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Articles written by Garth Dano


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  • Killer's release sickens prosecutor

    Garth Dano, Grant County Prosecuting Attorney|Jun 9, 2021

    I am passing along an extremely disappointing decision from the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board (ISRB), involving a matter I recently handled. In 1997, Adam Betancourt, then almost 17, along with another juvenile shot and killed an 89- and 88-year-old Quincy couple. The case eerily reminds me of Truman Capote’s movie “In Cold Blood.” Betancourt and co-defendant Donald Lambert killed Homer and Vada Smithson, who had just celebrated their 70-year wedding anniversary. Betancourt and Lambert broke into the Smithson house and began shoot...

  • Remembering Ed Allan

    Garth Dano|Nov 18, 2015

    Sometimes in life we are given gifts, sometimes extraordinary gifts in the relationships we are fortuitous enough to wander into. One of those extraordinary gifts came to me, by happenstance or God’s way of remaining anonymous, in the form of my friendship with Ed Allan. I was a neophyte lawyer in the early l980s, moving to Grant County to begin a practice with my father, when I first met Ed. His kindness and warmth was immediate. I vividly recall the first time I was introduced to him at the Grant County Courthouse. He welcomed me like a l... Full story