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?
That's incorrect. Pot was legalized, and that "whetted their appetite to outlaw firearms" (both in Colorado, one immediately after the other).
Rebel, folks. Pot is a tool of slavery. Get off of the stuff, and get off of the plantation. Let the bipartisan, socialist, political/regulator bosses, their rotten kids and their pocket authorities keep doing it without you.
I took you at your word based on what you wrote. Thanks for explaining that prudent people shouldn’t do that.
There is also nothing conservative about the abuse of federal power demonstrated here. The persons in question are obeying state law. The 10th Amendment delegates to the states powers to regulate such. The feds are usurping those powers. Whether or not you approve of the activity in question should be immaterial.
There is nothing ‘conservative’ about the the drug war either.
Seriously two posts with CAPS!!!!!!
And I am the dolt - hahahahahhahahahahahahah!!!!!!!!!
And there is nothing conservatives with people who make blanket and ignorant comments.
Paul Ryan Talks Medical Marijuana Legalization: ‘Let the States Decide’
i do not know what raich or winward is, please explain..
ginberg was in the MAJORITY, and did not write the opinion.. what she says verbally means nothing..
the 4 conservatives agreed with what roberts wrote pertaining to this.. i will hold that ginsberg was disgusted with this ruling, because that old communist knew the jig was up.. the silence from the libs on the court and in congress over this ruling speaks volumes to me..
your next statement is just plain false.. this bill was written years ago by people that are not quite as dumb as the limbaugh, hannity, levin people would lead you to believe, after all, they have been doing this for over 80 years and getting away with it..this bill passed due to prior case law and rulings, with this ruling it would never pass again...
I agree with your last statement, however, the courts can and have been packed with activists for over 80 years.. if the people continue to support and elect activists, you will get activist courts, this is what roberts was saying, and guess what just happened??????
this site is filled with conservatives, however, roberts is not a conservative. He is a federalist, and a member of the federalist society.
This ruling, unpopular as it was, was his best chance to get a majority/minority concurrance on strictly constitutional issues. His plan, as I see it, was that the people would not elect a hard core communist a second time.
The people failed. So called conservatives, evangelicals, and small l libertarians just stayed home in droves, giving us communist rule.
Roberts handed us, on a silver platter, the tools necessary to fight and defeat the socialist / communist on their own playing field.
We blew it...
You have not done your homework. First of all, that's 'Wickard'. These are 2 of the most important Commerce Clause cases of the last 100 years. They gave fedgov the green light to control health care, the environment, education etc.
Roberts ruling does not touch these cases or the precedents they set. May I ask where you got your info for your assertions? It sounds a lot like a column from Krauthammer on Roberts' 'Brilliant Tactical Maneuver'. He got his facts wrong.
I do not get my info or opinions from other so called commentators, I read and formulate my own..
I actually read the damn thing instead of letting some radio host tell me what to think
In the ruling, starting at page 21, Wickard is brought specifically into this...
Have you read the entire ruling?
by the way, i am not a lawyer, I am a human.. :)
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