Radley Balko reports that we might now know the identity of the confidential informant who mistook Japanese maple trees for marijuana, leading to the death of a police officer and murder charges against an innocent man.
The informant had a conflict with Ryan Frederick, so he broke into his house, misidentified his plants, and told police Frederick was growing marijuana. When police raided the home, Frederick mistook them for burglars and opened fire, killing a police officer. He's now sitting jail, awaiting trial for killing a cop.
This utterly tragic and absurd situation is the natural and predictable byproduct of our mindless war on drugs, which allows incompetent idiots with ulterior motives to provide probable cause for violent police raids.
Radley has some background on the case here.
Update: From comments, "If a police officer ran into traffic and got killed, would the driver who hit the officer be charged with murder?" I think that analogy comes pretty close to being fair. Frederick wasn't growing marijuana. He had no reason to think the people bursting into his home were anything other than common criminals, so he defended himself in good faith. The officer was killed because he went somewhere he didn't belong. It's a tragedy, to be sure, but it's certainly not Frederick's fault. Not in the slightest.
Freshman Virginia Sen. Jim Webb's name has come up as a possible Democratic VP candidate. Judging from his new book, A Time to Fight, the decorated Vietnam vet might be a good choice. "The time has come to stop locking up people for mere possession and use of marijuana," he writes. "It makes far more sense to take the money that would be saved by such a policy and use it for enforcement of gang-related activities."
Webb, who took office in 2007, criticizes the drug war and prison-industrial complex: "Either we are home to the most evil population on earth, or we are locking up a lot of people who really don't need to be in jail, for actions that other countries seem to handle in more constructive ways." [celebstoner]
[Courtesy of Marijuana Policy Project]Â
Dear friends:
Although we made unprecedented progress this year, yesterday the Minnesota House of Representatives adjourned for the year without bringing MPP's medical marijuana bill up for a vote.
The bill had passed the Senate at the beginning of Minnesota's biennial session and was endorsed by the Minnesota Nurses Association, the Minnesota Public Health Association, the Minnesota AIDS Project, the Minnesota Senior Federation, and hundreds of doctors and thousands of nurses who signed statements of support. Recent polling showed more than 2-to-1 support among Minnesotans.
However, a small but vocal group of law enforcement officials spread mistruths, exaggerations, and outright lies about the bill in an attempt to kill it â such as claiming that medical marijuana lacks support from the medical community and that medical marijuana laws increase teen use. We fought back hard, blanketing the airwaves with these TV ads, generating thousands of phone calls from constituents to their state representatives, and releasing a series of Web videos documenting our opponents' lies. But in the end, the opposition's false claims swayed legislators enough to keep us from getting the vote.
However, the battle to protect Minnesota patients is far from over. The work we've done this year leaves us in a stronger position than ever: Prior to this session, no medical marijuana bill had passed a single House committee, while our bill passed out of five this time around. And polling clearly indicates that our public-relations and grassroots-organizing efforts have increased Minnesota voters' support for medical marijuana.
Despite the failure of the House to bring this popular bill up for a vote on the floor, the momentum is on our side in Minnesota, and we'll be back to finish the job next session.
Sincerely,
Rob Kampia
Executive Director
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.
P.S. As I've mentioned in previous alerts, a major philanthropist has committed to match the first $3.0 million that MPP can raise from the rest of the planet in 2008. This means that your donation today will be doubled.
The man appointed head of the advisory council for the misuse of drugs once called for ecstasy to be downgraded to a class B drug, politics.co.uk can exclusively reveal.
Professor David Nutt, who replaces Sir Michael Rawlins as chair of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) this afternoon, made the comments at a science and technology committee hearing in 2006.
"I think the evidence base for classification producing deterrence is not strong and we see that with a number of drugs," he said. [politics.co.uk]