Some commentators have noted the potential performance enhancing nature of the drug on a trial lawyer – alertness, aggression but still, it’s illegal. Charles Ramsay, 43, was fined $2,500, ordered to perform 240 hours of community service and sentenced to 10 years of probation.

Star Tribune: Ramsay had been arrested after a Winona police investigator and a laboratory technician who had been called to testify in the murder trial noticed cocaine residue on a chair, table and floor of a conference room, just after Ramsay left it. The investigator then spotted Ramsay sniffing hard and wiping his nose after being in a nearby bathroom.

More officers were called to the courthouse, and they found five grams of cocaine in Ramsay’s possession.

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The man obviously set himself up for a long trial.

County Attorney James Backstrom said:

“This was a crime that occurred within a courthouse and was committed by an officer of the court at a time when he was in the process of representing a private client in a criminal case — so certainly a very disturbing set of circumstances, and he was held accountable for that”.

Bad but at least he limited his antics to himself rather than going the whole hog and putting crushed up Valium, GHB, Viagra or whatever in the opposing lawyer’s coffee.

Total wrongness.