defense attorney Bradley Schraven requested a year in jail as a condition of probation, saying that despite a lengthy history of drug abuse, Madison had been off drugs for the last 18 months and has been employed as a home health aide.

Probation, he said, “gives her an opportunity to build on the success since had she’s been released” on bond in March 2021.

Madison cried during her statement to the court.

“I’m to a point in my life I don’t want to be that person anymore,” she said.

Morrison said the writer of the presentence investigation said Madison admitted she had not maintained sobriety and will continue struggle with drugs, but has taken no initiative to get help to stop the problem. He added that Madison has a record of not complying with the rules of supervision, and granting probation to someone responsible for another person’s death would be “judicial malpractice.”

“The point is, a human being died because of your conduct, and if that does not change the arc of your life, there is nothing that you’re going to do in treatment, there’s nothing you’re going to do in sitting there and crying today, with convenient, crocodile tears, that makes me believe that anything is going to change,” he said.

Morrison sentenced her to two years in prison and five years of supervision on the delivery charge, and a consecutive 18 months in prison and two years of supervision on the possession charge.

Emphasizing he keeps an open mind at sentencing, Morrison said he came to the hearing expecting to give her to a total of five years in prison, but gave her the benefit of the doubt after hearing about her employment and sobriety from Schraven.

“I was impressed with arguments about what you’ve been doing, showing there is some hope for you to turn things around,” said Morrison, a Marinette County judge who was assigned the case after Madison asked for a new judge.

Counts of possession of drug paraphernalia to produce or store methamphetamine and maintaining a drug trafficking place were dismissed as part of the plea agreement.

Madison was charged in October 2008 in Brown County with first-degree reckless homicide by delivering drugs over the May 24, 2008, death of Jordan Jamison.

In the criminal complaint, Madison admitted supplying liquid methadone to Jamison and his girlfriend, which they split. Jamison, who was found dead in a Green Bay motel room, died from a methadone overdose.

As part of a plea agreement, she plead no contest to manufacture/delivery of Schedule I or II narcotics, and was sentenced in May 2009 to serve nine months jail and perform 500 hours of community service as a condition of five years of probation.

However, her probation was revoked in September 2012, and Madison was sentenced to three years in prison and five years of extended supervision.

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Contact Kent Tempus at (920) 431-8226 or ktempus@gannett.com.