County Judge With Everyman Touch Retiring

Hennepin County Judge Peter Albrecht, known for his humor and compassion, says he will miss people, not cases.

Two lines snake through separate security checkpoints every day in the Hennepin County Government Center. One is for employees who flash badges and breeze through. The longer, slower line is for the public.

District Judge Peter Albrecht made a habit of getting in the public line, pocketing his badge and patiently enduring the wait. Albrecht says he believes employees should be subject to the same weapons screening as everyone else.

The 65-year-old judge, who formally retires at the end of the month, brought that same sense of equality to his courtroom. Since first handling misdemeanors after he was elected at 32 in 1976 to what was then the municipal court, Albrecht has earned a reputation for two things: an unfailingly gentle demeanor in the courtroom and unrelenting practical jokes outside of it.

His neighbor on the 16th floor and best friend, Judge Gary Larson, has been a frequent target.

Albrecht once sneaked fake ants into Larson’s mouthwash bottle in the judicial bathroom. He secreted a Halloween “mummy” into Larson’s office to scare him (it worked — twice in a day).

He repeatedly crept into Larson’s courtroom when it was empty and ever so gradually moved the piece of duct tape on the floor closer and closer to the judge’s bench. The tape marks the place Larson tells defendants to stand.

Newer Judge Robert Small said that when he moved onto the 16th floor, he “knew there would be something. The place has a reputation.”

There was. Albrecht placed Small’s nameplate on his door — a foot off the floor. Small is considerably shorter than Albrecht.

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Hennepin County Judge With Everyman Touch Calls It a Career

Charged With Felony Theft by Swindle

Kathy Ann Weimar was supposed to take care of two sisters, ages 90 and 79.

Instead, she used their debit and credit cards to pay her bills and withdraw cash and wrote extravagant checks on their accounts to herself and to pay a friend to do maintenance and repairs on their townhouse, according to charges filed in Ramsey County District Court.

Weimar, 52, of Oakdale, is charged with one count of felony theft by swindle. The criminal complaint said she took more than $17,000 from the sisters while serving as a home health-care aide. Her first court appearance is Jan. 6.

“That is just not true at all,” Weimar said Friday. “All those things went to them. They gave me that card to use. The money that was taken out was used to replace a deck on their townhouse. They wanted it before winter.”

Full Article and Source:
Oakdale Health Care Worker Charged With Bilking Elderly Sisters

Isabelle Jessich: "My Sweet Home!"

On Tuesday morning, Isabelle Jessich stood on shaky legs in the driveway of her Edina home and held out her arms to her smiling teenage daughter.

“Hello everybody,” Jessich shouted. “My sweet home!”

Jessich, 56, had longed for this homecoming ever since she was taken to a hospital in June 2008, malnourished, disoriented and weakened by alcoholism. She thought it would come sooner. She has been sober for more than a year, and in May, her doctor pronounced her ready to live in her own house once again. Jessich was desperate to take care of her daughter, Allison, who was left to fend for herself after her mother was institutionalized.

But Jessich was legally barred from making the decision to go home. Where she lived, and virtually all other major life choices, were under the control of a professional guardian, Joseph Vogel, who was appointed to the case last year when a Hennepin County judge determined Jessich was incapacitated.

Vogel never earned the trust of Jessich, who found that the more she fought to regain her rights, the harder the system fought to keep her a ward of the state. For months she languished in the Robbinsdale Rehab and Care Center nursing home, feeling more like a prisoner than a patient.

After the Star Tribune published an Aug. 23 story about Jessich’s situation, she felt a gradual easing of the guardian’s restrictions. This fall, she began going home on weekends, and she spent Thanksgiving with her family. Her next step, according to updates from her guardian and staff at the nursing home, would be a move to a group home.

But last week, a social worker gave Jessich stunning news. On Dec. 1, she would go home. Jessich said no one explained what had changed.

On Tuesday morning, Vogel, who remains in control of her affairs, handed Jessich her driver’s license and a piece of paper detailing the approximately $200 per week she would receive for expenses.

Vogel, who previously said it was either unsafe or too costly for Jessich to go home, refused to explain his change of mind.

“I think the best thing to say now is nothing at all,” Vogel said Tuesday.

Full Article and Source:
Isabelle Jessich: Happy Return to “My Sweet Home!”

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Editorial: Protective Services Outdated

“I feel like I’m in jail”

Judge Kathryn George Under Investigation

The state Judicial Tenure Commission is investigating a Macomb County Probate judge who allegedly mishandled cases and was excessively absent from the bench.

The focus of the probe is Judge Kathryn George, who was removed as the probate court’s chief judge in January 2008 after it was revealed she was circumventing the court’s list of conservators and appointing an inordinate number of cases to one agency, Shelby Township-based ADDMS Guardianship Services.

The Detroit News in 2007 reported that George was sending most of her conservatorship cases to ADDMS, in violation of court rules requiring judges to use a rotation of several conservatorship agencies.

Now, Judicial Tenure Commission investigators are poring over court records, looking at cases handled by George, along with her attendance record, said Macomb Chief Probate Judge Kenneth Sanborn.

The probe marks at least the second time state court officials have investigated George, 58, a former registered nurse and Sterling Heights city councilwoman who has served on the bench since 2002.

In February 2008, the State Court Administrator’s Office commissioned Auburn Hills-based auditor The Whall Group to look into George’s handling of cases, along with allegations of excessive absences.

The audit found “flagrant violations” by ADDMS. The audit highlighted several cases in which the agency mishandled the estates of people it was charged to care for, including selling the assets of an 82-year-old man who was recovering from pneumonia in a nursing home.

The Whall Group found that ADDMS sold the entire contents of his home, “including furnishings, appliances, clothing and two vintage automobiles.”

In January 2008, after the Whall Group report was published, Carl Gromek, chief of staff of the State Court Administrator’s Office, removed George as the court’s chief judge, and ADDMS was barred from handling cases.

Seven months later, Sanborn signed an administrative order removing George from all cases involving wills and estates.

Full Article and Source:
Malcomb Judge Again Under Investigation

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Attorney Contests Removal

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My Mother

Victim of an Overly Broad Law?

David Knutsen is the victim of an overly broad law, and an indictment charging him with sexual abuse of a vulnerable adult patient at St. Luke’s Canyon View Behavioral Health should be dismissed, according to his lawyer.

Judge G. Richard Bevan heard three motions from Knutsen’s attorney, Mike Wood, on Thursday in Twin Falls.Wood wants Bevan to dismiss the indictment against Knutsen, suppress testimony in the case and deem the charges against him unconstitutional.

After a three-hour hearing Thursday on Wood’s motions, Bevan said he would write a decision “in due course.”

Meanwhile, the 29-year-old Knutsen, a convicted sex offender, faces trial on Jan. 30, 2010. He was indicted March 25 for four counts of sexual abuse of a vulnerable adult following the alleged incidents of abuse on Jan. 30, 2009, at Canyon View in Twin Falls. As a patient, Knutsen allegedly abused the then-21-year-old female patient, who is described in court records as developmentally delayed.

Wood argued Thursday that the statute prohibiting sexual abuse of vulnerable adults restricts an adult’s right to engage in sexual activity. Adults are responsible for their own sexuality, said Wood, “not the state of Idaho.”

But the Twin Falls County prosecutor on the case, Suzanne Craig, disagreed saying the felony statute is fair and protects people.

“The state may limit sexual activity,” said Craig, adding it protects people “who legitimately need to be protected. … Children need to be protected and so do people with limited mental capacity.”

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Judge to Rule in Patient Abuse Case

Sentencing Delayed

A New Hope man, who pleaded guilty to swindling his 78-year-old mother, temporarily avoided sentencing Tuesday because a judge acknowledged that the man remains the sole caregiver of the mother whose bank account he depleted.

Anna Sitte has Alzheimer’s disease, which was diagnosed years ago, but until plans for her immediate future are made, sentencing for her son Steven Carl Sitte, 53, can’t be determined, said Hennepin County District Judge Warren Sagstuen.

Jimmy Sitte, who turned in his brother to authorities earlier this year, has asked that their mother be moved back to North Dakota. There, three acres remain of a century-old 188-acre family farm that Jimmy Sitte says his brother liquidated without his mother’s knowledge.

“In a case as complex as this, one that involves the health and well-being of one of our senior citizens, I would be remiss” to immediately sentence Steven Sitte, said Sagstuen. He moved to delay sentencing until Nov. 16.

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Sentencing Delayed for Swindling New Hope Son

Devoted Husband, Wife in Chains

The rugged land near Bagley, Minn., is still dotted with the woods, lakes and swamps from which Jennings Sunderland’s uncle carved a dairy farm 100 years ago — treacherous territory for an Alzheimer’s patient.

Sunderland’s wife, Clarice, a retired nurse with the disease, began wandering this summer, so Sunderland would settle her in a chair in the barn while he and his son, Kurt, milked the cows, or take her along in their pickup to the fields.

At home in the late afternoon, he had the chain.

Tired from the chores he began before dawn, Sunderland, 78, would settle in his recliner beside his wife of 50 years, watch TV, and sometimes fall asleep. To keep Clarice close, he looped a length of chain around her and her chair, the other end in his hand. “If she started to get up or lift off that chain, well, it rattled and woke me up,” Sunderland said. “It was a pretty good idea, I thought.”

The county attorney disagreed. What followed was a two-month drama in which Sunderland was jailed and his fragile wife removed from their home.

The battle only ended late last week when the county attorney dropped the charges and avoided a court showdown Monday over whether Sunderland’s method for coping with his 76-year-old wife’s illness was cruelty or kindness.

Now the family is concentrating on how to get Clarice home again.

Full Article and Source:
A Devoted Husband, and a Wife in Chains

Aide Takes $10,000 From Resident

A nursing aide at a northern Minnesota assisted-living facility persuaded an elderly resident with memory problems to write 12 checks totaling more than $10,000 last year, then cashed them and apparently made off with the money, state Health Department investigators said Thursday.

St. Louis County prosecutors said they likely will decide later this month whether to charge the unnamed aide with felony theft, as police in Virginia, Minn., recommended. The aide was fired after the allegations surfaced last fall.

The aide was caring for a resident of the Edgewood Vista Virginia assisted-living facility — the same home where Health Department investigators a month ago reported that three aides physically and emotionally abused some residents. The resident lived at the home for about two years and died last December.

In the earlier case, investigators said the aides pinched and slapped several elderly residents, called them abusive names and taunted one patient with dementia by saying her husband had died. The aides were fired. Police are still investigating that case.

In the case announced Thursday, state investigators determined that the aide financially exploited the resident between late May and late September last year. The aide persuaded the woman to write checks made out to her or to cash for groceries or Mary Kay cosmetics, even though the resident did not use cosmetics and ate all meals at the home, the report said.

Full Article and Source:
Elderly Resident Taken For $10,000

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Virgina Police Investigating Elder Abuse

Editorial: A Serious Betrayal of Public Trust

When citizens appear before a judge, it’s crucial that they believe they will receive fair, impartial justice according to law. That’s one of the highest values prized by the court system. Public confidence in the integrity of courts is a cornerstone of our entire system of government.

That’s why the recent Minnesota Supreme Court decision in the case of First District Judge Timothy Blakely is so baffling. The Minnesota Board on Judicial Standards recommended that he be fired. But last week, the state’s highest court suspended and censured Blakely for misconduct, stopping short of removing him from the bench.

The misconduct involves a $64,000 discount Blakely received on fees from his divorce lawyer. In 17 instances over the course of four years, Blakely referred people who appeared before him in his family law courtroom to his lawyer, Christine Stroemer, for mediation or related services. He failed to tell them that Stroemer was his attorney and that he had run up a large bill with her firm.

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A Serious Betrayal of Public Trust

Woman Charged With Forgery

A Plainview woman faces criminal charges for allegedly forging her grandfather’s name on her student loan application and charging thousands of dollars on his credit card.

Jessica Jo Rinn, 34, is charged with one count of aggravated forgery, a felony. A summons has been issued for her to appear in Olmsted District Court Oct. 12.

According to the complaint, Rochester police were notified from Olmsted County adult protection staff concerning the possible financial exploitation of a vulnerable adult. Rinn’s grandfather was diagnosed as suffering from dementia. He died last month.

The complaint alleges that Rinn made thousands of dollars of purchases using her grandfather’s credit card from February through August 2006. In addition, she is accused of forging his name as a co-signer on an education loan application. The loan amount was for $21,992. The total outstanding debt is $28,379.

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<a href="
http://www.postbulletin.com/newsmanager/templates/localnews_story.asp?z=2&a=416967″>Plainville Woman Charged With Forgery