MONROE — A 23-year-old jailed since September on a $10,000 cash bond was convicted last week of charges in two separate cases related to cooking meth on his parents’ property in rural Brodhead.
Jordan E. Douglas pleaded guilty Feb. 15 in Green County Circuit Court to two felony charges of manufacturing or delivering amphetamine. Numerous related charges, including maintaining a drug-trafficking place, were dismissed as part of a plea deal but “read in,” meaning the judge could consider them at sentencing.
Douglas faced prison time in agreeing to the plea deal.
District Attorney Craig Nolan recommended a sentence of five years of incarceration and five years on extended supervision.
But Judge Thomas Vale gave Douglas a lesser sentence of five years on probation with a conditional year in the county jail. Douglas is eligible for Huber release privileges to go to work or to alcohol and drug counseling while serving his jail sentence.
In a letter to the judge, Douglas’ mother wrote that his arrest and incarceration since September “was an extremely hard blow” to the family personally and to their septic tank service, line cleaning and portable toilet rental business.
A stroke left her husband with permanent balance and vision issues several years ago, and the family-owned business has been “limping along” without their son’s help as a full-time employee, she wrote.
“We could have bailed him out to continue working,” she wrote, “but I feel that would have been self-serving and not to Jordan’s greater benefit. He was obviously suffering from an addiction that I hope the court system can help him resolve. I look forward to a day soon when Jordan can rejoin us — young, bright, strong and addiction-free.”
According to court records, Douglas was busted twice for cooking meth on his parents’ 15-acre property in the W300 block of Town Center Road, Town of Spring Grove.
A search warrant executed on the property in November 2017 found evidence of “one-pot method” meth production in two sheds and in a barn’s upstairs haymow. Also called “shake and bake,” this method employs a plastic soda or water bottle to combine chemicals with a high potential for explosion into a small batch of meth crystals.
Police got the warrant after Douglas’ on-again, off-again girlfriend, Kristie Jo Sweeney, 29, called police to report that Douglas had broken into her house in Brodhead, had meth on him and “makes it at his parents’ house,” according to the criminal complaint.
Sweeney currently faces eight meth-related felonies as Douglas’ codefendant, after a search warrant was executed on the Town Center Road property again in September. Her case is still pending. When she was arrested, she denied using meth and said she was “working on getting (Douglas) clean.” Sweeney is ordered to have no contact with Douglas as a condition of the bond in her case.
Douglas was out on a $20,000 signature bond at the time of the second search warrant, which police got after documenting evidence that he and Sweeney shopped together for pseudoephedrine at area pharmacies to use as an ingredient in meth.
Douglas also cooked meth for other users who bought him pseudoephedrine, according to the complaint. Of the meth users named in the complaint, all are now serving sentences or awaiting sentencing for meth-related convictions.