Heidi Groover writes in The Stranger about the verdict in the Kettle Falls Five case in Eastern Washington. Down from the original 5 defendants, the 3 remaining medical marijuana patients were facing long jail terms, essentially being charged as big-time drug traffickers rather than ordinary folks pushing the plant limits of our state’s collective garden law. The jury saw through the bullshit being thrown around by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Eastern Washington and acquitted them on all but one charge.
I’ve written before about this case and the incredibly cynical and spiteful behavior of U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby. There’s really no excuse for the Obama Administration to continue having him serve in that role openly defying the Obama Administration’s desire to leave ordinary patients alone. Groover details the more egregious aspects of this prosecution:
The U.S. Attorney’s Office combined photos they found of 75 plants grown in 2011 with the 74 live plants they found in 2012 in order to charge the family with growing 100 or more plants. That’s the number that triggers a five-year mandatory minimum prison sentence. This actually made up three of the counts facing the defendants: 1) conspiring to grow and distribute, 2) growing, and 3) distributing. (On Tuesday, the jury found them guilty of growing fewer than 100 plants, but not guilty on charges one and three.)
Then, the feds tacked on another troubling charge: use of a weapon in furtherance of a drug trafficking crime. The Harveys keep multiple guns in their house, which they say are for hunting and protecting their dogs from bears and cougars on their property. (I know this is weird. Guns are terrifying. But they’re common enough in Eastern Washington that having them near a pot grow doesn’t mean you were using them to protect that grow.) It was troubling because it would have added another five-year mandatory minimum.
Anyone could see that the defendants in this case weren’t big-time drug dealers. No evidence was ever presented that any of the defendants sold what they were growing. Nor was any evidence presented that their legally owned firearms were used in any way other than for protection. This was nothing more than an attempt to railroad innocent people, for reasons that aren’t clear to anyone. And, as Groover points out in her article, Ormsby is unapologetic and continuing to pursue other cases. If there are other victims of Ormsby’s office out there, I hope we’re able to shine some light on their cases as well.
More news items from the past two weeks…
Radley Balko put together a four-part series on how dodgy bite-mark analysis experts have put innocent people behind bars. Also, a roundup of recent police raids gone wrong.
Trevor Timm on why shutting down the Department of Homeland Security would be a good thing.
The Defense Intelligence Agency is either unable or unwilling to provide any evidence that Edward Snowden’s actions have harmed U.S. national security in any way.
Julian Sanchez discusses why the NSA isn’t being realistic about the feasibility of allowing encryption “back doors” in communication technologies for intelligence purposes.
Glenn Greenwald writes about the FBI’s outstanding record of foiling its own terror plots.
Dan Froomkin writes about how CIA officials were confused about the disconnect between what they were doing and what the Bush administration was saying publicly.
A study has shown that, in the United States, a person is far less likely to receive the death penalty for a homicide if the victim is black.
Maurice Chammah writes about the horrors of prison rape and the efforts to combat it.
A controversial police body-camera bill is nearing a vote in the Washington state house.
A prison nurse in Idaho reached a settlement over sexual harassment at a prison run by Corrections Corporation of America.
A bill passed by the Kansas Senate could lead to teachers being arrested for using controversial books or other materials in their courses.
The DOJ released its report on the Ferguson Police Department. They found that the department routinely violated the civil rights of black citizens.
Spencer Ackerman writes about a semi-secret facility in Chicago where detainees are taken and the normal rules of due process are ignored.
Cleveland Police Union leaders are still openly and brazenly lying about the Tamir Rice shooting. Now that lawsuits are being prepared, city officials have begun to blame the victim before the ensuing outrage forced them to start walking that back.
A Texas police chief spoke up about how increased policing can have a negative impact on a school’s dropout rate.
Texas was 9 days away from executing a likely innocent man before the highest court in the state issued a stay of execution.
In Louisiana, video evidence exonerated a man who was falsely accused of assaulting police officers.
Liliana Segura writes about a controversial 20-year old arson conviction in Tennessee and the flaws in fire analysis that have led to wrongful convictions.
Religious fundamentalists on the Alabama Supreme Court are ordering a halt to legal gay marriages. Another fundamentalist Alabama judge is refusing to allow a gay couple to adopt their own child.
Allie Gross writes about Georgia’s racist probation system.
In Tallahassee, another unarmed black man was shot under questionable circumstances.
A woman in Washington DC is accusing an officer of forwarding to himself a naked picture of herself from her phone during a DUI stop.
An environmental group in Pennsylvania reached a legal settlement with state law enforcement after the state hired a private security firm to conduct illegal surveillance on them.
Tom Robbins writes about abuses in the Attica prison in New York.
AJ Vicens looks at police abuses in Puerto Rico.
Canada’s equivalent of the NSA has been snooping on the private communications of its citizens as well.
The Venezuelan government is trying to unseat an opposition politician in order to charge him with trying to overthrow the government.
The killing of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov emphasizes the dangers of challenging the current regime in Moscow.
Israel is refusing to grant asylum to thousands of valid asylum seekers from Eritrea and Sudan.
Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy is still awaiting trial in Egypt for reporting “false news”. An Egyptian court sentenced well-known activist Alaa Abdel-Fattah to 5 years in jail for an unathorized protest. An atheist in Egypt was sentenced to a year behind bars for his religious beliefs. And for good measure, they’re going after homosexuals as well.
There are concerns that liberal Saudi blogger Raif Badawi might face the death penalty.
Iran has arrested more Baha’i citizens.
Pakistan is forcing all cell phone users in the country to register their fingerprint info with the government.
The torture of detainees continues to be a problem in Afghanistan.
The daughter of Uzbekistan’s president Islam Karimov has been detained at her home for a year, unable to communicate with the outside world.
Kyrgyzstan is threatening to pass anti-gay legislation.
China is continuing to crack down on activists and human rights groups.
The government of Myanmar was criticized by the UN for its treatment of minorities and dissenting political views.
Singapore is still caning people, even for relatively minor crimes like vandalism.
More modern countries whose citizens are being arrested for drug trafficking and killed by the Indonesia government are starting to look at how to deal with the situation.
The Philippines is cracking down on government-backed death squads.
New Zealand’s spy agency is spying on the citizens of its neighboring countries in the South Pacific and sharing the data with the NSA.
In Nauru, dozens of peaceful refugee protestors were arrested, including children.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/02/28/.....gger-dead/
Please consider adding this to your list.
Thanks for posting these threads.
Jury nullification is the answer to abuse of power.
Man, it’s kind of overwhelming to read the whole list all at once. Great work Lee.
“the incredibly cynical and spiteful behavior of U.S. Attorney Mike Ormsby”
What do you expect from someone who came from the same law firm that spawned Slade Gorton, Jack Abramoff, and Rick Santorum?
Hey, just kidding! It’s a joke. I don’t do guilt-by-association. That’s a Republican thing.
Roger Rabbit Roundup
Religious bigotry and intolerance is a Republican habit.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....tail=email
Why do Christians rape children?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....tail=email
Another innocent person is executed in his own bed by “no-knock” drug police.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....ail=email#
A national pizza chain’s franchisees have a habit of stealing from their own employees.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/.....ail=email#
Roger Rabbit Commentary: There’s no such thing as a self-enforcing law. More often than not, your constitutional rights and statutory protections are merely ideals to hope for, and not how things work in the real world. In the end, you have no rights without a good tort lawyer, yet Republicans want to put plaintiff’s lawyers out of business with so-called “tort reform” (which is anything but reform; it’s a huge step backward into the 19th century’s anything-goes society).
Yesterday, the U.S. Department of Justice issued a report outlining massive and systematic civil rights abuses in Ferguson, Missouri. Will anyone go to jail? Don’t hold your breath. A few of the most visible perps (i.e., those penning racist emails) may lose their jobs. Will the thousands of victims of municipal extortion get their money back? Not a chance. Will Michael Brown get his life back? You get the picture. We live in a society that rewards wrongdoing and punishes the victims. That’s just the way it is, folks.
Seventy-five plants a year. Huh! That’s a lot medication.
My friends and I have been growing that plant for nearly half a fucking century. Not for profit. Just to avoid the scumbags who tend to sell that shit. No, we actually gave it away. After all, it’s just a fucking plant, a weed.
I used to help people get started with their one-light room so they could drop out of the “looking for pot” scene. These days I’m a design consultant for grower greenhouse complexes coming in at over 100,000 square feet each with over a megawatt power demand just for the lights. One megawatt. That’s one thousand 1000W metal halide lights. Chew on that shit. I know it gives me pause. Back in 1966 when I bought my first $5 matchbox of “grass” from a black friend who stole it from his parents, little did I know where it would lead.
Back to these folks and their 75 plants. If they had a strain producing only one meager ounce per plant, that’d still be over 4 1/2 pounds per year with just one outdoor crop. That’s a lot of medication. Some strains produce a hell of a lot more than that. Surely, they were getting at least a couple of ounces per plant, probably ten pounds each year or more.
Not knowing anything about this story, and you don’t offer much above, my first question would be, how many individuals were those 10 pounds of pot medicating each year?
I believe there are people who truly benefit from medicinal marijuana and I’ve had no problem with the law. But I know for a fact that the law was extensively abused to grow pot for recreational purposes. I believe those who did so were no less guilty of violating drug laws than myself. My next question for you would be, do you agree with that? I ask that question because, after reading a few of your posts, it strikes me that you’re in the tank for anybody who claimed they grew pot for medicinal purposes, but you’d throw me under the bus because I didn’t play their bullshit game.
As we approach the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the GOP is boycotting Selma commemorations. They still want white power.
http://handbill.us/?p=45560�.....ent-276933
@6
By law, a collective garden could have up to 10 people, so legally they could’ve been using those plants to provide for up to that many. The plant limit is 45, so they were in clear violation of that statute. From my experience, many other medical patients who grow will violate that limit, for no other reason than having too much is better than having too little, and for many the economic incentives from selling your surplus are too great to pass up.
Yes, the law has often been abused by people trying to make profit, but that’s not what this prosecution was about. They had no evidence of any of the defendants selling it.
It’s absolutely true that they were growing more plants than allowed by the law. What’s the appropriate punishment for that? Probably a fine and the confiscation of the extra plants, not a decade-plus behind bars.
Actually, I’m a longtime recreational user who has steadfastly refused to indulge in the bullshit of calling myself a “medical” user and have never even considered trying to go to a doctor to get some phony authorization. But I strongly believe that the government has no business telling us whether or not we can grow or use this plant either for recreation, or for health reasons.
Ferguson’s municipal court clerk and two high-ranking Ferguson police officers have lost their jobs because of the racist e-mails uncovered by the DOJ investigation of Ferguson law enforcement.
http://handbill.us/?p=45638
Roger Rabbit Commentary: This should only be a beginning. America’s police departments need a top-to-bottom housecleaning. We need to run all the racists, power trippers, and killers out of law enforcement. If Michael Brown’s death leads to sweeping police reforms throughout the country, Obama should give him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and Congress should erect a bronze statute of Brown on the National Mall as an emblem of the thanks of a grateful nation. Now, I know our conservative friends will object to a statue of a criminal, but we do it all the time with statues of presidents and vice presidents.
And lest we forget, for all their shouting about “freedom!”, the track record of conservatives and Republicans on civil liberties, police abuse of citizens, and respecting other people’s constitutional rights stinks to high heaven.
Maybe there are some real humans in the US Attorney’s office but most of them come across as cruel parodies of self-righteous zealots advancing their careers over the bodies of small-time offenders. It’s one thing to uphold the law, it’s another to try and bury people in prison for the rest of their life for no good reason.
The defendants are lucky they were in eastern Washington in one respect. A King County jury would have been much more likely to convict on the gun count, not understanding the sentencing consequences but wanting to signal disapproval of gun.
Speaking of The Stranger – Dan Savage challenges Ben Carson: ‘Suck my d*ck’ and see if that makes you gay.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201.....ts/#disqus
Thanks for the comments everyone.
@1
In the interest of keeping these things manageable, I only focus on government violence or repression. But that Bangladesh murder was jarring and tragic. Would be curious to hear Darryl’s thoughts on it, he’s actually lived there.
“But I strongly believe that the government has no business telling us whether or not we can grow or use this plant either for recreation, or for health reasons.”
I agree. That’s why I’ willfully broke the law for decades. I don’t like the laws and I don’t like dealers. That’s why I helped people, set up systems for them, taught them how to grow, and done so they could avoid dealers. In defiance of law and the dealer culture, I gave excess pot away. I did these things because I believe in freedom.
“Probably a fine and the confiscation of the extra plants, not a decade-plus behind bars. ”
Those “extra plants” would have been enough to get me that decade-plus behind bars.
At the end of Octorber 2012, I was busted for possession of marijuana and paraphernalia. A week later the law was passed. A month after that, the charges were dropped. Without that law, it would have turned out a lot different. But I was willing to stand before a judge and say, “Yes I grow it and, yes, I smoke it. And I do so because I choose to live free.” And then I would accept the consequences of taking that stand.
I’ve never once read a post on Horsesass crying a river for a case like that, never a post about a one-light grower taking a stand for freedom and seeing their lives ruined. But enter medicinal marijuana, seemingly always surrounded by a haze of bullshit, and the Horsesass tear dam breaks open and another post appears.
I have sympathy for those people. Nobody deserves to be in prison because they smoke marijuana. But these posts do not help. At least, not with me. Just the opposite. For a few hours after reading it, I wanted those SOBs to get 10-20, no further evidence required. Hell, no evidence required. They’d serve time simply because I’m tired of posts like this. But they’d also serve time in my world, or at least get the scare of their lives as they’re getting now, because those who abuse the medicinal marijuana laws willfully put the future of those laws and access to medicinal marijuana for those who truly need it in jeopardy.
Off with their fucking heads! Oops, sorry. Back to sympathy mode.
A friend of mine moved to Arizona. Sigh! He’s looking for a good doctor, one who will prescribe the right medication for what ails him – a desire to get high and a lack of pot. I hope he finds one. Better for him to look for an obliging doctor than to be looking for a pusher.
Hi, Lee. I just wanted to thank you for linking to my piece and recognizing that this is a pattern—not a one-off—from Ormsby. When I wrote about this case at my last job (before it went to trial and, admittedly, before I had access to the government’s evidence), I highlighted a few other cases he has prosecuted or is prosecuting. Those included one with just 30 plants and another one that was a huge grow but could land a guy in his 20s in prison for the rest of his life because of three-strikes laws. (http://www.inlander.com/spokan.....id=2372831)
I’m sure these aren’t the last.