216 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
216 lines
13 KiB
Plaintext
////// // //////
|
|
// // //
|
|
// // //////
|
|
// // //
|
|
// ////// //////
|
|
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|
|
The Lawless Society
|
|
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|
|
|
|
Welcome To The Lawless Society. Issue #13.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Greetings and salutations to all. The following file is an article ripped
|
|
from the pages of Penthouse, June 1993 issue. It deals with some pretty
|
|
astounding facts concerning the drug laws in this not-so-great land of ours,
|
|
laws concerning Marijuana in particular. I discussed a few of the thing I
|
|
read in this article with a few of the users in my local area and most of them
|
|
seemed quite interested and surprised by what I told them. Hopefully this
|
|
article will enlighten you a bit as to where the priorities in our country
|
|
lie. I'm also hoping it will bring TLS out of the slump it's been in lately
|
|
and get these files back to the informational texts that they were originally
|
|
intended to be.
|
|
|
|
Well here it is...If this article pisses you off the way it pisses me off,
|
|
I would most definitely encourage you to write to your congressman, governor,
|
|
or even slick Willie himself up there in the white house.
|
|
|
|
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|
|
Justice Goes To Pot
|
|
By
|
|
B.J. Oppenheimer
|
|
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|
|
|
|
|
|
As you read this, I'll probably be behind bars, serving a possible 5 to 40
|
|
years in federal prison with no hope of parole. My house will have been
|
|
confiscated by the government, and a fine of $340,000 will have been levied
|
|
against me.
|
|
I'm a nonviolent offender with no prior record. Married for 20 years with
|
|
2 small children, I'm a college graduate and published writer. I have a good
|
|
reputation in the community and have been involved in many charitable
|
|
organizations.
|
|
My only crime was planting a handful of marijuana seeds....
|
|
When I was first arrested for growing pot last August, I freely admitted
|
|
my guilt, fully expecting to receive the relatively minor sentence usually
|
|
meted out in marijuana cases. Until recently, marijuana use and cultivation
|
|
was decriminalized in many places, and even now it's only a misdemeanor in
|
|
most states (including my own). It usually warrants nothing more than a
|
|
suspended sentence and a small fine when prosecuted at the state level. Last
|
|
year a man in New York was convicted of growing 154 plants -- Many more than I
|
|
am charged with -- and his only punishment was a $100 fine -- Less than $1 per
|
|
plant.
|
|
My penalty probably would have been similar if I'd been tried in state
|
|
court. But more and more these cases are being turned over to the federal
|
|
government for prosecution, where penalties are much stiffer. What would've
|
|
earned me, at most, a fine and probation in state court carries a mandatory
|
|
minimum sentence of five years (and a maximum of 40) when prosecuted on the
|
|
federal level.
|
|
It's all because of recently enacted mandatory minimum-sentencing laws.
|
|
They impose statutory minimums for all drug crimes and prohibit the judge from
|
|
and exercise of judicial discretion in arriving at a sentence. The judge is
|
|
enjoined against taking into account things like my reputation in the
|
|
community, charitable works, or lack of prior record. Since there's no such
|
|
thing as parole in federal prison anymore, if I'm sentenced to five years
|
|
(assuming I lose my case), that's how many I'll serve.
|
|
Chalk it up to the government's "get tough on crime" policy: So what if a
|
|
few undeserving people serve inflated sentences? It's worth it to keep the
|
|
streets free from crime. The problem is, rather than being tough on crime,
|
|
the net effect of mandatory minimums is to be soft on crime, violent crime.
|
|
Since there are no mandatory minimum sentences for offenses like rape, child
|
|
molestation, murder, aggravated assault, et cetera, violent criminals are
|
|
often released early to make room for nonviolent first offenders like me. The
|
|
average murderer now serves only six and a half years in jail (versus the five
|
|
year MINIMUM I'll serve).
|
|
But if our jail terms are similar, there's one important difference
|
|
between the murderer and me: He doesn't lose his house.
|
|
Even though my house was bought with legitimate earnings, and there was no
|
|
marijuana grown on my property, it was confiscated by the police shortly after
|
|
I was arrested. The primary reason given was that fertilizer was found in my
|
|
basement. My house was thus considered a "facilitator" of the crime, which
|
|
justified it's forfeiture. When I learned that the government had seized my
|
|
property on such flimsy pretenses, it infuriated me, but what bothered me even
|
|
more was that they did it without even trying me first.
|
|
Since the passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act of 1984, property
|
|
can be seized if one is merely SUSPECTED of using it in a crime. It's not
|
|
even necessary to be charged, much less convicted. It's up to the individual
|
|
to prove that he didn't use it illegally. And since this is a civil
|
|
forfeiture, and public defenders are only provided in criminal cases, he's
|
|
forced to foot the bill for a lawyer. Often he must put up a bond, sometimes
|
|
as much as $10,000, which usually makes fighting the forfeiture
|
|
cost-prohibitive.
|
|
In the majority of cases, the government simply steps in and take the
|
|
property without even bothering to charge anyone with a crime, and there's not
|
|
a thing to be done about it. Since 1984 almost two and a half billion dollars
|
|
in property has been seized this way.
|
|
There's another difference between the murderer and me. He isn't subject
|
|
to penalties for tax-stamp violation. Even though marijuana is illegal, in
|
|
many states you're required by law to buy tax stamps for its cultivation, at a
|
|
cost of $1000 per plant, something that's virtually impossible to do without
|
|
incriminating yourself. Yet even if you are somehow able to purchase the
|
|
stamps without getting arrested but don't actually affix the stamps to the
|
|
plants, in the wind and rain, you're still liable for a heavy fine. And they
|
|
don't just count the living, growing plants. They count the dead ones and
|
|
even the cutoff stems from plants that were thinned from the garden and thrown
|
|
away earlier. Even though the total weight of marijuana in my case was under
|
|
five pounds, with all these other factors added in, the fine was $340,000.
|
|
When I asked my lawyer how the government expected me to pay such an
|
|
astronomical fine, he said, "They don't. They want to wipe out your assets.
|
|
Then when, and if, you get out of jail, they intend to garnish your wages for
|
|
the rest. Of course, by that time there'll be all that interest..."
|
|
But the fine is just part of my penalty for tax stamp violation. It also
|
|
carries criminal (versus civil) penalties of up to five years in state prison.
|
|
That's on top of the 5 to 40 years I'll already be serving in federal prison.
|
|
All for the crime of putting a handful of marijuana seeds in the ground.
|
|
If this seems like a violation of the 8th Amendment ("Let the punishment
|
|
fit the crime"), it's not the only time the constitution's been ignored when
|
|
it comes to drug law. Confiscation of property without due process is a
|
|
violation of the 5th amendment, as is the imprisonment of drug offenders twice
|
|
(at the state and federal levels) for the same crime. The self-incriminatory
|
|
tax-stamp requirement is also a violation of the 5th amendment. Police can
|
|
now obtain search warrants based on anonymous tips, which is a violation of
|
|
the 4th amendment. And a defense attorney's legal fees can be seized in drug
|
|
cases, a violation of the 6th amendment.
|
|
But if drug laws are chipping away at the constitution, they're wreaking
|
|
havoc on our prison system. Federal prisons are currently at 146 percent of
|
|
capacity, and drug offenders serving mandatory minimum sentences make up 57
|
|
percent of the population (more than half had no prior arrests). At the
|
|
current rate of incarceration, nearly 70 percent of all federal inmates will
|
|
be drug offenders serving mandatory minimums by 1995.
|
|
The United States now imprisons more of its citizens per capita than any
|
|
other country in the world (455 per 100,000 people). That's compared to the
|
|
No. 2 country, South Africa, with 311 per 100,000.
|
|
As stated earlier, violent offenders must often be granted early release
|
|
to make room for this influx. In a recent four year period in Florida, more
|
|
than 130,000 inmates (including muggers, armed robbers, et cetera) were
|
|
released, and one out of three went on to commit new crimes. The FBI reports
|
|
that the rate of violent crimes in America increased by 24 percent from 1987
|
|
to 1991, and many people feel that mandatory minimums have a lot to do with
|
|
it.
|
|
But apart from the hypothetical increase in violent crime due to mandatory
|
|
minimums, there's the undeniable increase in tax payer costs. The National
|
|
Institute of Corrections estimates that in 1992 the United States built
|
|
facilities for 2,000 cells (at a cost of $100 million) PER WEEK to accommodate
|
|
the exploding prison population -- and construction costs were only part of
|
|
the total. It's been estimated that in five years the financial obligations
|
|
incurred by U.S. corrections could be double the current national deficit. On
|
|
top of that it costs and average of $20,000 a year to house, clothe, feed and
|
|
guard each of the 81,426 federal prisoners. And this is say nothing of the
|
|
increased cost of social services for inmates' families, which were previously
|
|
being provided for by the inmates themselves.
|
|
Over 30 million Americans regularly smoke marijuana, so it's not
|
|
surprising that a lot of people in this country feel that it should be
|
|
decriminalized. I'm sure that many people would disagree, but I doubt they'd
|
|
dispute the fact that the penalties for marijuana use are not only unjust and
|
|
illogical, an unconscionable waste of tax payer dollars. With violent crime
|
|
making us ALL live like prisoners, it's time to stop freeing murderers to make
|
|
room for marijuana users.
|
|
|
|
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|
|
|
|
Well there ya go...Whether you are for or against the use of drugs like
|
|
marijuana, I think it is quite obvious that the government has got it's
|
|
priorities way the hell out of whack. Even if you think all drug
|
|
users/dealers should be put away, I hope you at least take a good hard look at
|
|
just how many constitutional rights are being infringed upon by some of these
|
|
laws.
|
|
The mere fact that the government makes pot illegal, yet expects you to
|
|
pay taxes on it if you're going to use it should tell you something. What
|
|
kind of government preaches to it's people about the evils of something like
|
|
drugs, but then wants to take a piece of profits made from their use?
|
|
|
|
Again...I strongly urge you to do something, anything, even if it's just
|
|
in you town about laws like these. Being for or against drugs is not the
|
|
issue, the issue is the way our government treats it's people! This
|
|
government is supposed to be BY the people FOR the people, and I can guarantee
|
|
you that not one vote was held outside of congress before these laws were
|
|
passed.
|
|
|
|
I myself was the victim of a mandatory minimum sentence. In the state of
|
|
New Jersey where I live was I was sentenced to a $350 fine, 1 year drivers
|
|
license suspension, and 60 hours of community service, all for not having
|
|
insurance on my car simply because I was out of work and couldn't afford the
|
|
$1000+ dollars per year (on a 1966 car!) On top of that I am forced to pay a
|
|
$250 surcharge each year for then next 3 years on my insurance or my license
|
|
will be suspended indefinitely. This sentence is DOUBLE what I would have
|
|
gotten if I had been driving drunk. Now you tell me who's more dangerous, me
|
|
or the drunk driver? I actually worked with a man who was convicted of drunk
|
|
driving on his THIRD offense and received lower penalties than I did for my
|
|
first offense on the insurance.
|
|
|
|
Do something about the way our country is being run! Things like this
|
|
will effect us all eventually!
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
////// // //////
|
|
// // //
|
|
// // //////
|
|
// // //
|
|
// ////// //////
|
|
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|
|
The Lawless Society
|
|
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
|
|
|
|
|
|
-Flammable Fuzzball
|
|
|
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|
|
Cyber/Chat (40 Lines) (908)506-0610
|
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|
|
Phoenix Modernz Systems (TANJ Headquarters) (908)830-TANJ
|
|
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
|