Intro to Current Issues
A
WORD ABOUT BUYING GROW EQUIPMENT
For some time now I’ve been making pretty good money
off of cases that I haven’t done enough to prevent.
Shame on me. One who
is in the business of representing the victims of the war on drugs also
has a duty to try to reduce the number of victims.
With that self serving sanctimonious introduction,
hopefully I’ve got your attention, for there is indeed a predator
lurking at the watering hole—a predator that has produced a whole lot of
business for me in the last couple of years.
Here’s how it works:
In the greater Seattle area, certain stores that are
suspected of catering to marijuana growers are placed under
surveillance. If you get
lucky, the folks who see you are just cops who will follow you home,
investigate your life, get a
search warrant based usually on smell, and bust your garden.
After they bust your garden they will go after your assets.
Your home, your bank accounts, your stock accounts, your
vehicles, your jewelry -- anything of value.
If you are not lucky, you will be followed home by someone who
wants to rob you.
There has been no evidence that any of the shopkeepers
are involved. To the contrary—they are horrified.
There is nothing they can do to protect their customers.
Should they do anything to even remotely suggest that their
products might be used for illegal purposes, they themselves get busted.
In most cases they only find out their shop is being watched if a
customer or his/her lawyer lets them know after the fact.
But facts are stubborn things and this is one of them.
If you are breaking the marijuana laws, and even if you are a
legitimate grower, keep this ever present danger in mind.
The grow shops are the water holes where the predators hang out.
You are the prey.
------------------------------------------
Marijuana is a drug of such enormous power that it has driven the government mad.
But I digress. . .
Marijuana cases are different. You and your lawyer need
to understand that marijuana prosecutions are different from any other
criminal prosection for at least four reasons: First, no other type of
law violation has spurred police to develop such intrusive investigative
techniques or to habitually bully and terrorize an entire class of
harmless citizens; second, when you fight a marijuana prosecution it is
the defendant, not the government who occupies the moral high ground;
and third, when you try a pot bust case, the only victim in the
courtroom is the defendant, which means that fourth Marijuana cases make
good appellate law because the court can often free the defendant on
constitutional grounds without turning loose a dangerous criminal.
They are also different because America’s fastest growing indoor
hobby/cottage industry has provoked law enforcement to respond
aggressively with intrusive investigation techniques – some employing
space-age technology and many bringing the eyes, ears and noses of law
enforcement into the home, a place American citizens have long
considered to be at the hard core of the right to privacy. Remarkably,
enforcement against indoor cultivation has become an issue of primary
importance now that the Drug Enforcement Agency and local law
enforcement have prioritized the “war” on domestic marijuana. In the
State of Washington, for example, where the large majority of the
marijuana, Washington's number one cash crop, is grown indoors, a
well-publicized $5000 reward awaits informants who will turn in
marijuana farms. Remarkably, no advertised reward encourages those who
turn in murderers, rapists, robbers, child molesters or criminals who
prey on the vulnerable. Even dealers of the harder drugs have no
advertised bounty on their heads. How can this be? Marijuana is not a
dangerous drug. Its use is not a danger to society. Extreme measures to
enforce the marijuana laws are not justified.
The resultant pressures on the privacy of the home are difficult to
reconcile with traditional American values such as tolerance, liberty,
or pursuit of happiness. But, privacy is a fragile right. No one ever
got elected for defending it. It comes as no surprise that it retreats
in the face of three decades in which everyone has indulged the drug
warriors. More alarmingly, however, as the following discussion will
explain, even the usually robust rights of private property are no
longer secure. The entire U.S. Constitution has retreated in the face of
the assault. Any defense attorney – for that matter, any reasonably
industrious federal agent – knows that for those who depend for
protection upon the U.S. Constitution, few places remain that are truly
private. In many state courts, however, there is room for creative and
aggressive response to the war on privacy. Indoor marijuana gardens are
a relatively new phenomenon. Many of the intrusions they provoke have
not yet been tested under state constitutional theories. Where there has
been a test, states have often found enhanced protection in their own
constitutions. No defense attorney practicing in state court can afford
to overlook those few remaining opportunities to have someone in a robe
say the word “suppressed.”