For years, Paul Douglas Kastern, 41, has legally given justice the slip.
Now, a pattern he once followed has landed him in the Wisconsin prison system for the next five years. Douglas County Circuit Court Judge Michael Lucci on Tuesday sentenced the Superior man to 18 months of initial confinement and 42 months of extended supervision for dealing methamphetamine.
Douglas County District Attorney Dan Blank said it's a "breakthrough case," a rare example of a drug dealer getting more than probation or time in the county jail.
"It was less than I was asking for, but a lot more than what the defense suggested," Blank said. "It's the kind of message we hope to send ... that a meth dealer will go to prison."
Blank had hoped the former police informant would serve five years in prison, with another five years of extended supervision.
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Kastern's attorney, Public Defender Leslie Dollen, argued for probation or a sentence served in the Douglas County Jail -- a sentence similar to those received by more than 20 other people charged and sentenced since 2005 for similar crimes.
Though charges against Kastern date back to the 1980s, his willingness to help law enforcement has resulted in few convictions.
Ironically, an unidentified confidential informant facing drug possession charges helped break the latest case against Kastern, said Detective Michael Miller, the Douglas County Sheriff's Department's narcotics and vice investigator. Miller arrested Kastern in September after executing a search warrant issued by Lucci after an unidentified informant successfully bought meth from Kastern under controlled conditions.
"Because good, honest people don't know where to get drugs, we have to use some of these less-than-perfect individuals, because they're in that game," Miller said. "We have to use drug users who are in the game and hang out with that kind of clientele."
Kastern's pattern was to become an informant and work with police when he got into legal trouble. He went as far as setting up his own attorney, Blank said. In 2002, Kastern and his wife were living on property in Foxboro owned by Superior attorney Michael Inglimo. According to court records, the couple videotaped the attorney snorting cocaine and smoking marijuana. Kastern provided then-Superior Police Detective Herb Bergson with information about that incident and a subsequent drug party that involved a17-year-old girl smoking marijuana.
Inglimo entered a no-contest plea to possession of marijuana under an agreement that dismissed marijuana delivery and cocaine possession charges against him.
"Every time [Kastern] got in trouble, he'd go to the police because he lived in that drug subculture ... and he'd get less of a punishment or no punishment depending on what it was," Miller said. "That's kind of been his M.O. [mode of operation] for the last several years."
However, Dollen said he doesn't see the sentence as fair, given the lack of convictions over the years. He pointed to more than 20 similar cases in which the offenders' sentences leveled local jail time with work-release privileges, probation or both.
