| Photo: The Tyee |
Vancouver’s flamboyant Prince of Pot, Marc Emery, pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Seattle on Monday to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana.
The plea bargain which Emery accepted means the 52-year-old Canadian must serve five years in a U.S. prison for selling marijuana seeds to American customers through his Vancouver-based businesses, Marc Emery Direct and Cannabis Culture.
Emery will remain in custody at the Federal Detention Center at SeaTac, Washington until his formal sentencing on August 27, reports Andrea Woo at The Vancouver Sun.
The deal is an attempt to make the best of a bad situation, according to Emery’s wife, Jodie.
“It’s unfortunate that a five-year sentence is what we want for Marc, but the alternative was at least 30 years and up to life if it went to trial,” she told The Vancouver Sun on Monday.
“But while he’s gone, he’ll be there to demonstrate the insanity of this War On Drugs,” Jodie said.
| Photo: Cannabis Culture |
| Jodie Emery will be tending her garden solo for awhile. |
Emery is reaping what he sowed, according to smugly self righteous U.S. lawyer Jenny Durkan.
“Today, Marc Emery acknowledged he broke the law,” Durkan said.
“Seeds from Marc Emery’s business were found at grow sites across the U.S.,” Durkan said.
Mr. Emery made millions of dollars promoting and facilitating marijuana grows in the U.S. with no regard for the age or criminal activities of his customers. The rule of law requires accountability. A five-year prison term will hold Emery accountable for his choice to ignore the law.”
About three-quarters of the seeds emery sold over the years went to American residents, according to authorities.
Emery said he made about $3 million a year selling seeds. Much of the proceeds, he said, went to marijuana activist groups and political parties. Emery himself was president of the British Columbia Marijuana Party.
The U.S. Department of Justice claimed that Emery sold seeds on multiple occasions in 2004 and 2005 to an undercover Drug Enforcement Administration agent at the shop and elsewhere.
“As a Canadian who has never left Canada… he should have been charged and punished here in Canada, where most of his activities took place, where it’s against the law and where we’re fully capable of going after him,” said Jodie Emery, who called her husband’s extradition an “outsourcing of justice.”
Jodie, is trying to arrange to have Marc serve his five-year sentence in Canada. Both the United States and Canadian governments, however, would have to approve the request for Marc to return to Canada to serve his sentence, reports All Headline News.
