By Darren Smith, Weekend Contributor
The confusion as to what constitutes lawful medical marijuana grows with federal deference and ten year punishments for doing so, the United States Department of Justice is prosecuting five rural Eastern Washington residents accused of growing sixty-eight medical marijuana plants in a private collective. The accused include a seventy year old man who states he uses the medicine to treat pain from a job related injury, his wife for her arthritis, and their son.
What compounds the severity for these five individuals is that within the thirty-eight acre property, two of the defendants’ residence had inside several firearms, including rifles which are used by the family to hunt and for protection from wild animals. Firearms are very common in residences in rural Eastern Washington. Yet, the firearms in relation to the marijuana grow add an additional five year minimum sentence, adding to the defendants’ minimum of ten years imprisonment, something the senior defendant claims to be a “death sentence.”
What is rather extraordinary in this effort by the department of justice, despite guidelines in not allocating resources to prosecute medical marijuana patients, the defendants claim it was a misunderstanding of Washington’s medical marijuana laws that caused them to go from legal users to being potentially imprisoned for ten years.
Federal prosecutors allege the five were conspiring to manufacture and distribute marijuana and possession of firearms in relation to drug trafficking. The defendants deny they intended to distribute the marijuana and claim they grow the marijuana for their own usage. They face a minimum of ten years imprisonment if convicted on all charges.
According to Americans for Safe Access, a group that advocates cannabis for medicinal and research use, 100,000 Washingtonians use medical marijuana. Presently there are about thirty state licensed retail marijuana growers who are permitted under state law to grow thousands of plants for distribution to eventually several hundred licensed marijuana retailers.
But there has been irregular enforcement and ambiguity with regard to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the Office of the US Attorney. The office posted guidelines in August of 2013 listing priorities and what resources the federal government would consider in whether to prosecute marijuana grows or uses. A copy of this guideline can be found HERE
Within this memorandum one of the guidelines seems to be permissive on this incident:
The Department’s previous memoranda specifically addressed the exercise of prosecutorial discretion in states with laws authorizing marijuana cultivation and distribution for medical use. In those contexts, the Department advised that it is likely was not an efficient use of federal resources to focus enforcement efforts on seriously ill individuals, or on their individual caregivers. In doing so, the previous guidance drew a distinction between the seriously ill and their caregivers, on the one hand, and large-scale, for-profit commercial enterprises, on the other, and advised that the latter continued to be appropriate targets for federal enforcement and prosecution. In drawing this distinction, the Department relied on the common-sense judgment that the size of a marijuana operation was a reasonable proxy for assessing whether marijuana trafficking implicates the federal enforcement priorities set forth above.
The memorandum does not confer any rights or defenses, according to its wording, but purports itself to be a guide to prosecutions and delegation of federal resources.
The underlying incident that brought about this prosecution, reportedly ready for trial in June, allegedly happened in August of 2012 when a sheriff’s deputy arrived at the home of 70 year old Larry Harvey to cut down SOME of his marijuana plants, telling the patients state law only allows forty five plants among a collective grow. The plants originally were alleged to have been sixty eight in number. Mr. Harvey stated he believed he was in compliance because under Washington’s Medical Marijuana Laws, a medical marijuana patient is permitted to grow fifteen plants themselves and among the five of them, they should have been permitted to grow seventy five plants.
Apparently, the sheriff’s office then notified the federal DEA which then arrived at Larry’s home, seized his marijuana plants along with eight of his firearms.
Essentially Larry is put into this jeopardy of his freedom because of numbers. According to Washington Law he could not have more than forty five plants in one collective but if he had instead divided the garden into three areas, perhaps leasing the land to the other defendants, he would have been in compliance. But, since he was allegedly out of compliance the DEA went after them. If the deputy in this case would have recognized this was simply a misinterpretation of the law, according to Larry, a teachable moment might have corrected the matter. Why the DEA was called is unknown. But along with this alleged numbers game, the DEA drew in to the firearms issue to rack up another potential five year penalty.
What do you think?
By Darren Smith
Sources:
KREM News
KXLY
NextNewsNetwork
US Department of Justice
The views expressed in this posting are the author’s alone and not those of the blog, the host, or other weekend bloggers. As an open forum, weekend bloggers post independently without pre-approval or review. Content and any displays or art are solely their decision and responsibility.
Feds say, “Drugs will ruin your life, and if they don’t we sure will. Oh, and please stop by the gift shop for big pharma, alcohol, and tobacco on your way out.”
rafflaw:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-05-05/holder-signals-criminal-charges-coming-against-some-banks.html
> U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said his department is readying criminal cases against banks that show financial institutions aren’t too big to prosecute.
When the banksters go to jail for wrecking our economy, then maybe the DOJ can work on going after this kind of nonsense!
Schulte, you’re just playing dumb by acting like you don’t know what this has to do with Ronnie “Just Say No” Reagan. Maybe Wikipedia will tell you just how big an escalation the drug war took under his watch.
You’re right, though, that ignorance of the law is no excuse.
If following the law means “dancing” to Obama’s tune, then so be it. Funny how Republicans don’t like it when Obama bends the law for dreamers or medicinal patients who are following state law, and they don’t like it when he doesn’t bend the law in other cases.
Which is it young feller? If’n you want him to follow the law, then he won’t be bending it. And if’n he bends it, he won’t rightly be following it (apologies to the Cohen brothers).
The feds really don’t want this to go to trial. They are asking for nullification once an old dude in a wheelchair appears with his likewise elderly wife. These are the new faces of the miserably failed war on drugs.
It’s easy if you look at it from the stand point that while RWR was pushing back to states previously funded efforts he was increasing the strength and authority of the federal government, bush did it with one example of no child left behind. An unfunded mandate.
And what does any of this have to do with Ronald Reagan?
Look guys, there is a guy in England who is having his newly built 500k house torn down because it is 6″ higher than his permit allowed for. This guy had too many plants in his grow. Ignorance of the law is no excuse. And the Feds and the states have conflicting roles in these drug things. The DEA is controlled by Obama. It is his creature right now. So is the DOJ. They dance to his tune.
Again, authoritarian sadism is the diseased heart and soul of it.
I just love these ever eroding states rights, thank you Ronald Raygun.
Jon, don’t you mean Darren?
What do I think? I am mad as hell that our government is going after these people. This is sick, sick on the part of our society that lets our law enforcement go after people like this.
Stop this madness? Legalize marijuana NOW!
Will the sheriff’s office receive any money resulting from asset forfeiture?
Where’s Cliven Bundy when you need him?
Prosecutors should not be allowed to continue the practice of piling on charges. There needs to be some kind of control over these government teet attorney’s. Most of these prosecutors operate under a total misconception as to what prosecutorial discretion is for. This one step in the judicial prosecution process allows the prosecutor to stop the government from undue intrusion into citizen’s lives before it goes too far.
As an elected or appointed official, the prosecutor is the most powerful official in the criminal justice system. Prosecutors exercise unfettered discretion, deciding who to charge with a crime, what charges to file, when to drop the charges, whether or not to plea bargain, and how to allocate prosecutorial resources. In jurisdictions where the death penalty is in force, the prosecutor literally decides who should live and who should die by virtue of the charging decision.
Prosecutors have abused this process, turning it into a game. They will charge a person with 10 crimes fully aware all of the charges are not winnable. Yet, they make these charges because the citizen cannot afford to enforce his or her constitutional rights or is afraid to be taken from their homes and family for several years and is not willing to risk their fortunes when the same prosecutor comes over and says, “But wait, let’s make a deal!”.
The United States median income is around $51K. To properly defend oneself through trial on one serious criminal charge can easily cost a citizen TWENTY THOUSAND DOLLARS. To lose one half of one’s yearly income exacts an untold burden on the family of the citizen. The citizen must choose between, mortgaging their property, sell the property, go to family and friends and borrow money (humiliation), or pick a lesser jail time. The damage to a citizen’s reputation, occupation and income has already begun by this stage. (Another form of punishment)
What person would not give great consideration to making a false plea of GUILTY to charges when the prosecutor says, “you can go to jail for 50 years or if you please guilty I will see you get less of a sentence.”
I do not believe the judicial system should use belittling sentences to humiliate individuals. But I cannot change the fact that the government uses this practice on a daily basis.
With that said, I suggest that for every 30 charges a prosecutor pursues to the courtroom that are later dropped or a jury finds untrue, the prosecutor should be forced to stand on a downtown street corner holding a sign. The sign should say, “My Mom didn’t teach me the golden rule!” The local newspaper should print a photo of each prosecutor who reaches the 30 charge limit and is punished. If there is some form of discipline from the people to the prosecutor maybe some semblance of humanity will return to the system.
I would appreciate comments on alternative wording for the sign!
The gun charges may be unconstitutional in light of recent Supreme Court cases (e.g. Heller).
They should challenge those charges.
Holder must be superman to be able to micromanage the activities of all the DEA agents.
This is part of the zero tolerance mentality. If there is evidence that group is selling their crop, the charges should stick. Without that evidence the judge should dismiss the charges with the caveat that the growers take action to come into compliance.
if the search warrant was for the size of the patch, why were they inside any of the residences?
Great story Mark. Thanks for bringing this to us.
You have GOT to be kidding me! This is outrageous, and Holder needs some remedial training. Of course, it did not help when Obama kept in office all of the US attorneys that Bush had. So much for the good of bipartisanship. They all should have been fired the first day.
Impeach Eric Holder. Over and out.