The 30-year veteran federal judge made it clear at the beginning of what turned out to be a 2 1/2 hour hearing: Jerry Carlson, school booster and Coeur d'Alene insurance giant, was going to prison. 

“Probation is not an appropriate sentence,” U.S. District Judge Justin Quackenbush (left) said Monday. “What message would such a sentence send to the people of this community both young and old who have been misled by Mr. Carlson?”

Carlson appeared frustrated throughout the hearing, folding his arms over his chest and looking away. 

At one point, Quackenbush scolded him.

“Might I suggest, Mr. Carlson, what the court has to say may be of some interest to you?” Quackenbush asked.

“Yeah,” Carlson replied, looking up. 

Quackenbush sentenced Carlson to 27 months in federal prison for his role in an undercover cocaine sting that exposed his addiction to the community in February 2009. He could be released after about 13 months.

Quackenbush also ordered Carlson to serve four years on probation but declined to impose further forfeitures, besides $20,000 Carlson's already paid. The judge said further forfeiture would unfairly burden Carlson's family.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Cook said Carlson still has not accepted full responsibility for his role in the case, which she said began in late January or early February 2008 when Carlson bought a kilo of cocaine from Theodore Bruck, a former Bayview, Idaho, contractor now in federal prison for marijuana distribution.

Carlson admitted Monday that he split that kilo with a known dealer, someone Cook said had a large impact on the community. Carlson says Bruck set him up to buy the next kilo, which led to his arrest, by offering it to him for the exceptionally low price of $2,000.

Cook says he'd already given Bruck $19,000; Carlson says that cash was a loan for Bruck's construction business. When Carlson stopped lending Bruck money, Bruck found another way to Carlson’s wallet - his addiction or his “Achilles tendon.”

Carlson went to rehab for alcohol addiction several years ago but soon relapsed and was using cocaine occasionally. After he began dealing with Bruck, Carlson said he consumed more than two pounds of cocaine in two to three months.

“He was using as much as he could get his hands on,” said his lawyer, James Siebe. “Neither his family nor his clients knew he was back into the problem.”

Read much more from the sentencing in my full story: School booster in cocaine sting gets 27 months

Past coverage:

May 26: DEA shuts down alleged CdA cocaine ring

Jan. 29: Ex-Bayview contractor helped bust Carlson

Sept. 21, 2009: Feds wants Carlson's car, cash

Feb 23, 2009: CdA businessman faces federal cocaine charges

Sentencing for a former Coeur d’Alene insurance agent who bought a kilo of cocaine in an undercover federal drug investigation has been postponed. 

Jerald S. “Jerry” Carlson originally was to be sentenced Thursday, but a judge approved lawyer James Siebe’s request to move the hearing to July.

Carlson pleaded guilty in January to a felony charge of attempting to possess cocaine with intent to deliver in a plea deal that dismissed two other felony cocaine charges.

Carlson, a once-prominent Coeur d’Alene High School booster, already paid $20,000 in forfeiture. Further punishment is still being discussed.

“Obviously under the guidelines he’s looking at hard prison,” Siebe said today.

But Siebe is arguing that Carlson’s case as extenuating circumstances that warrant a lighter sentence. He points to the price of the cocaine Carlson bought from a government informant - $2,000 for a kilo, “which they themselves claim was worth $20,000.”

“Obviously, anybody with a substance abuse problem is going to look at that and be tempted to do it,” Siebe said.

Siebe also points to Carlson’s lack of a criminal history and his record of community service.

Carlson was arrested in February 2009 after Theodore Bruck, a former Bayview contractor set to go to federal prison on a marijuana conviction sold him the cocaine.

Federal agents arrived at his insurance office in Hayden to find him trying to flush the drugs down the toilet.

Past coverage:

Ex-Bayview contractor helped bust Carlson

Feds wants Carlson’s car, cash

CdA businessman faces federal cocaine charges

A former Bayview contractor now serving time in federal prison for selling marijuana helped federal drug agents bust a once-prominent Coeur d’Alene insurance agent and school booster weeks before he was sentenced last year.

That insurance agent, Jerald S. “Jerry” Carlson, 47, pleaded guilty Thursday to a felony charge of attempting to possess cocaine with intent to deliver in a plea deal that dismissed two other felony cocaine charges.

Carlson’s plea avoided a trial in which an acquaintance who sold him the cocaine that led to his arrest, Theodore L. Bruck, was scheduled to testify.

Idaho State Police detectives began investigating Bruck, 53, in 2005 after a man who claimed to work for him was arrested in Arizona with about 100 pounds of marijuana, according to court documents.

He pleaded guilty in October 2008 to charges related to the distribution of thousands of pound of marijuana from at least 2000 to April 2008 and is serving nearly 7 years in a federal prison in California.

Months before Bruck was ordered to prison, Carlson wrote a letter to a judge describing contracting work Bruck performed for Carlson over the years.

Carlson called Bruck, who had a previous federal marijuana conviction, “very reputable and trustworthy.”

Read the rest of my story in tomorrow’s Spokesman-Review.

Past coverage:

Feds wants Carlson’s car, cash

CdA businessman faces federal cocaine charges

CdA civic booster busted on cocaine charge

A prominent school booster charged in a major cocaine dealing investigation could be forced to give up $40,000 and his Mercedes Benz, newly filed court documents show.

Jerald Stuart Carlson was indicted on a federal drug forfeiture charge last week, more than seven months after a police raid at a storage facility behind his insurance business on Government Way north of Coeur d’Alene.

The charge, filed Sept. 15, demands that Carlson give up assets related to charges of conspiracy to posses within intent to distribute cocaine, possession with intent to distribute cocaine and attempt to posses with intent to distribute cocaine.

Each of the three charges involves more than 500 grams - or half a kilogram - of cocaine and stems from allegations dating back to November 2007.

The drug forfeiture charge, which calls for Carlson to give up “at least” $40,000 and a 1999 Mercedes Benz already seized by the DEA, is the first filing in the case since a judge extended the trial date in July.

In a motion requesting that extension, Carlson’s lawyer, James Siebe, said he and his client were considering a plea deal. (The new trial date is set for Oct. 27, with pretrial motions due a week from today. UPDATE: Trial now set for Jan. 26, 2010.)

Carlson graduated from Coeur d’Alene High School in 1980 and was named the school’s booster of the year for the 2006-07 school year.

CHS administrators were nearly speechless when they learned of his arrest. (His Farmers Insurance business has since closed.) Read about it here, with a follow up available  here.