Unfortunate Marijuana Victims

Robin Prosser

For over 20 years, Robin Prosser, a musician and mother from Missoula, Montana, had suffered from an immunosuppressive illness similar to lupus. Her muscles stiffened, impeding her ability to move, and she suffered from chronic pain, heart trouble, nausea, and migraines. She was allergic to many prescription drugs, and others simply didn't work.

Beginning in April 2002, at age 45, Prosser staged a 60-day hunger strike to draw attention to her plight. She sought assurance from local law enforcement authorities that she could grow her own marijuana - so as to maintain a steady supply of medicine - without fear of arrest or prosecution. However, Missoula Police Chief Bob Weaver maintained that Prosser would "be busted if she grows pot and we learn about it."

In May 2004, Prosser had run out of marijuana. She e-mailed her psychologist that she planned to commit suicide because she could no longer stand to live in pain. When police arrived at her house, they found her nearly unconscious in bed after taking prescription sleeping pills that she ordered over the Internet. They also found a small quantity of marijuana and two pipes. Prosser was charged with possession of marijuana and drug paraphernalia, charges that could have brought up to a year in prison.

Missoula Police Captain Marty Ludemann explained that "the reason we charged her is Montana does not allow the medical use of marijuana." He added that "if it happened tomorrow under the same circumstances, we would arrest her again."

In September 2004, Prosser's charges were dismissed as long as she remained "law-abiding" for nine months; the plea agreement was unclear if this meant she was allowed to use marijuana.

It seemed as though Prosser's trouble had ended when Montanans passed a medical marijuana initiative by an overwhelming 63% to 37% margin that November.

However, in the spring of 2007, federal law enforcement officers intercepted the medicine her licensed caregiver had sent her in the mail. Following the incident, Prosser had great difficulty acquiring the type and quality of medical marijuana she needed to alleviate her symptoms.

According to Prosser and those close to her, she experienced excruciating pain in the following months until on Oct. 18, 2007, she took her own life.

Suzanne Pfeil

Suzanne Pfeil was asleep in her assisted living hospice, the Wo/Men's Alliance or 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.

Weldon Angelos

On November 16, 2004, 25-year-old Weldon Angelos was sentenced to 55 years in federal prison for selling several hundred dollars' worth of marijuana to a police informant on three separate occasions. Though Angelos had no criminal record, federal mandatory minimum laws required the draconian sentence because Angelos had a gun strapped to his ankle during the commission of the crimes.

The maximum sentence in Angelos' case was so severe that a group of former judges and prosecutors ' including U.S. attorneys from nine states ' urged U.S. District Judge Paul G. Cassell to rule the federal mandatory minimum law unconstitutional.

Despite this, Cassell issued Angelos the mandatory 55-year sentence for his gun crimes and a symbolic one-day sentence for the drug and other related charges. At sentencing, Cassell called the penalty "unjust, cruel, and even irrational" but explained that he "had no choice" but to issue the sentence required by law. Cassell then urged Angelos to exhaust every legal appeal available to him and ask President Bush for clemency. The judge also noted that the sentence for hijacking an airplane is 25 years; for second-degree murder, 14 years; and for the rape of a child, 11 years.

Nevertheless, Angelos' hopes for mercy within the justice system died on December 4, 2006, when the U.S. Supreme Court let his sentence stand without comment.

Unnamed Florida college student

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."

Will Foster

In 1995, Will Foster was a 36-year old father of two when Tulsa, Oklahoma, police officers appeared at his door with a "John Doe" warrant to search for methamphetamine on the basis of a tip from a confidential informant. They found no amphetamines, even after tearing apart his five-year-old daughter's teddy bear. But behind a locked steel door in his basement they found a 25-square-foot marijuana garden — plants Foster grew to treat the chronic pain of acute rheumatoid arthritis.

Foster had doctors' prescriptions for Percodan and Percocet, opiate narcotic pain killers, but he couldn't tolerate the moodiness they caused and worried about their addictiveness. With marijuana, Foster was able to manage his pain and could control his dosage better.

The Tulsa district attorney offered Foster a plea bargain, but he refused, convinced that a search of his home based on bad information would be thrown out. But the officer who got the warrant swore at trial that it was accurate, even though it had no name, only an address, and they found nothing listed on the warrant. Foster's demand to face his accuser, the confidential informant who told the police methamphetamine was being sold from the house, was rejected by the judge.

The prosecution told the jury that Foster had to have intended to distribute marijuana because his small indoor garden was producing the equivalent of 2,652 joints, far more than a single person could consume. Ed Rosenthal, a marijuana cultivation expert, testified that the yield would be at most 600 joints, a proper amount for a medical patent who uses marijuana as medication on a daily basis.

Even though Foster, a successful computer programmer with his own business, had only $30 in the house and no evidence of any sales, the jury convicted him in January 1997 of cultivation and intent to distribute. They also found aggravating factors of possession "in the presence of a minor under age 11" (his daughter) and failure to obtain marijuana tax stamps. The total sentence came to 93 years in prison.

"My medical use of marijuana never interfered with my work," said Foster. "I ran a successful business. I told my conservative doctor what I was doing, and while he did not really agree with it because of the health risk of smoking, he witnessed my positive results. I was minding my own business taking care of my health and my family. What was I doing to anybody that got me 93 years?"

Because of overcrowding in the Oklahoma prison system, Foster was transferred to a prison in Texas, 400 miles from his family. While there, prison officials refused to allow him any medical treatment for his worsening condition, until one ankle became so hideously swollen that it was in danger of amputation. Public outcry helped prompt prison officials to begin treating him.

In 1998, an Oklahoma appeals court found that the 93-year term "shocks our conscience" and reduced the sentence to 20 years, which introduced the possibility of parole for Foster.

The parole board quickly issued a unanimous recommendation for his release, but then-Governor Frank Keating (R) rejected Foster's parole. The following year, Foster again came up for parole, again received the recommendation of the board, and again was rejected by the governor. On Foster's third attempt at parole, Keating finally agreed to release him, and Will Foster walked free on April 26, 2001.