Search Results: plea-bargain (6)

David B. Sloane, Attorney
Don’t drive through the Texas Panhandle carrying Colorado marijuana — unless you plan on needing the services of attorney David Sloane

Beware in the Texas Panhandle (Potter, More, Hartley & Dallam counties)

By David B. Sloane
Criminal Defense Attorney
In my criminal defense practice I am seeing some alarming trends in police Drug Interdiction tactics in the Texas Panhandle with Colorado’s relaxation of their marijuana laws. I am finding myself defending people in these areas more than ever before.
The Texas Highway Patrol (Department of Public Safety) and a few local agencies have stepped up and bolstered their drug interdiction tactics dramatically in the Texas Panhandle corridor leading from Colorado in an area primarily North and West of Amarillo. US Highway 87 running through Potter, Moore, Hartley, and Dallam Counties appears to be the areas where police are most active in their Drug Interdiction efforts.

DrReefer.com
Activist Pierre Werner, center, at the federal courthouse on November 17 for his mother’s sentencing. Werner himself was sentenced on Monday to 41 months in federal prison.

​Former marijuana activist Pierre Werner — known as “Dr Reefer” after one of the dispensaries operated by his family — on Monday was sentenced to 41 months in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Philip Pro also ordered Werner to pay $27,438 in restitution and placed him on three years of supervised release once he gets out of prison, reports Jeff German at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Werner, 39, has until January 9 to surrender to federal prison officials.
Judge Pro last week sentenced Werner’s mother, Reynalda Barnett, to four months in prison and four months of home detention for her role in running the marijuana dispensary once known as Dr. Reefer. Pro had earlier placed Werner’s younger brother, Clyde Barnett, on three years of supervised release.

Lincoln Journal Star
This $50 drug tax stamp is required by law for anyone selling half an ounce of marijuana in Nebraska.

​Lots of folks might tell you that taxation is the first step towards legalization, but it ain’t necessarily so. Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a number of legislatures passed laws establishing state taxes on illegal drugs — though very few people know about the taxes, and even fewer pay them. Nebraska, in 1990, was one of the states which decided to tax illicit drugs, and like most of the other state drug taxes, that law is still in effect.

People hauling drugs through Nebraska are required by law to buy stamps to affix on the packages, even though the drugs are illegal in the first place, reports Cory Matteson of the Lincoln Journal Star. The stamp doesn’t legalize the transport, yet it’s illegal not to have it.
Nebraska’s drug tax stamps are actually pretty cool looking, for kitsch value alone. In what lawmakers must have imagined was a bold and thought-provoking design, the somber background is a tombstone marked “RIP” with the foreground featuring a skull and… not crossbones, but crossdrugs: a syringe and a fat joint.
“The 1990 Nebraska Unicameral passed and Governor Kay Orr signed LB260 establishing a state tax on illegal drugs,” said Deepa Buss, spokeswoman for the Nebraska Department of Revenue. “The intent of the law was to give law enforcement an alternative tool against drug dealers.
“If a prosecutor couldn’t win a conviction for selling drugs, he might be able to send the suspect to prison for failing to pay the drug tax,” Buss said. “Or the prosecution could win a conviction on both charges, increasing the potential penalties.”

Photo: Benjamin Rasmussen/The New York Times
In happier times: Pierre Werner, owner of Dr. Reefer, takes a toke in his dispensary in Boulder, Colorado, June 13, 2010.

​Dr. Reefer’s days as a marijuana activist are over.

“Someone else has got to carry on the fight now that me and my whole family are convicted felons,” Dr. Reefer — also known as entrepreneur Pierre Werner — said on Thursday, reports Carri Geer Thevenot at the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Werner and other members of his family on Thursday resolved their federal marijuana case by pleading guilty to felonies.
Dr. Reefer was one of 14 people, including his mother and brother, arrested on January 6 in connection with marijuana sales at Las Vegas dispensaries.

Photo: Cook County Sheriff’s Office
Here is one of the Zimmermans’ enviable grow operations. Since the photo is from the Cook County Sheriff’s Office, this must have been the dad’s growroom. Nice!

​An old man and his middle-aged son have been arrested on marijuana charges for cultivating cannabis in their homes, the Cook County Sheriff’s office said Tuesday.

Sheriff’s police estimate the seizures at both homes totaled “about $3 million to $5 million” at those mythical “street prices” they keep promising us.
Jay Zimmerman, 69, and his son Alan Zimmerman, 42, owned homes in Skokie, Illinois and Chesterton, Indiana, reports Chicago Breaking News. The father was charged with manufacturing and delivery of marijuana, a felony. The son was charged with felony possession of marijuana and possession of “drug paraphernalia.”

Photo: CTV
Marc Emery, the Prince of Pot, is now in custody in the United States.

​After a years-long battle to avoid extradition, marijuana activist and entrepreneur Marc Emery of Vancouver, B.C., the self-proclaimed “Prince of Pot,” is going to the United States. It’s not a trip that Emery wanted to take.

Emery, 52, was driven from a Vancouver jail to the Washington State border and was handed over to U.S. authorities, according to his wife, Jodie, reports The Canadian Press.
Jodie said her husband will be held in a detention center south of Seattle until appearing before a judge to plead guilty of selling millions of marijuana seeds to American customers, and begin his plea-bargained sentence of five years in a U.S. federal prison.