A metro attorney who used cocaine while representing a client during a murder trial will be suspended from practicing law for 90 days, and his law license will be on probation for 10 years after that, the Minnesota Supreme Court ordered Thursday.
That professional probation will coincide with the 10 years of court-ordered probation and other criminal penalties brought earlier against Charles Ramsay.
Ramsay, 44, of New Brighton, pleaded guilty last August to third-degree felony drug possession. A misdemeanor drug charge was dropped.
Ramsay was arrested after a Winona police investigator and a laboratory technician who had been called to testify in the 2009 trial noticed cocaine residue on a chair, table and floor of a conference room just after Ramsay left it. The investigator also saw Ramsay sniffing hard and wiping his nose after being in a bathroom.
More officers were called to the courthouse, and they found five grams of cocaine in Ramsay's possession. He was arrested after the trial recessed.
Ramsay had been representing Jack Nissalke, who was on trial for murdering a woman 25 years earlier.
JOY POWELL
