Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Pleads Guilty to Smuggling Marijuana and Cell Phone to Inmate
Or maybe she thought she could outsmart the system. Johanna Grace, 34, a former Lieutenant with the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office in Wisconsin, pleaded guilty on July 12, 2024, to providing marijuana and a cell phone to Michael A. Wright, Jr., 34, an inmate in the county jail charged with drug trafficking, conspiracy, and related crimes in Racine, Wisconsin, according to a U.S. Attorney’s Office press release.
Grace pleaded guilty to two of the original three counts in the original indictment for crimes committed in 2023, according to the plea agreement.
The United States Attorney Gregory J. Haanstad’s announcement stated that Grace pleaded guilty to charges that include a violation of Title 18, U.S Code, Sections 2(a), 1791(a)(1), 1791(b)(3), and 1791(b)(4), which prohibits the providing or possession of contraband in prison.
Grace also admitted to working with people on the outside to bring items into the jail for Wright and acknowledged that, when she started to fear discovery, she shared internal documents in the form of law enforcement reports with her outside associates to obstruct justice, according to the plea agreement.
This wasn’t the only time Grace was indicted in 2023 for crimes she allegedly committed during her tenure as Lieutenant for the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office. Johanna Grace and Deborah Link, 65, a jail nurse who worked at the Waukesha County Jail, were both indicted in August 2023 after an inmate, Randy Glenn Jr., died at 34 in January 2023 while in their custody, according to state proceedings.
Both Grace and Link were charged with one count of Abuse of Residents of Penal Facilities, a felony, alleging that they failed to take Glenn to the hospital when he became sick under their watch according to the criminal complaint.
An officer saw Glenn cough and gag on something that he had put into his mouth, according to local ABC 12 WISN reporting. What came out turned out to be an empty plastic bag. The jail nurse, Deborah Link was asked to evaluate Glenn, who denied swallowing anything, according to records filed in court. She cleared him “because he seemed so genuine and adamant.”
Hours after, Glenn began to sweat profusely, so Link examined him again. Glenn continued to deny that he ingested anything, so Link cleared him again and didn’t find it necessary to put him on a medical watch because “there was no reason to believe he had taken anything,” Link told investigators.
Deputy officials found Glenn dead in his cell the next morning and paramedics pronounced him dead at the scene, according to Lieutenant of Detectives Tim Kemps in court records. Detective James Frankow of the Washington County Sheriff’s Department, in Wisconsin, reported in the criminal complaint that an autopsy was performed the next day and revealed that “approximately 42 grams of a foreign material was located inside [Glenn]’s stomach.” The material turned out to be five bundles of cocaine, weighing 9.72 grams in total.
For Grace’s part, she allegedly failed to follow up with Glenn and failed to send him to the hospital when he became increasingly ill.
Both Grace and Link pleaded Not Guilty to the charges of felony abuse in Randy Glenn’s case, but Grace has pleaded Guilty to smuggling contraband to Micheal A. Wright, Jr. Sentencing for the case has been rescheduled from October 9, 2024, to October 24, 2024, because a witness is set to testify between October 7th and 9th, according to a court memorandum.
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