In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/don-nord.html

On October 14, 2003, 57-year-old Don Nord was arrested when a DEA task force raided his Hayden, Colorado, home and seized three marijuana plants, some loose marijuana, pipes, and growing equipment.

Nord is a disabled, wheelchair-bound, state-registered medical marijuana patient. He has battled kidney cancer, diabetes, lung disease, a neck injury, and other conditions, and grew his own marijuana out of medical and financial necessity.

Though Colorado allows seriously ill people to use marijuana with a doctor’s approval, DEA agents follow federal law, which forbids the use of marijuana for any purpose. The task force that raided Nord’s house was composed of a DEA agent and eight county law enforcement officers deputized by the DEA to enforce federal law.

A county judge dismissed the charges against Nord in November 2003, and ordered the task force agents to return his marijuana and equipment. The officers returned his growing equipment the following month, but refused to return his marijuana or pipes.

In January 2004, the officers were held in contempt of court, but the U.S. attorney for Colorado then transferred the case to a U.S. district court. In July 2005, the court found that the agents are immune from state prosecution and therefore are not required to return the marijuana and pipes that they confiscated from Nord.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/the-naulls-family.html

A church-going family man who used medical marijuana to ease chronic pain from injuries sustained in a 2001 car accident, Ronald Naulls already had two successful careers – one as an IT consultant and another in real estate – when he established the Healing Nations Collective in Corona in 2006 to save fellow patients the hours-long drive to Los Angeles for medicine.

Healing Nations was widely considered a model medical marijuana collective. It followed state and local law. It maintained strict dress codes and professional standards for employees. It paid state taxes – amounting to several hundred thousand dollars a year – even when loose tax regulations allowed other dispensaries to slip through the cracks. Proceeds from the dispensary went to local and national cancer organizations.

Nevertheless, at 5:50 a.m., July 17, 2007, DEA agents invaded the Naulls family’s home and the collective. Naulls was arrested and now faces federal prosecution for distribution of medical marijuana.

County child protective services also took Naulls’ three daughters, ages 1, 3, and 5, and charged him and his wife with child endangerment, even though they weren’t accused of breaking any state laws. The children were put in foster care for nearly a month before they were returned to their parents.

Because the DEA seized all of their property, assets, and accounts, the Naulls family has no way to properly defend themselves against the state and federal charges they face. Those wishing to contribute to the family’s legal defense fund can do so here.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/suzanne-pfeil.html

Suzanne Pfeil was asleep in her assisted living hospice, the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana (WAMM), when more than 20 armed federal agents stormed into the facility and held an assault rifle to her head.

Pfeil suffers from post-polio syndrome and is paraplegic. The police officers ordered her to stand, despite the fact that her leg braces and crutches were in plain view. Pfeil tried to explain that she couldn’t stand, but the agents handcuffed her behind her back and left her on the bed for several hours.

WAMM was well-known as a medical marijuana dispensary and hospice that strictly abided by California state laws regarding medical marijuana. Since the raid on WAMM, 33 patients have died.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/donald-scott.html

On the morning of October 2, 1992, a group of 30 law enforcement officers served a marijuana search warrant to Donald Scott at his Malibu, California ranch. While serving the warrant to Scott and his wife, Frances Plante, deputies shot Scott three times, killing him instantly. No marijuana was found on the property.

In September 1992, a confidential informant told Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Deputy Gary Spencer that between 3,000 and 4,000 marijuana plants were being grown on Scott’s 200-acre ranch, which was nearly surrounded by state and federal parkland. However, subsequent visits by officials from park rangers, the fish and game service, and law enforcement agents conducting late-night ground surveillance revealed no marijuana on the property. Aerial surveillance by the California Air National Guard yielded inconclusive results.

Finally, only after flying over the property several times, a DEA agent spotted what he thought may have been, at most, 50 marijuana plants. The DEA agent — who did not take pictures or use binoculars during his surveillance — was unwilling to let his observations form the basis of a search warrant without corroboration by another witness. Deputy Spencer told the DEA agent that another confidential informant corroborated his findings, and the agent signed an affadavit that was later used to obtain a search warrant.

The confidential informant later denied having any such conversation with Spencer. In addition, the request for a search warrant made no mention of the officials who saw no marijuana when visiting the property.

On October 2, a group of 30 officers — including members of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, Los Angeles Police Department canine unit, National Guard, National Park Service, U.S. Forest Service, California Bureau of Narcotic Enforcement, and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration — gathered at the edge of Scott’s ranch and prepared to serve the search warrant. Two of the Sheriff’s Department officers were members of the asset forfeiture unit, and researchers from the Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena were there as well, possibly interested in the use of Scott’s ranch in connection with missile testing over the Pacific Ocean.

After pounding on the door and calling out, “Sheriff’s department. We have a search warrant. Open the door,” Spencer entered Scott’s house. Once inside, officers seized Plante. At this point, the story has conflicting versions. Officers swear that Plante was taken outside before the fatal shooting, but Plante says she was in the room when Scott was killed.

Regardless, at some point Scott faced Spencer and another deputy, holding a gun in front of him and pointed upward. The deputies told Scott several times to put his gun down; as he was lowering it, Spencer and the other deputy shot Scott a total of three times. It is unclear if Scott was lowering his weapon to aim at the deputies or if he was going to put it on the ground.

After the fatal shooting, Ventura County District Attorney Michael Bradbury investigated the incident. (Scott’s ranch was technically in Ventura County.) Bradbury found that Spencer should never have been granted a search warrant because there was no probable cause to search Scott’s property. Controversially, Bradbury also found that the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department may have been motivated to raid the multi-million-dollar property in order to seize it, as evidenced by the presence of asset forfeiture officers and federal defense researchers at the time of the raid.

Ironically, Frances Plante told Bradbury that Scott was against all drugs and that she had never seen him use marijuana. In January 2000, Plante won a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit against the federal government and Los Angeles County.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/tyrone-brown.html

Tyrone Brown served 17 years of a life sentence for testing positive for marijuana while on probation for a $2 stickup committed when he was 17.

No one involved was ever able to explain the severe penalty. Brown’s victim in the holdup said he rarely thought about the incident, but pointed out that he was unharmed, that Brown returned the wallet to him after removing the $2, and that police apprehended Brown and recovered the money that same evening. Neither Brown’s attorney in the trial nor the court-appointed lawyer who handled his appeal said they could even remember the case.

Keith Dean, the judge who sentenced Brown to life for the failed drug test, also said he didn’t recall the case when first asked about it. Legal experts say the legal system in Texas, where the incident took place, affords judges wide latitude in sentencing and requires little accountability.

Dean, who lost his bid for reelection in the 2006 midterms after nearly 20 years on the bench, came under national scrutiny after ABC’s news magazine “20/20″ aired a story contrasting Brown’s sentence with that of another probation violator. Alex Wood, the son of a prominent Waco pastor, repeatedly failed the drug tests required by his probation for a murder conviction, testing positive for cocaine, among other substances. Not only did Dean decline to impose any prison sentence, he eventually allowed Wood “postcard probation,” which requires only that Wood send a postcard each year giving his current address.

As a result of the story and the public outcry that followed, Brown received a “conditional pardon” — meaning he would still be subject to supervision — from Gov. Rick Perry and was released from prison March 15, 2007.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/esequiel-hernandez.html

On May 20, 1997, 18-year-old Esequiel Hernandez came home from school and hiked onto his family’s isolated property on the Texas-Mexico border to graze his herd of 45 goats. Hernandez, a high-school student with no criminal record, dreamt of becoming a U.S. Marine or park ranger. Like most of the other residents of tiny Redford, Texas, Hernandez frequently carried a gun, occasionally firing it into the air to scare off animals that bothered his goats.

Unbeknownst to Hernandez or the 90 other residents of his town, U.S. Marines were stationed along the town’s border to patrol for drug smugglers from Mexico. As he followed his flock of goats into the desert that day, Hernandez saw something move in the distance. Thinking it was wild dogs or a snake, he fired two shots into the air with his World War I-era shotgun. As he prepared to shoot again, the Marines — who, in camouflage, were likely the source of movement — shot Hernandez in the back. They waited more than 20 minutes to call for medical assistance, and Hernandez bled to death within sight of the house he grew up in.

Hernandez was the first U.S. civilian to be killed by U.S. armed forces since the 1970 political protests at Kent State University in Ohio. The practice of sending troops to patrol U.S. property for drug smugglers escalated in the ’80s when President Reagan loosened the Posse Comitatus Act, which had prevented the practice. The U.S. government later settled with the Hernandez family for $1.9 million, and in 1999, the Pentagon announced that U.S. armed forces would no longer routinely patrol the U.S.-Mexico border for drugs.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/unnamed-florida-college-student.html

On June 6, 2003, a 19-year-old Alachua County, Florida, college student was raped by his cellmate as he served the first of four weekend sentences for delivering marijuana, a felony offense. (The student’s name has not been released.) He had been placed in a cell with a violent offender who had been in the county jail for 11 months awaiting trial on sexual battery charges.

The two men were sharing a cell because the jail was overcrowded. Typically, inmates are classified according to offense, criminal history, gender, and/or age, among other factors, when assigned to their cells. Because certain offenders need to be isolated for safety reasons, a jail’s capacity is in reality much lower than the number of beds it houses.

While the Alachua County jail could theoretically hold 920 inmates, in reality it could only accommodate an average of 782 inmates on any given day because of the need to separate certain offenders. On the day the college student was raped, the jail contained 918 inmates, far exceeding capacity. Such overcrowding had been typical in the jail since 1998.

Though the two men would normally have been separated, they were grouped together because delivering marijuana and sexual battery are both considered felonies. According to Alachua County Sheriff’s Sergeant Jim Troiano, “If there was space available, absolutely we would rather keep the weekenders in a pre-designated area. But because we don’t have much space available we have to do with circumstances on hand.”

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/alberta-spruill.html

On May 16, 2003, 57-year-old Alberta Spruill died of a heart attack shortly after police mistakenly raided her Harlem, New York, apartment for drugs. The office of the city medical examiner attributed her death to “the stress and the fear that she experienced” during the raid.

The warrant for the raid was issued on the basis of a tip from a confidential informant, who told police that a drug dealer lived on the 9th floor of Spruill’s building but had stashed guns and drugs in an apartment on the 6th floor, where Spruill lived.

Because the warrant was “no-knock,” a group of 12 armed police officers used a battering ram to topple Spruill’s door at 6:10 a.m., just as the longtime city employee was preparing to go to work. Officers detonated a stun grenade, intended to disorient anyone inside the apartment. The explosion shattered a glass-top table.

A neighbor described the raid: “I heard the boom. Police shouted, ‘Get down!’ The lady was screaming. They invaded her apartment. In the hall, she was screaming, ‘I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!’ She was coughing.”

Spruill was briefly handcuffed before police realized they had the wrong apartment. She refused medical attention, despite feeling chest pains, but an ambulance was summoned anyway. On the way to a hospital, Spruill went into cardiac arrest and was declared dead at 7:50 a.m., less than two hours after the raid.

The office of New York City’s medical examiner ruled Spruill’s death a homicide because it was caused by another person, and that the “stress and the fear that she experienced” during the raid had caused her death.

Spruill’s death prompted civil rights activist Al Sharpton to call for an independent investigation of the botched police raid. The city eventually modified its regulations governing the use of confidential informants and no-knock warrants, though a temporary moratorium on the use of stun grenades was lifted within just days of Spruill’s death. Subsequent city council hearings revealed dozens of similar incidents where completely innocent people were mistakenly raided by police.

New York City eventually settled a lawsuit with Spruill’s family for $1.6 million.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/anthony-diotaiuto.html

Early on the morning of August 5, 2005, 23-year-old Anthony Diotaiuto returned home from his job as a bartender. Diotaiuto, a regular churchgoer, also worked as a DJ to support himself and his mother, and he studied restaurant management part-time at a local community college. He was planning his first vacation, which was to include a visit to his grandmother. Diotaiuto had no criminal record other than a marijuana possession arrest at age 16.

Two days earlier, Sunrise, Florida, police obtained a search warrant for Diotaiuto’s home, based on a previous tip from a confidential informant that marijuana and cocaine were sold there. Police conducted surveillance of the Diotaiuto residence before staging the raid, but the warrant did not require Diotaiuto to be home at the time of the search.

At 6:15 a.m., an armed SWAT team entered Diotaiuto’s home. A neighbor reported hearing a bang and seeing a flash but never hearing officers say, “Police!” as they entered the house nor pounding on the front door.

Diotaiuto, who was in the living room when the SWAT team entered, ran to his bedroom and grabbed a loaded handgun, for which he held a permit. He was then shot in the head, chest, torso, and limbs, a total of 10 times.

Police found a total of 30.2 grams (a little over an ounce) of marijuana and marijuana residue in various locations throughout the household, as well several packs of rolling paper and a digital scale. Possession of over 20 grams is considered a felony under Florida law, resulting in fines of up to $5,000 and up to five years’ imprisonment.

In observance of 420, I’m going to be gone all day. I’ll probably be protesting the crazy marijuana laws on Capital Hill in Denver. Let’s take a look at a victim of the so called “War On Drugs”. Visit MPP.org for more information.

Source For This Post: http://www.mpp.org/victims/gary-silva.html

Gary Silva uses medical marijuana to alleviate pain from degenerative disk disease and nerve damage. Gary was asleep in his Sky Valley, California home, when the police came to the door. When Gary, who cultivated marijuana in his home on behalf of his patients’ collective, went to undo the deadbolt, DEA agents kicked in the door. The force sent Gary sprawling to the floor, dislocating his shoulder and causing lacerations to his face. Gary had to go to the emergency room.

The DEA agents also pointed a gun at Gary’s wife and daughter, confiscated 80 plants, some dry medicine, and a few old guns.