James Grandberry appears before Brown County court, October 22, 2025. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — The Wisconsin Attorney General’s office agrees a drug suspect’s right to a timely preliminary hearing was violated by delays of more than a year, but the state doesn’t think it’s appropriate for the courts to create rules allowing cases to be dismissed when attorneys aren’t immediately found.
The case involves James Grandberry, a suspect in a major Chicago-to-Green Bay drug ring investigation. He sat in jail for more than 14 months without an attorney or a preliminary hearing, which are usually held within 10 days.
Grandberry, 36, faces 14 charges, including three of manufacture or delivery of fentanyl, amphetamines and cocaine. He was arrested July 11, 2024, and charged about two weeks later. Prosecutors have said this case was the state’s first wiretap investigation for fentanyl and at least 47 people are facing charges. Grandberry now has an attorney and has pleaded not guilty. No trial date has been set. He returns to court April 10 for a status conference.
Before an attorney was appointed, however, Grandberry’s preliminary hearing was postponed 10 times.
Grandberry’s motion to have his case dismissed was denied by a judge. Grandberry then filed what’s known as an “interlocutory appeal” asking a higher court for the case to dismissed, arguing his Sixth Amendment rights were violated by the delay. Usually, the appeals court take up issues of law after a case has been completed, but this mechanism allows for an appeal while the case is still pending. In August, the Court of Appeals said it would hear the case. This appeal case continues, even though an attorney was eventually found for Grandberry and his case is now underway.
Grandberry’s attorneys filed their brief in January. Grandberry’s case builds off the 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 — a fraction of the time Grandberry waited. Eventually, the original case was dismissed and prosecutors were allowed to refile the charges. The Lee decision instructed the circuit courts to use a five-pronged approach to determine if it’s appropriate to postpone a preliminary hearing.
“Here, the State agrees with Grandberry that at least some of the good cause findings below did not satisfy Lee’s exacting standard,” wrote Assistant Attorney General Nicholas DeSantis in a brief filed this week.
The state contends the appeals court should reverse the circuit court’s order denying Grandberry’s motion to dismiss, with instructions to dismiss the case without prejudice — meaning the state could re-file the charges. As a practical matter, however, it remains to be seen if a dismissal order would be entered, as Grandberry has since had his preliminary hearing and arraignment in that case.
Grandberry’s appeal also argues the courts should create a rule that would have suspects be released on bond if they don’t have an attorney after seven days, and for the courts to dismiss cases — without the state having the ability to refile them — if there are excessive delays in getting an attorney.
However, DeSantis counters that’s not an issue before the appeals court and would be asking the court to legislate from the bench.
“In short, the problem here is not that protections do not already exist in the law. They do. Rather, the problem here is that these existing protections were unfortunately not properly followed in this particular case. This case does not present a need to make sweeping new rules of law such as Grandberry’s proposed new seven-day rule but just to follow the ones we already have,” the brief states.
Grandberry has asked this Court to pass sweeping, unprecedented new criminal laws because he feels that such laws would be wise policy. This is a request more properly made to the legislature, not to a court, much less to a primarily error-correcting court on an interlocutory appeal of a separate issue.
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. The state public defender’s office has also spent more than a year making over 5,000 contacts, trying to find an attorney for Jordan Leavy-Carter, who is charged in connection with the shooting death of a 5-year-old.
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