Article

2019-10-16 -Lurid Crime Tales-

A New Orleans man faced a felony marijuana charge, but too many potential jurors didn't think it should be illegal

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Posted by DarthVader 2019-10-16 09:28|| || Front Page|| [11126 views ] Top

#1 Ultimately, that's why we have jury trials - to determine if government is moving beyond community acceptance (or v.v.) Seems to me this was a reasonable resolution - reduced from felony charge in return for a plea rather than continue the trial.

Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-16 09:38|| 2019-10-16 09:38|| Front Page Top

#2 Jury nullification is supposed to be reserved for the most extreme cases. And yet here it is appearing in ordinary ones.

We lost the drug war. Time to admit it and legalize. This is going to hurt a lot of industries: law enforcement, the courts, prisons, and cities that make a lot of money from fines and confiscations. It's a big shit sandwich and we're all going to have to take a bite.

Posted by Herb McCoy 2019-10-16 10:27|| 2019-10-16 10:27|| Front Page Top

#3 We already have nullification at the pre-arrest stage when members of certain communities decide "don't snitch" is the community "standard." Of course, some of that is people seeing retribution visited on those who do come forward and deciding they don't want to sign up for that. It's a mixed bag.

The court system, law enforcement and corrections are not supposed to be revenue-generating "industries," but all too often they are. That creates a backlash also.

Posted by M. Murcek 2019-10-16 10:38|| 2019-10-16 10:38|| Front Page Top

#4 I was a part of a "mock" trial one time with real attorneys, a real judge and a jury. The jury deliberations were videoed and fed back to the audience. The case was a real adjudicated case from out West; Colorado as I recall. The case had to do with a fatal highway accident where there was marijuana involvement. Jury deliberations were a bit unsettling and seemed to have little to do with the law. One jury member said: "I've driven stoned many times and never had any problems."

Posted by JohnQC 2019-10-16 10:47|| 2019-10-16 10:47|| Front Page Top

#5 "I've driven stoned many times and never had any problems."

It's the cases of "Plenty of harm / culpability but still no foul" that certainly grate.

Posted by M. Murcek 2019-10-16 10:50|| 2019-10-16 10:50|| Front Page Top

#6 We lost the drug war. Time to admit it and legalize.

Make it illegal to use drugs produced by or profiting jihadis, and I might be willing to discuss it. But as it stands, anything trafficked from abroad, much of the fake V1agra, cross-state cigarettes, and credit card identity theft among so much else, seems to be sold to fund various jihadi groups.

Posted by trailing wife 2019-10-16 13:31|| 2019-10-16 13:31|| Front Page Top

#7 The problem is, people are bad enough with distracted driving when otherwise not impaired. To expand on that, do you want your kids' school bus driver working while high? Your airplane pilot? Your healthcare professionals? Hell, for that matter, your accountant? Yes, yes, all those things already happen now. They should only and always be discouraged.

If people want to be zoned out, sure, why not. Create GonzoLand, with a high fence around it. Go in and knock yourself out, but there only, not out wherever putting the entire public at risk.

As for "taking the monetary incentive out of the drug trade," market supply and demand dynamics say you might take away the outrageous black-market profits but where supply meets demand, money will always change hands.

Posted by M. Murcek 2019-10-16 14:34|| 2019-10-16 14:34|| Front Page Top

#8 I believe there should be an aggressive and wide reaching campaign against drugs in general. Route it through professional advertisers, hollywood. Project the State's interest in promoting athletics. Give health freak youtubers and local contestants cash prizes, promote and attach greater prominence to gymnastics, running, stuff like that. Martial arts, boxing, tricking... all these require better core health that a weed smoking pansy teenager can't summon. Highlight the differences in the ultimate life destinations of people with these habits. A media and advertising blitz. Give tax waivers and grants to celebrities to promote and weave these themes into their la-la land stuff.

Marijuana, peyote, mushrooms are all gateway stuff for people with no anchor and no direction. With parents reduced to the butlers they've become, a serious threat to the coming generations if made completely legal and as abundant as candy. Coupled with the education policies which are shit, and the SJW syllabi of institutions - this is a recipe for slow implosion and death of the country.

Posted by Dron66046 2019-10-16 15:02|| 2019-10-16 15:02|| Front Page Top

#9 I believe you have a right to get as high as you want, however you want. I also believe you do not have a right to impact ME while doing so - so no driving, piloting planes, operating cranes, doing brain surgery etc. while high. The problem is how to enforce the second part without impacting the first.

Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-16 16:09|| 2019-10-16 16:09|| Front Page Top

#10 You want fentanyl over the counter? Oxy? Crack? Meth? Be prepared to watch your children die.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2019-10-16 16:11|| 2019-10-16 16:11|| Front Page Top

#11 No, not really, Abu, but I don't see any effective way to stop them if they really want to go that route.

Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-16 16:14|| 2019-10-16 16:14|| Front Page Top

#12 It shouldn't be so hard to secure the border and put a stop to a lot of this nonsense. But if that cartel money has corrupted the Mexican government, you must wonder why Nancy Pelosi and some of her cohorts are so adamant about refusing to secure the border. Follow the money. Or, would you prefer to throw in the towel? Surrender in this war and you will live with the corruption and the rot and the death of a civilization.

Posted by Abu Uluque 2019-10-16 16:15|| 2019-10-16 16:15|| Front Page Top

#13 Abu, we've tried to cut off the pipeline for nearly 100 years, for both drugs and alcohol, and all we seem to do is enrich the bad guys - and make them even badder. (And that doesn't even consider the internal meth 'labs' that now make it hard for me to get effective decongestants for my danged allergies.) No, my suggestion is to take unused military bases, admit all those who want to destroy themselves with drugs and let them have at the piles of confiscated drugs. Provide mental health and drug treatment centers at the exit for those who decide they want to exit alive.

Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-16 16:31|| 2019-10-16 16:31|| Front Page Top

#14 Make it illegal to use drugs produced by or profiting jihadis, and I might be willing to discuss it.

When it becomes legal, the massive profits disappear. You DO know that the only reason drugs are so profitable is that they're illegal, right? Otherwise you might as well try to make money trafficking ballpoint pens or frozen concentrated orange juice. And we call those traffickers "import-export companies".

ANY illegal good has a huge premium attached to it. It happened during Prohibition. Time to repeal our generation's Volstead Act and regulate drugs as a commodity. It'll cut the legs out from under the jihadis to have their revenue removed like this.

Posted by Herb McCoy 2019-10-16 16:31|| 2019-10-16 16:31|| Front Page Top

#15 Egad, I am in the same group as Herb. Oh well.

Posted by Glenmore 2019-10-16 16:38|| 2019-10-16 16:38|| Front Page Top

#16 Marijuana, peyote, mushrooms are all gateway stuff for people with no anchor and no direction.

So? They have no direction with or without the drugs. The drugs don't cause it. You've got the cause and effect backwards. It's the directionless people who are attracted to psychedelics.

"There's this idea that somehow smoking pot makes you lazy but I really believe that it's just lazy people love to smoke pot."

-- David Bienenstock, High Times Editor

do you want your kids' school bus driver working while high? Your airplane pilot? Your healthcare professionals?

Obviously not and literally nobody is arguing this point.

You want fentanyl over the counter? Oxy? Crack? Meth? Be prepared to watch your children die.

They are already dying. Like flies, they are. The harm the drugs being illegal does is more harm than having them legal. We can get rid of meth labs, crack houses, off-limits grow operations in national forests, Mexican drug cartels and all sorts of accessory crimes that are committed in the service of these awful things.

I get where the anti-drug people are coming from. But just like in the Syria situation, you're not seeing the whole picture. You've got to go all the way back to the beginning and completely rethink things. What we have now isn't working, and it can never work. It's been tried all sorts of ways, and has failed every time. You don't reinforce failure, you reinforce success. Time to reboot.

Consider a drug addict who breaks into a row of parked cars, doing $5000 damage to steal $500 worth of car stereos which he sells for $50 which is enough to buy drugs for 2 1/2 days. Wouldn't it be better for the government to produce the drugs at a cost of $5 and just give them to him? Wouldn't everyone involved be better off under this situation?

And suppose the cops catch him and he goes to jail for 7 years. We pay the cost of a fine college education every year to keep him incarcerated. Hurts him, hurts us. Isn't it cheaper and better for everyone just to hand him a Lincoln every 2 1/2 days?

I understand why drugs are bad. They rob you of your free will. But robbing you of your free will AND throwing you in prison for 13 years is worse.

Posted by Herb McCoy 2019-10-16 16:54|| 2019-10-16 16:54|| Front Page Top

#17 But if that cartel money has corrupted the Mexican government,

Legalize drugs and you have just put the cartels out of business overnight. Suddenly the Mexican government is a whole lot less corrupt.

Follow the money.

A sound principle.

Or, would you prefer to throw in the towel? Surrender in this war and you will live with the corruption and the rot and the death of a civilization.

The drug war is what is corrupting and rotting our civilization. Let us destroy this foul menace root and branch.

Posted by Herb McCoy 2019-10-16 17:17|| 2019-10-16 17:17|| Front Page Top

#18 I guess if you want to group marijuana in with crack,oxy,heroin and the like,why stop there.....lets just call alcohol a gateway drug too. So lets start up prohibition again......wait no, because now you're barking too close to your tree? I've smoked weed for 30 plus years,with many many many friends quit 13 years ago only because of drug testing at the new job. The only shit that it's a gateway to is the fridge and a nice nap.

Posted by bbrewer126 2019-10-16 21:48|| 2019-10-16 21:48|| Front Page Top

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