27-Year-Old Man Gets "20 Years Hard Labor" for Half an Ounce of Pot

Asktheanimals
The answer is in your sentence here: "I think our jails are full enough and we have no business putting a guy in jail for 20 years over some weed "

Our jails are full we have business.
Somebody is making mucho $ from these draconian laws.
Don't expect them to change, corporations are sacred you know.

Bingo!

There's the real reason right there.

Look at the facts of this piece of...'justice';

Ingesting pot is a private matter for an adult. IF pot is bad for you, the only one who would have suffered would have been the guy himself. Locking someone away for 20 years hard labour is SO much more damaging to his life than smoking or eating a little weed now and then ever would or could be, that much would be obvious to even the most mentally challenged among us.

States in the US now recognise that Pot is useful medicinally. It is useful and effective in a variety of conditions, from simple insomnia to debilitating disease and illness like MS, parkinsons, Cancer, depression, Bipolar and a whole host of others...so where is the justification for sending a young man to prison for half of his life, when he was essencially only self medicating with a useful natural plant?

He's basically been handed the same sentence as a murderer or child rapist...for half ounce of a natural and harmless plant, recognised as having few if any side effects and a host of positive effects.

I wonder how much profit money is going to ripped from the public purse and generated by private prisons during this poor guys half a life in prison?

If i were a friend or member of his family, i would be devoting my life to hunting down the connections, financial and social of the Judge and prosecutors, legislators etc. to the board of the private prisons in the area.

There's BOUND to be yards of dirt to be dug up, and used to bury the bastards using there own crooked laws.

Bloody outrageous.

roadgravel
What is this "hard labor". Haven't prisoners convinced the system that work with any real labor in prison is cruel.

You have a good point. Hard Labor made me kinda laugh too.... Is this like hard hard labor of making license plates or the prison laundry? Or...are we talking real hard labor like prisoners in North Korea and Russia get to enjoy? Totally and radically different concepts, huh? Anything but being a couch potato in a cell all day is hard labor to American prisoners it seems.

reply to post by OtherSideOfTheCoin


oh my the hypocrosy is just astounding....perhaps we should just do away with courts and just have a few judge dredd's getting around eh....these hippies are scewing up society,god forbid they should oppose the law....put him in with actual criminals and watch how tainted he is when he gets out....this is just outa control...

reply to post by hopenotfeariswhatweneed


if you want to change the law their are ways to go about it with out actually breaking the law.

if you are found guilty of a crime 3 times, the same crime and it is explained to you the consequences of committing said crime again and you go ahead and get caught doing it a fourth time then its your fault and you should expect to be punished in accordance with the law of the land.

We might all disagree with weed being illegal but that does not matter the fact is that the law is the law if you break the law then you will be punished, society needs rules.

if you really want legal weed that much head of to Amsterdam

TheLotLizard
reply to post by goou111

 

This is the same reason why I got my medical card.

100% legal for me as it is now my medicine. So now if a cop pulls me over I can have a rolly in my ear and they can't say a single thing.

Only in the state you are in. Go outside your state and get caught they will laugh at your script while they are busting you.

paraphi
Well, different States in the US have different local laws. Surely that's an expression of the democracy, thus demonstrating something works. With regards to multiple offenders, such as this person... He knew the rules.

Do you really think these laws represent the will of the people anymore?

It's an expression of mock democracy. It's akin to a kangaroo court now as we've lost control of our governments and most people were never given a hint of education (ON PURPOSE) on how to interact with them, much less take control back from people who have agendas and revenue motives.

The education trend is slowly changing back thanks to the ability for awareness and information to be shared via the internet, but it's going to take a generation to start seeing the full effects.

reply to post by BardingTheBard


"Do you really think these laws represent the will of the people anymore?"

The will of the American people has not been represented since the federal reserve system came into play.

You are all slaves to a government of totalitarian oogarts have been since the beginning if truth be told, just like the rest of us!

Land of the free my left bum cheek! LoL

The Netherlands, where Marijuana is legal as we all know, had to close eight prions du to lack of criminals. Also their government offers drug users a free treatment in a clinic instead of going to jail.

I'm a big fan of the drug politics there and the numbers and statistics also prove it's working. Other than the War on Drugs scam which the USA is "fighting" for decades.

reply to post by hopenotfeariswhatweneed


Thats the law for you.

If the punishments dont work they get stronger. If you make a special case for pot, so thats its a minor offense with a small max sentence every time, that opens to the door for other, seemingly non serious crimes.

Now having said that the laws are wrong in my opinion and do need to be changed. Ive never seen a fight involving two stoned people, nor have i known anyone to die from it. The only bad things that come from pot are due to the law making it illegal, rather than the plant itself doing any harm.


If you get arrested for something you are going to do regardless and you know sentences are getting stiffer, that makes you a total moron for not moving to Amsterdam. Or even simply not smoking it any more while campaigning for it to be made legal or have sentences reduced, so you can in 'safety' at some point enjoy it legally.

I thought I'd throw this in from the article...

In Louisiana, a person can get up to six months in jail for first marijuana conviction, up to five years in prison for the second conviction and up to twenty years in prison for the third. In fact, the Louisiana Supreme Court recently overturned a sentence of five years as too lenient for a fourth possession of marijuana and ordered the person sentenced to at least 13 years.

(Op Link)

If someone is going to break that law in THAT state? Like Otherside noted...there is no sympathy here. He also wasn't given the sentence for pot as the article states ...but habitual offender status on repeated arrests and convictions. It's like the guy in California who got life for shoplifting. Well... No.. Actually, he didn't. Shoplifting to a felony level was just the 3rd strike and a really crappy one to go out on ...but still, if one wants to live as a criminal with frequent flier status to the local jail? They will stop letting you out eventually.

I have to comment out of a sense of condolance for this man. Someone said it right - rape a kid or traffic high dollar drugs and you get 6-7 years. Have seen too many stories of short sentences for serious crimes while these ones are equal to or longer. Which person did this guy rub the wrong way? Not willing to kick down a little to the arresting officer? (Yep - that happens).

If people dont flood this place with letters over a period of time I will be surprised. What they did here is take what they deemed a criminal and turned him into a victim.

Danowski
The Netherlands, where Marijuana is legal as we all know

thats not quite correct ,it is legal in amsterdam in the red light district,not in the whole of the netherlands,in fact there a quite severe penalties if you are caught taking it out of the designated areas i beleive...

reply to post by goou111


If it would have happened in NY, where yearly expense per inmate in 2012 was $167,000 , it would cost the state $ 3,340,000 . Source

Luckily it is much "cheaper" in Louisiana costing roughly $17,486 of taxpayer´s money a year, Source . If inflation is not counted in (price per inmate remains the same) and the inmate does not have any serious health issues, which could lead to far higher cost, then the total would cost for taxpayers would be $349,720 in 20 years. Is elimination of a person having 15 grams of pot with them, worth this money? You decide.

I guess the lock-up quotas need to be achieved. Louisiana prisons have lone of highest lock-up quotas in the country between 95% and 100% (Source, which basically means, whether prisons are filled or not, state has to pay for any unfilled places below the quota. This of course had led to the highest incarceration rate in the nation of 1,619 people of 100,000 being locker up or more easily said 1,6% of the people in Lousiana, if Louisiana was a country, it would have the highest incarceration in the world.

reply to post by hopenotfeariswhatweneed

the fact that a man can get a stupid sentence like that over a bit of weed is ludicrous...tell me was he hurting anybody?was he neglecting anybody?does he really deserve to go to jail?

Yes i totally agree the law is stupid, but and I dont know if he was hurting anyone or not.

but thats not really the point

the point is he committed the same crime repeatedly and he knew the consequences of his actions.

If you repeat the same mistake over and over again i have no sympathy for you, if you commit the same crime over and over again I have even less sympathy for you when you get sent away for a few years.

its the law,

we might not like it but we are all accountable to the law of the land.

reply to post by andy06shake

I think you'll find my posting history in agreement.

OtherSideOfTheCoin
we might not like it but we are all accountable to the law of the land.

And when the "law of the land" has become the greater crime?

Think back through the history of things that were against the "law of the land" and were punished by prison, hard labor, concentration camps/gulags, excile, death, etc... that we now can look back on as horrific injustices. How many people had to face those punishments (purposefully or not) to oppose the "law of the land" and reveal just how corrupt they are so that YOU can do things that you take for granted now?

There is only one real crime: To cause injury to another... and even that is along the spectrum of willingly/knowingly versus accidentally while engaging in behavior that puts others at risk.

I will never take words on paper more seriously than other human beings... and I will always be more accountable to the other human beings than I will words on paper.

The people who write our laws these days (especially at the federal and financial level... and the drug laws as they stand are part of the federal/financial design) are knowingly engaging in injury to others for personal gain.

The term "the Law" keeps coming up in this thread and if you think about it those truly guilty here are those who profit from incarcerating those whose actions do nothing to harm society. First all law must conform to the Constitution of both the state and the US. I would argue that under the right to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness" one has an inherent right to control what goes in one's body.
Second, this person was prosecuted under criminal law which requires that 1) the action of the accused is deleterious to society (who was harmed by this man's actions?) and 2) One must have Malicious intent (also lacking).
Finally there is the "cruel and unusual punishment" protection of the 8th Amendment to the US Constitution. 20 years is neither cruel or unusual, really?

Federal courts have ruled in Roe vs Wade that a woman's has a right to control her own body. Is this not also the case with this man? In seizing his mj they also stole his property which is what our laws are designed to protect along with our fundamental rights.

I think in every sense this man's sentence is a travesty and farcical interpretation of law. We are long past the point of common sense and into the realm of legal maneuvering for political and economic gain. A sure sign we have entered the realm of totalitarianism.