METH ADDICTION: DOWNFALL OF A LAWYER

Marshall Shain has gone from practicing before the bar to living behind bars.

Shain, 46, a Cape Girardeau County assistant prosecuting attorney in the late 1970s, lost his freedom and law license because of a methamphetamine addiction.

He is serving a one-year jail sentence in the Madison County Jail at Fredericktown on a Bollinger County drug conviction.

"My cell mates are a murderer and a child molester," Shain said during an interview at the jail.

He said his life has hit bottom, steered there by a methamphetamine addition that made him a lawbreaker.

Dressed in orange prison pants and a white T-shirt, Shain talked this month about his drug addiction from behind the windowed wall, where prisoners and visitors communicate by telephone.

Shain's legal problems began Sept. 25 when he was arrested in Stoddard County on a felony charge of attempting to manufacture methamphetamine and a misdemeanor charge of driving while intoxicated.

On March 24, he was arrested in Bollinger County on a felony charge of possession of methamphetamine.

On June 11, Bollinger County Prosecuting Attorney Bill Hopkins filed amended charges that replaced the felony charge with two misdemeanor counts: possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia in the form of rolling papers.

Shain pleaded guilty to the amended charges June 11. On July 2, he pleaded guilty to the Stoddard County felony drug charge.

On July 18, the Missouri Supreme Court indefinitely suspended his law license.

Shain had practiced law for about 20 years, much of that time in Cape Girardeau.

Besides a stint as assistant prosecuting attorney in Cape Girardeau County, he served as prosecutor for the city of Cape Girardeau for seven months, ending in May 1988.

Shain said he closed his law practice in 1995 because of his drug addiction. He returned to his hometown of Fisk.

The suspension of his license came after the state's Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel filed papers with the Supreme Court stating that Shain wasn't fit to practice law because of his addiction to controlled substances.

While awaiting sentencing in Bollinger and Stoddard counties, Shain again got into trouble with the law: He was arrested July 23 at a Butler County home on drug-manufacturing charges. Sheriff's deputies found Shain hiding in a back room of the house just after midnight.

Shain denies he was manufacturing the illegal drug. "I went over to a guy's house to look at an organ for sale," he said. "I knew the guy. I knew he was involved in drugs."

The man who lived at the house told deputies that all of the drug paraphernalia was Shain's.

Deputies said they found various items associated with the manufacture of methamphetamine, including a glass jar filled with a white substance and coffee filters soaked in ether.

They also seized a marijuana smoking pipe, a plastic bottle of Liquid Fire, plastic tubing and two light bulbs converted into methamphetamine-smoking devices.

On Aug. 6, Circuit Judge Stephen Sharp of Kennett sentenced Shain on the Stoddard County charge. Sharp suspended the imposition of sentence on the felony drug charge and placed Shain on four years of supervised probation. The driving-while-intoxicated charge was dismissed.

If Shain doesn't violate terms of his probation, his record will be wiped clean in Stoddard County at the end of four years.

Sharp refused to discuss why he suspended the imposition of sentence, saying he doesn't talk about his decisions.

On Aug. 13, Shain was sentenced on the Bollinger County charges at the courthouse in Marble Hill. Associate Circuit Judge Scott E. Thomsen sentenced Shain to one year in jail on each of the two misdemeanor charges, with the sentences to run concurrently.

In early September, Butler County Prosecuting Attorney Carl Miller dismissed drug charges against Shain in that county. Miller said Shain already had pleaded guilty to drug charges in Stoddard and Bollinger counties.

Miller said it would be "a waste of time and the taxpayers' money" to further prosecute Shain in a case that would have resulted in him being put on probation.

Shain doesn't believe he would have been sent to jail if it weren't for his arrest in Butler County. He said he didn't expect the Bollinger County judge to put him in jail; he thought he would get probation.

Prosecutor Hopkins defended his decision to replace the felony charge with two misdemeanor charges. Hopkins said his decision had nothing to do with Shain being a lawyer.

"Normally what every prosecutor does is charge them with everything and then have something to bargain with," said Hopkins. "That happens all the time," he said.

"Anybody who thinks he is getting off easy doesn't know what they are talking about," said Hopkins. "I think he is getting punished severely."

Hopkins said Shain has a felony conviction in Stoddard County that could lead to more jail time if he violates the terms of probation.