Posted on 01/02/2013 7:47:05 AM PST by Kaslin
Chris Williams, a Montana medical marijuana grower, faces at least five years in federal prison when he is sentenced on Feb. 1. The penalty seems unduly severe, especially because his business openly supplied marijuana to patients who were allowed to use it under state law.
Yet five years is a cakewalk compared to the sentence Williams originally faced, which would have kept the 38-year-old father behind bars for the rest of his life. The difference is due to an extremely unusual post-conviction agreement that highlights the enormous power prosecutors wield as a result of mandatory minimum sentences so grotesquely unjust that in this case even they had to admit it.
Of more than two dozen Montana medical marijuana providers who were arrested following federal raids in March 2011, Williams is the only one who insisted on his right to a trial. For that, he paid a steep price.
Tom Daubert, one of Williams' partners in Montana Cannabis, which had dispensaries in four cities, pleaded guilty to maintaining drug-involved premises and got five years of probation. Another partner, Chris Lindsey, took a similar deal and is expected to receive similar treatment. Both testified against Williams at his trial last September.
Williams' third partner, Richard Flor, pleaded guilty to the same charge but did not testify against anyone. Flor, a sickly 68-year-old suffering from multiple ailments, died four months into a five-year prison term.
For a while, it seemed that Williams, who rejected a plea deal because he did not think he had done anything wrong and because he wanted to challenge federal interference with Montana's medical marijuana law, also was destined to die in prison. Since marijuana is prohibited for all purposes under federal law, he was not allowed even to discuss the nature of his business in front of the jury, so his conviction on the four drug charges he faced, two of which carried five-year mandatory minimums, was more or less inevitable.
Stretching Williams' sentence from mindlessly harsh to mind-bogglingly draconian, each of those marijuana counts was tied to a charge of possessing a firearm during a drug trafficking offense, based on guns at the Helena grow operation that Williams supervised and at Flor's home in Miles City, which doubled as a dispensary. Federal law prescribes a five-year mandatory minimum for the first such offense and 25 years for each subsequent offense, with the sentences to run consecutively.
Consequently, when Williams was convicted on all eight counts, he faced a mandatory minimum sentence of 80 years for the gun charges alone, even though he never handled the firearms cited in his indictment, let alone hurt anyone with them. This result, which federal prosecutors easily could have avoided by bringing different charges, was so absurdly disproportionate that U.S. Attorney Michael Cotter offered Williams a deal.
Drop your appeal, Cotter said, and we'll drop enough charges so that you might serve "as little as 10 years." No dice, said Williams, still determined to challenge the Obama administration's assault on medical marijuana providers. But when Cotter came back with a better offer, involving a five-year mandatory minimum, Williams took it, having recognized the toll his legal struggle was taking on his 16-year-old son, a freshman at Montana State University.
"I think everyone in the federal system realizes that these mandatory minimum sentences are unjust," Williams tells me during a call from the Missoula County Detention Facility. But for prosecutors, they serve an important function: "They were basically leveraging this really extreme sentence against something that was so light because they wanted to force me into taking a plea deal." Nine out of 10 federal criminal cases end in guilty pleas.
The efficient transformation of defendants into prisoners cannot be the standard by which we assess our criminal justice system. If the possibility of sending someone like Chris Williams to prison for the rest of his life is so obviously unfair, why does the law allow it, let alone mandate it?
It’s a BS sentence all right ,but one he wouldn’t have gotten if he hadn’t grown the crap in the first place.
He knew he was shading the law ,and he chose to do it.
We will all be facing sentences when the Feds outlaw our guns. I doubt the jails will be able to hold us all.We all know it’s coming , are we prepared to pay the price?
When we agreed that the government could outlaw a vegetable, we certainly whetted their appetite to outlaw firearms. The goal of reasonable conservatives should be to limit overreach by governments. I see no purpose to marijuana prohibition. It doesn’t limit use very much and simply allows government to raid homes. I’ve been in jurisdictions here it’s essentially legal and not used it nor been tempted to; I suspect most folks are the same.
Where EXACTLY in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution is Congress given the specific, enumerated power to criminalize the growing of a plant?
Thanks in advance. I await the results of your diligent research.
I hope so; there is evil in this world and it must be fought -- sometimes even to bloodshed and death.
It’s a BS sentence all right ,but one he wouldn’t have gotten if he hadn’t grown the crap in the first place.
He knew he was shading the law, and he chose to do it.
There's a problem here; a fundamental problem: is a 'law' [statute, ordnance, rule, etc] which is unlawful legitimate?
First, let's start with the power to regulate the drug: the 18th amendment was required to enable the regulation of alcohol by the federal government -- by what power then is the regulation of drugs assumed? If it is the commerce clause, which has been cited in Gonzales, then all one needs to do to repudiate that is look at the commerce-clause: it is in a list which contains "foreign nations", the [attempted] enforcement of such regulations in a foreign country would correctly be construed both an act of war and the waging of war -- therefore, such regulation applies to the States is also an act of war and definitionaly satisfies the charge of Treason as laid out in the Constitution.
That's right, the War on Drugs is literally Treason.
Sure wouldn't want the jury to have ALL THE FACTS would we?
There is so Gotdamn much treason in our laws today it’s hard to pick which is worse, and then Obama wants a traitor as his Secretary of State.
We already have at least one on the Supreme Court, I speak of the Chief Justice who stabbed us all in the back and confirmed an Unconstitutional health care bill.
The courts have settled on the Commerce clause: "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;"
What they fail to realize is that by placing the 'several states' in a list including foreign nations and Indian tribes (which could be called native nations) there is a limit placed thereon: the federal government cannot legitimately assume 'regulation' to mean something that applied to foreign nations would constitute an act of war -- the enforcement of which would be waging war -- and therefore, being applied to the states, would constitute treason.
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
So, keep in mind that those advocating the War on Drugs are doing no less than advocating Treason.
The “War on Drugs” is total nonsense and needs to end.
Where EXACTLY in Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution is Congress given the specific, enumerated power to criminalize the growing of a plant?
Thanks in advance. I await the results of your diligent research.
Wait until the public service announcements emerge revealing govt research showing exposure to handguns leads to schizophrenia, cancer, induces white women to cohabit with black jazz musicians, grows breasts on men, and is a "gateway firearm" to hardcore automatic weapons.
The war on drugs is a a failed policy that caused a huge enroads into are constitutional rights.
While I agree that the decision was despicable, and horrid, I must also conclude that it is not Treason -- treason is very carefully and strictly defined in the Constitution -- though it may certainly be sedition.
You’re really tough aren’t you n00b?
I hope you pointed out to them that the clause is a statement of purpose not a grant of power - and that if it were the latter, every present and future program of the federal welfare state would be constitutional.
and what about life for illegal guns????
your ignorance is showing, newb..
I love it when faux conservatives like you show their true colors by pissing on the Constitution just as hard as any Leftist.
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