Rich Paul Is Appealing His 81-Year Prison Sentence for Selling Pot | VICE
Could jury nullification have saved a pro-marijuana activist from an 81-year prison sentence for selling pot?
Rich Paul of Keene, New Hampshire, is planning on appealing to the New Hampshire Supreme Court on the grounds that the judge misled the jury on what nullification is in his trial for selling marijuana to an undercover Drug Task Force informant. According to Free Keene’s coverage of the trial, judge John C. Kissinger emphasized that the jury had to follow the law as he explained it and didn’t mention jury nullification. Kissinger’s instructions to the jury were different than the ones given to the jury in the case of Doug Darrell, a 59-year-old Rastafarian woodworker who was acquitted of marijuana-growing charges thanks to jury nullification.
Paul, who essentially admitted that he sold marijuana to an FBI informant, had refused plea-bargain deals (including one that would have let him walk away with no jail time) because he wanted to stand up for his principles—weed is basically harmless and you should be allowed to smoke it and sell it to your friends. “Somebody had to stand up and say that this is wrong, and I thought I might as well be that guy,” he said in an email to VICE two days before the jury found him guilty. “I took the risk and now we’ll find out whether I bet my life well.”
some background on jury nullification:
Confusion about the legality of jury nullification is natural—essentially, it’s legal only because jurors can’t get punished for whatever verdict they reach. In the 90s, a juror from Colorado named Laura Kriho was charged with contempt of court for voting to acquit a 19-year-old charged with possession of meth and supposedly lying about her anti–drug war beliefs during the jury selection process, in what a lot of people read as an assault on the doctrine of nullification. Since then, though, the idea has become more mainstream—in 2010, the New York Times reported on prospective jurors in Missoula, Montana, voicing their concerns about sending an admitted weed dealer to prison, which led to the charges being dropped, and the mayor of San Diego recently said he supported nullification in a case involving a man running a medical-marijuana dispensary (legal under state law) who got arrested by the Feds.
In the past, juries in the South have used nullification to acquit whites accused of hate crimes against blacks, so the doctrine does have some nasty history behind it. A common critique, as expressed by the Straight Dope in a 2009 blog post on nullification, is, “If you want to change the law, do it at the ballot box, not in the jury room.” But change at the ballot box is complicated in 2013’s America. Even when states legalize marijuana, the federal government’s agencies can still crack down on people using and selling a legal (or semilegal) substance. Juries are supposed to represent the conscience of the community—is it so far-fetched to believe that many communities would find laws that send nonviolent criminals to prison for years repugnant? And shouldn’t they have some clearly defined mechanism for stopping that from happening?
Justice is not cheap in America so a fundraiser has started to help hire a lawyer for Rich Paul’s appeal. You can donate to his cause here
Hey look, it’s another Liberator.
Reason #33 to move to New Hampshire
Porc 411, a phone communication system, used to report speed traps, check points, political events, and news as-it-happens, broadcasted via email as audio file attachments.
NH State Rep. Mark Warden Fights For Full Legalization Of Marijuana - http://bit.ly/Zw8m0J
Reason #22 to move to New Hampshire
Government officials, from town clerks all the way up to the state governor, are accessible to the public and generally have a walk-right-in office policy.
New Hampshire Democrat: We Need to 'Restrict Freedoms' of Libertarian & Conservative Citizens
The “Free State Project” is a New Hampshire conservative/libertarian movement of sorts that, although says it is not affiliated with any particular party, is trying to bring more conservatives and libertarians to the state and fight for conservative/libertarian ideals. Anyhow, this old bat reportedly had this to say about them in a post that now seems to have mysteriously vanished:
“In the opinion of this Democrat, Free Staters are the single biggest threat the state is facing today. There is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal. In this country you can move anywhere you choose and they have that same right. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the ‘freedoms’ that they think they will find here. Another is to shine the bright light of publicity on who they are and why they are coming.”
NO YOU OLD FAT PIECE OF GARBAGE! WE NEED TO RESTRICT THE FREEDOMS OF IDIOTS LIKE YOU!
Self deportation! Self deportation! ‘DAS RAAAACIST!!! … So basically, this retard probably thinks it’s “wrong” to try and prevent illegals from entering the state. Yet she clearly thinks it’s fine to try and prevent anyone even remotely right of Karl Marx from entering the state. In the opinion of this Republican, the “biggest threat” is the ass backward logic that characterizes leftism in general and these half baked ways of dealing with issues that these people come up with which empirically only make things worse in most cases /:
I have a proposal for this Democratic Legislator: We’ll trade Texas’ illegals for New Hampshire’s right wingers. Suddenly Texas’ purported “higher levels of uninsured and uneducated people” would drop drastically along with its crime rates and welfare use and the shithole that is New Hampshire would soon wipe itself out of existence, hopefully taking this crotchety old gorgon with it.
LIVE FREE OR DIE
The Free State Project
Tom Woods talks about the Free Stater “threat.” BTW, Tom Woods is the keynote speaker for the upcoming Liberty Forum. You should come!
Free Staters Not Welcome in New Hampshire
Tom Woods writes:
The great Free State Project (FSP) involves having pro-freedom individuals and families move to the Granite State in order to create an environment for the realization of “liberty in our lifetime,” as the FSP puts it. Democratic State Rep. Cynthia Chase calls them “the single biggest threat the state is facing today.”Whatever can be done about these people who favor nonviolence in interpersonal relations?
Her answer: “There is, legally, nothing we can do to prevent them from moving here to take over the state, which is their openly stated goal. In this country you can move anywhere you choose and they have that same right. What we can do is to make the environment here so unwelcoming that some will choose not to come, and some may actually leave. One way is to pass measures that will restrict the ‘freedoms’ that they think they will find here…. Cheshire County is a welcoming community but not to those whose stated goal is to move in enough ideologues to steal our state, and our way of life.”
Let’s translate this from Politico into English: “Unfortunately, people have the right to move anywhere they like in this country. There’s nothing we can do about that. But if we make New Hampshire a less desirable place to live, with fewer freedoms, maybe people seeking freedom will be less likely to settle here. We have a way of life here, you see. Our way of life consists of sticking a gun in people’s ribs and taking their things, in order that those things may be distributed to powerful constituencies from whom we public servants expect to win votes. This is one of our sacred traditions. If you are philosophically opposed to the use of violence in the service of political ends, you are an ideologue. Ideologues are not welcome here. We are welcoming to everyone who delights in having a gun shoved in his ribs.”
Ron Paul stars in 1983 Congressional Baseball Game (by AnCapChase)
I am not normally into sports, but I found this to be neat.
Ron Paul: We Must STOP Raising the Debt Ceiling! (by RonPaul2008dotcom)
