Marc Emery agrees to five years in Canadian prison

[amsterdamage]

I'm speechless at the power of the prohibitionists! Five years is way better than life, but for the "crime" of selling seeds it's five years too much!!

Marc Emery, Vancouver's self-styled Prince of Pot, has tentatively agreed to a five-year prison term in a plea bargain over U.S. money laundering and marijuana seed-selling charges.

Facing an extradition hearing Jan. 21 and the all-but-certain prospect of delivery to American authorities, Emery has cut a deal with U.S. prosecutors to serve his sentence in Canada. He also hopes it will save his two co-accused - Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams, who were his lieutenants for so much of the past decade. The three were arrested in August 2005 at the request of the United States and charged even though none had ventured south of the border. Since then, they have been awaiting the extradition hearing. With the proceedings about to begin, Emery says his lawyer brokered the best deal possible.


If accepted by the courts in both countries, Emery said he will serve the full term and not be eligible for Canada's lenient get-out-of-jail-early rules. "I'm going to do more time than many violent, repeat offenders," he complained. "There isn't a single victim in my case, no one who can stand up and say, 'I was hurt by Marc Emery.' No one."


He's right. Whatever else you may think of Emery - and he grates on many people, what is happening here is a travesty of justice. Emery's case mocks our independence as a country. Prosecutors in Canada have not enforced the law against selling pot seeds and all you need do is walk along Hastings Street between Homer and Cambie for proof.
There are numerous stores selling seeds and products for producing cannabis. Around the corner, you'll find more seed stores. You'll find the same shops in Toronto and in other major Canadian cities.


The last time Emery was convicted in Canada of selling pot seeds, back in 1998, he was given a $2,000 fine. Emery has flouted the law for more than a decade and every year he sends his seed catalogue to politicians of every stripe.


He has run in federal, provincial and civic elections promoting his pro-cannabis platform. He has championed legal marijuana at parliamentary hearings, on national television, at celebrity conferences, in his own magazine, Cannabis Culture, and on his own Internet channel, Pot TV.


Health Canada even recommended medical marijuana patients buy their seeds from Emery. From 1998 until his arrest, Emery even paid provincial and federal taxes as a "marijuana seed vendor" totalling nearly $600,000. He is being hounded because of his success. The political landscape has changed dramatically as a result of Emery's politicking for cannabis. Emery challenged a law he disagrees with using exactly the non-violent, democratic processes we urge our children to embrace and of which we are so proud.


But along the way he has angered the anti-drug law-enforcement community - the same gang that insists we must continue an expensive War on Drugs that has failed miserably for more than a quarter century and does more harm than good.


Canadian police grew so frustrated that neither prosecutors nor the courts would lock up Emery and throw away the key, they urged their U.S. counterparts to do the dirty work. And that's what's wrong. Emery is being handed over to a foreign government for an activity we are loath to prosecute because we don't think it's a major problem. His two associates were charged only as a way of blackmailing him into copping a plea.
It's a scandal.


Emery is being made a scapegoat for an anti-cannabis criminal law that is a monumental failure. In spite of all our pricey efforts during the last 40 years, and all the demonization of marijuana, there is more pot on our streets, more people smoking dope and more damage being done to our communities as a result of the prohibition.
There is a better way and every study from the 1970s Le Dain Commission onward has urged change and legalization.


Regardless of what you think of Emery, he should not be facing an unconscionably long jail term for a victimless, non-violent crime that generates a shrug in his own country. Emery is facing more jail time than corporate criminals who defrauded widows and orphans and longer incarceration than violent offenders who have left their victims dead or in wheelchairs. And while he has long seemed to court martyrdom, Emery is by no means sanguine about what is happening. He is angry at local lawyers for failing to come up with a viable defence.


"They had two years and $90,000 and they came up with nothing," he fumed. "John Conroy called me up and said 'take the deal - Michelle will die in jail. Michelle will die in jail!' What can I say to that?"


Rainey, who has a medical exemption to smoke marijuana, has Crohn's disease. Incarceration in the U.S. would deprive her of her medicine, and she fears it could lead to her death. "It's an ugly situation but Marc expects miracles," Kirk Tousaw, one of the lawyers involved, told me. "There aren't any here."


He's right. Our extradition law puts Canadian citizens at the mercy of foreign governments and judges can't do much about it. Emery is being forced to accept a deal because not only are two of his friends in jeopardy if he doesn't, but also to go south for an unfair trial would mean serving as much as 20 years in prison, perhaps more.


One of his friends, for example, was handed a 30-year sentence for growing 200 plants. This is wrong.


If Emery has been breaking the law and must be jailed, our justice department should charge him and prosecute him in Canada. It's time for Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to step in and say, sorry, Uncle Sam, not today - not ever.

http://www.canada.com/calgaryherald/...bf6d89&k=19587

[Medicine Al]

Oh, Canada...WTF?

This is what happens when you leave your borders open...?

[CaliCoast]

Why are they busting Emery reallly? Not for selling seeds, they busted him and his two other associates because the US is afraid of his political ambitions imo. I would be pissed if I was Canadian with the US government meddling in Canadian affairs. I will say though that Emery shouldn't have been so flamboyant in his political operations because that is what drew the most heat from the Feds but 5 years for selling seeds is bs imo.

[djnecro]

Originally Posted by The Article

Emery even paid provincial and federal taxes as a "marijuana seed vendor" totalling nearly $600,000.

What about the proceeds from crime act? I'm not sure if we have something similar here in Canada, but according to the courts, that $600,000 should be considered proceeds from a crime and the persons who received the money should also be prosecuted appropriately...


Okay, perhaps my bong hit was a little too big, but I am unable to form coherent arguments in this case... it makes so little sense, it's.... .. just wrong...

[Blazin'Talon]

Originally Posted by djnecro

What about the proceeds from crime act? I'm not sure if we have something similar here in Canada, but according to the courts, that $600,000 should be considered proceeds from a crime and the persons who received the money should also be prosecuted appropriately...


Okay, perhaps my bong hit was a little too big, but I am unable to form coherent arguments in this case... it makes so little sense, it's.... .. just wrong...

The government would never prosecute itself. They accepted the money with the full disclosure of where it came from. In doing that they were saying that it is an acceptable way to earn money (as long as you pay them theirs).

I think he was fined once for a couple hundred dollars. That's how serious his crime was.

The DEA is a fucking joke. It makes me sick.

[Durchii]

I've responded to this in a duplicate post, but I will say this here:

I have waited for nearly a year to come on GC and tell everyone that Marc Emery has been extradited to the US for a life-time jail sentence in a federal prison, without the possibility for parole. I have waited and waited for that day, knowing in my heart that it would happen sooner or later... or so I thought.

This plea agreement was a very judicious act on marks part, as he is saving his friends serious jail time, if any at all. I'm sure, without a doubt, that if it were just him on trial that he would have fought this out to the bitter end, but since the DEA felt obligated to add two very close friends to the roster, he was obligated to spare them his fate. Michelle Rainey, being a legal, Canadian Medical Marijuana patient could have spent her last day (which wouldn't be long after her extradition, believe me) rotting in a US federal penitentiary, being fed weak morphine until her body just gave up.

Marc said this just after the plea agreement was taken:

Emery said that's especially important for Rainey, who smokes marijuana to control symptoms of Crohn's disease, a painful digestive-tract disorder. It was one of the reasons he considered the offer. "Well, what if something did happen in jail to her?" said Emery. "You know I would always be responsible."

[somekind]

He's being locked up here in the US? I have to pay for that?

[Thomps]

Fuck the American Government.

[Hempfarmer]

Here is a show that aired lat night where I live, it originally aired a few months ago. these people in the DEA are monsters.

http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/5087.html
scroll down to watch the videos

[PostIt]

What a bummer, they can't go after the people who grew the seeds so they throw this guy in jail. How sad, its not setting an example or making anyone else stop distributing seeds if you ask me. What a sad state of confusion over a little green plant

[chase2216]

how could his lawyers not defend this cause is there no more justice in this so called free world people

[Hempfarmer]

Marc is a political activist, that is why the the US government is sought after him, they just use the DEA and their dirty tricks to nab him. Unfortunately there is no justice in this world, its a big crock of shit if you ask me.

[Salvial]

Originally Posted by Hempfarmer

the DEA are monsters.

That's an understatement. I was really looking forward to meeting Marc at this year's Marijuana March. I remain confident that he will come out with the same voice, maybe stronger. Hopefully the world and Canadian drug policy won't go into the shitter by then.

[Smokinscientist]

Hopefully, he gets out in a few years or less and stays in that fancy Vancouver prison with a golf course on it.

[FrostAie]

the war against marijuana has to stop. When I am 40 (20 now) I doubt the shit thats going wrong with the world will be over and done with. If we even have a world to live in by then