A Wisconsin man demanded $4,000 in restitution after a woman gave his daughter pot brownies. He got $450.

Jenny Whidden | Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

There is usually nothing out of the ordinary when a parent bakes brownies for their child, but one Oak Creek mom was convicted for it.

After Stacy Wandschneider gave marijuana brownies to her daughter and several of her daughter’s friends last February, she was convicted of two counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child and given over $1,500 in court fines.

However, the incident was far from over. For one of the victims’ fathers, thousands of dollars of restitution was in order.

Jerry Urbaniak insisted that he and his family were owed over $4,000 as a direct result of Wandschneider's actions.

Urbaniak demanded Wandschneider pay $275 for his daughter’s gym membership and about $1,400 in her medical expenses. He also claimed about $2,500 in lost wages, due to the time he had to take off work to deal with the aftermath of the incident.

In February 2018, Wandschneider provided brownies with marijuana in them to her daughter and her daughter’s friends, who at the time were all under the age of 17, according to a criminal complaint filed last year in Milwaukee County Circuit Court.

The juveniles told Oak Creek police they knew Wandschneider had bought marijuana and was making pot brownies for them.

Wandschneider pleaded guilty and was sentenced to a fine of $300, in addition to other court costs, in April 2019.

A restitution hearing was then scheduled in May, when the court would decide whether and how much Wandschneider owed the victims.

The restitution hearing

When the day of the hearing arrived, Urbaniak made an appearance to argue for the money he believed his family was owed. He claimed that following the pot brownie incident, his daughter fell into a delinquent path that landed her in therapy and at various medical institutions.

Eugene Detert, Wandschneider's defense attorney, said the restitution hearing was very unusual. Detert had never experienced restitution claims to the extent of this particular case before, he said.

Judge Joseph Wall scheduled a continued restitution hearing for May 24 after asking Urbaniak to produce documents that tied his claims to Wandschneider’s offense.

In other words, could Urbaniak prove that his daughter’s various medical expenses and his time off of work were directly caused by Wandschneider giving his daughter marijuana brownies?

In the end, Wall allocated just about $450 to Urbaniak in restitution money. Wall included the gym membership, which was recommended by the therapist of Urbaniak's daughter. Wall added transportation costs for therapy and hospitalization and $100 for various medical costs.

'Clearly, the (law) does not reach that far'

Though Wall only granted a fraction of the restitution that Urbaniak filed for, the judge expressed his sympathy.

“I understand (Urbaniak’s) frustration. I would feel the same,” Wall said. “These are not unreasonable requests … but I do have to look at the restitution statute.”

Wall said the law is meant to be interpreted broadly, and he added that he understood there was a relationship between the issues facing Urbaniak’s daughter and Wandschneider’s actions.

However, restitution law did not reach far enough to cover the extensive loss that Urbaniak claimed, Wall said.

“In the exercise of reasonableness, I recognize that not all of the amounts are related to this conviction,” Wall said. “But, there is a broad relationship such that I can make some allocations.”

Contact Jenny Whidden at 414-224-2173 or jwhidden@gannett.com. Follow her on Twitter at @jennyruthh.