Brown County drug trafficking suspect James Grandberry. (Photo source: Brown County Jail)
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) – The state Court of Appeals has granted a rare in-case appeal to James Grandberry – a suspect in a large-scale drug bust who hasn’t had a preliminary hearing more than a year after he was arrested, who now wants the case dismissed.
Grandberry, 36, faces 14 charges, including three of manufacture or delivery of fentanyl, amphetamines and cocaine, after a bust last August. Seven people were arrested, with Grandberry facing the most charges. He was arrested on July 11, 2024, and charged about two weeks later.
A preliminary hearing is an early step in the criminal process, where prosecutors have to show there is enough for the case to proceed. For those in custody – as Grandberry is, being held on a $1 million cash bond – such hearings are supposed to take place within ten days. However, as the state has been unable to find an attorney for Grandberry, that hearing has been postponed at least seven times, most recently on July 15.
Brown County commissioners have repeatedly extended the deadline. Grandberry filed a motion asking for his case to be dismissed, arguing his Constitutional rights have been filed. Prosecutors have opposed the request.
Grandberry filed what’s known as an “interlocutory appeal.” Usually, the appeals court take up issues of law after a case has been completed, but his mechanism allows for an appeal while the case is still pending.
Grandberry’s motion cited the Marathon County case of Nhia Lee. In that case, the courts ruled Lee’s rights had been violated because he was jailed 113 days without a preliminary hearing. Eventually, the original case was dismissed and prosecutors were allowed to refile the charges.
In the ruling filed Monday saying it would hear the case, the appeals court referenced the Lee case.
“Having considered the arguments of the petitioner and respondent, we conclude that interlocutory review is warranted in this case. In Lee, this court found that a circuit court erroneously exercised its discretion when it extended the ten-day deadline multiple times—resulting in the defendant being held in custody without counsel for 101 days before having a preliminary hearing—based solely on the fact that the State Public Defender (SPD) was still searching for counsel. Here, Grandberry’s initial appearance was held on July 23, 2024. At the time the circuit court denied Grandberry’s motion to dismiss the appeal on June 3, 2025, Grandberry had been held in custody without a preliminary hearing for 315 days. Although we do not yet have the transcripts, docket entries suggest that the primary reason for the extensions was the inability of either the SPD or the circuit court to find counsel for Grandberry,” the ruling states. “The issue for appeal is therefore whether the circuit court properly exercised its discretion pursuant to State v. Lee, when it repeatedly extended the deadline.”
The court ordered the clerk to provide it with transcripts of Grandberry’s hearings. Briefs will be submitted before the court makes a decision, a process which will likely several weeks or months.
Grandberry wrote a letter in July, expressing his frustration with the situation.
“Yes, the county is in a crisis state with the Public Defenders office not being able to appoint attorneys fast enough to satisfy incarcerated individuals’ needs. But the courts do have the option to appoint private attorneys so that us accused individuals have our rights to be proven innocent upheld. To this day I have been held at the Brown County Jail without an attorney which has now pushed it to over a year my rights have been in violation” he wrote.
Grandberry’s case isn’t the only one to challenge the delays in appointing attorneys. In 2022, eight current and former inmates filed suit in Brown County, seeking an order demanding quicker appointment of counsel. No trial has been scheduled in that case. The attorneys are still briefing the court on the legal issues being debated.
The delays have caused various issues. In one Green Bay murder case, for example, the state contacted more than 500 attorneys without finding one, leading to delays.
As for the Grandberry case, police said the arrests were the culmination of a six-month investigation. The suspects allegedly were involved in trafficking drugs from Chicago to Northeast Wisconsin.
Five search warrants were executed in Brown County earlier in July. A simultaneous search of the stash house in Chicago yielded 12 kilograms (26 pounds) of fentanyl, four kilograms (nine pounds) of cocaine, 748 grams (1.6 pounds) of meth, 460 grams (one pound) of heroin, 16 guns and some marijuana.
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