Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Can hallucinogens make you a political prisoner?

Can hallucinogens make you a political prisoner?

Nicodem - 28-7-2006 at 11:01

I found an interesting legal case of this guy, Casey William Hardison, that had his little lab where he worked on the usual psychedelics (LSD, 2C-B, 2C-I, DMT, 5-MeO-DMT, mescaline…), mostly for his own use as it seams from the confiscated quantities (except for LSD). Given that he was an eager consciousness researcher or a “psychonaut” as the journalists call them, it was also pretty obvious he was not after any large profit making although he obviously self financed his hobby by selling part of his products. The main charge against him was the production of 7g of LSD. Nevertheless, it was continuously implied in the media that he would have make £5 millions by selling his products on the black market (without any explanation on how they got to such an amount).

A court in UK gave him 20 years in prison!

Now, that is a bit exaggerated for a victimless crime to say the least. He was not even making narcotics or any drug that could be easily abused or addictive. A multiple murderer gets considerably less where I live. This got me interested to understand what the hell was all this about. OK, the guy was a foreigner, a US citizen living in the UK, and knowing these islanders I would say this fact contributed a couple of years to his sentence. But it is still irrational. I did some more reading and found a newspaper article with a strange citation of what the judge said. What the judge implied between the lines is quite obvious. The guy was sentenced not because he made class A drugs (LSD, 2C-B and DMT), neither because he might have profited by selling them but simply because he committed a political crime. Indeed Hardison openly advocated his ideological convictions about the psychedelics, the War on drugs, the individual’s rights on possessing his body, the right to search the truth and so on. So what happened is not really that surprising.

Judge Anthony Niblett told Hardison:

Quote:

You are a highly intelligent, articulate and talented man. Tragically you have used those talents for illegal purposes. You have strong personal beliefs that hallucinogenic drugs which alter the human mind are not harmful. The public and governments of civilized modern democracies take a different view.

I find it shameful that there are still people imprisoned for their ideological belief in EU with al its bullshit about human rights and all that blabla. Normally this would not bother me as it is obvious to me that you can’t build an empire without lots of victims, but this guy was a self thought chemist and obviously very intelligent and able so I can’t help feeling sorry for him.

So I just wanted to make his case more public. It will certainly not help him, but anyway…

Links
Newspaper articles:
http://archive.theargus.co.uk/2005/2/19/105253.html
http://archive.theargus.co.uk/2005/3/19/104438.html
http://archive.theargus.co.uk/2005/4/23/103475.html

Erowid’s comment on the case (and links therein):
http://www.erowid.org/culture/characters/hardison_casey/hard...

Casey’s and other similar cases and links to legal texts (with a photo of his lab):
http://www.lsd25.20m.com/

Vitus_Verdegast - 28-7-2006 at 13:16

It is sickening to know that a murderer, a rapist or a pedophile will serve much less time than him in most European countries and the USA.

I know that in the USA for drug offences there is no possibility for parole (unlike for eg. rapists). I don't know the situation in the UK. In some EU countries he would only have to sit out 1/3 of his time (which is still exceedingly harsh considering the situation) for a first offence.

I agree with your statement that his sentence is clearly politically motivated. There are numerous examples of commercially motivated people getting caught with kilos of amphetamines, P2P etc.. serving much less time.

The guy did leave us with a novel synthetic pathway to LSD. Interestingly he uses the peptide-coupling agent PyPOB, and uses N,N-diethylmethylamine as the acid scavenger which results in a 90+% yield of LSD. As is also mentioned in the article the use of peptide-coupling agents were frequently discussed at the Hive.

[Edited on 28-7-2006 by Vitus_Verdegast]

franklyn - 28-7-2006 at 13:21

Not having considered how to cover his activities what more can he
expect ? A jury convicted him so sympathy was not with him. He can
count his blessings at being imprisoned in a "progressive" country.
If it had been Thailand he would have been executed, and Turkey is
not much better. ( remember the film Midnight Express )

.

Vitus_Verdegast - 28-7-2006 at 17:55

True, but if you compare with other sentences that have been brought in this "progressive" country.
Some examples from the past couple of months:

2 youngsters sentenced for murdering a homeless man. One, 17years old, got 8.5 year and the other, 19 years old, got 6.5 years.

paedophile raped 3-year old girl; will get parole after 6 years

killed his wife, 13 years

stabbed his wife to death on Christmas Day, 3 (three) years

rapist, 3 years

violent rape, 8 years

two teenagers kicking a man to death, one 16 year old gets 5.5 years, the other 17 years old gets 4.5 years

I don't want to sound like the "Daily Mail" here, but you have to admit that something is wrong with the criminal justice system.

Polverone - 28-7-2006 at 17:59

On the one hand I'm disgusted that he's been sentenced to 20 years after harming no person or property. On the other hand I would hope that someone so intelligent would know that it is not safe to draw attention to himself and to simultaneously engage in proscribed activities. This is not a moral judgement, just a pragmatic one. If only he had as much self-preservation instinct as he did intellectual talent.

solo - 28-7-2006 at 18:48

It bothers me that countries make up this laws that are usually self serving , or serving their friends that paid the bill to put them there. There are so many laws in the books that one is born to a world of laws that one had nothing to say or any input. But that would mean that there is power in the vote, but that is a falicy only to be belived by those that have faith in the imposed system in which they live under..............solo

Nicodem - 28-7-2006 at 23:59

Quote:

Originally posted by franklyn
If it had been Thailand he would have been executed, and Turkey is
not much better. ( remember the film Midnight Express ).

Well, actually in Turkey he might only get a symbolic sentence for 7g LSD. You have to consider that they only give harsh sentences for narcotics trafficking. This attitude toward narcotics is quite specific to many Muslim countries where the use of these drugs is viewed as an expression of hating life or as a mean of regression back to the womb. And since life, as painful as it is, was still created by god in its master plan, they see the use of narcotics as an offence to god himself. It is exactly for this reason that they tend to forgive the use of opium by the elderly and those who are dying in pain anyway. On the other hand, unlike the Christians, they have never really and fully eradicated mysticism from their religion. There are still religious groups practicing mysticism in order to directly communicate with god (dervish, sufi…). There are actually still numerous cultural remains hinting toward the religious use of hallucinogens in several Muslim countries (Peganum harmala in Iran, Henbane in Turkey). Not to mention that the Turks were still animists only a couple of centuries ago. So it would be unconceivable that a Turkish judge would give 20 years for a victimless crime involving psychedelics, unless he would be obsessively secular, too stupid to know his origins, religion and culture or simply a complete ignorant in regards of psychedelics (which is quite possible).

I don’t really know about Thailand though. I never was there. But I would guess they would not care much about it since he was not making any narcotics and as far as I know they are after heroin traffickers. From what I heard one can buy magic mushrooms semi openly in Thailand. I’m not sure if the police even bothers the sellers. Maybe someone who visited Thailand knows more about it?

The attitude that LSD is way more dangerous than heroin used to be specific for the USA only until quite recently. Remember Richard Nixon? That clown said that Timothy Leary was the USA enemy number one and Leary’s ideology was viewed as more dangerous than communism. So I find it “normal” that chemists caught in LSD production generally get enormous sentences or life imprisonment in USA (check the William Leonard Pickard case). The scary thing is that this attitude is moving from USA trough its oversea subsidiary, the UK, into EU.

vulture - 29-7-2006 at 01:39

What if he would have bought 7 grams of LSD and used it to kill someone with it?

Nicodem - 29-7-2006 at 04:15

That’s an interesting question.
Given the examples of sentences murderers got in the same country (as listed by Vitus) I would estimate he would get 3-7 years for the murder itself, plus 0-4 years depending on the motivation, plus 1-2 years since he is a foreigner, plus 2-4 years because poisoning is not a manly way to kill, plus 1-3 years for the originality of the murder weapon.

In total that makes from 7 to 20 years, but since a murder is nearly not as serious offense as an ideological crime, he would probably not get the maximum estimate. He would probably get somewhere near the average of 14 years.

I googled a bit on political criminals that actually committed violent acts (like bombing and killing) or terrorists as they are called nowadays. Surprisingly in UK they don’t get any more years of prison that Hardison got. Furthermore it seams the actuall killings are not that relevant in the trials. For example:

From The New York Times

Quote:

A man and a woman were arrested in a sweep by 200 members of the police and British Army in South Armagh in connection with the 1998 bombing in Omagh that killed 29 people and injured 200. In Ireland last month Michael McKevitt was sentenced to 20 years for leading the dissident republican group that caused the explosion, Real IRA, and a pub owner, Colm Murphy, from the border town of Dundalk, was sentenced last year to 14 years for conspiracy in the case, but no one has yet been charged with murder for the actual attack. Warren Hoge (NYT)

franklyn - 29-7-2006 at 10:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Nicodem
Remember Richard Nixon? said that Timothy Leary was the USA
enemy number one and Leary’s ideology was viewed as more dangerous
than communism.

Hell I remeber Eisenhower

and Nelson Rockefeller who
instituted the drug laws of New York State. Life for a reefer.
Yes I am extrapolating from narcotic offenses and given that
imbibing alchohol is a serious offense in devote muslim cultures,
your points are well taken. Thailand it is my understanding, is
having quite a problem with Methedrine much as in the American
Southwest so they're intolerance is understandable. You rightly
characterize this in it's political foundations that it is seen
as an underground counterculture that must be persecuted.

.

[Edited on 29-7-2006 by franklyn]

len - 29-7-2006 at 16:00

Quote:

At the risk of beeing lynched on this forum, this is not a political statement, it has that superficial appearance, but its import is not. You might equally well meet a person who considers random murder of people he meets on the street as morally right, what would you say to him? That the majority of people do not view it that way, moreover the majority of people view prison as the punishment for it. There could be no other basis for what you say. The alternative is saying, all right you are entitled to your opinion, go live as your internal morals allow. The fact is that laws are made by society, and to do without them is also, unfortunately, not an option.

If you disagree with society imposing such harsh penalties, thats a different thing to the justification for the sentence. Here I might agree with you. If its victimless, its not a crime (although not really so since he sold his stuff), but thats an unrelated matter.

[Edited on 30-7-2006 by len]

Mr_Benito_Mussolini - 29-7-2006 at 16:36

len, I think you have misunderstood the argument here. It is not being proposed that individual behaviour can be justified on the grounds of belief. I think that there are 2 issues here: firstly Hardison's argument is that individuals should be free to take mind-altering substances if they so wish to do so (they, not the state, are soverign over their bodies); secondly that the judge imposed a harsh sentence on the grounds of Hardison's views and because he refused to meekly prostate himself before the bench - Hardison was challenging one of the central myths of the ruling class.

The key problem I see is that the government manufacture threats as a way of gaining power and authority. The war on drugs is as absurd and bogus as the war on terror. The majority of the population support the tough government line on prohibition, but their opinion has been formed by decades of fear-mongering propaganda rather than reason and experience. This is a fundamental flaw in western democracy, whereby the population have opinions and voting habits which have been formed by the class of people they are voting for. People are opinionated but ignorant.

I don't see that Hardison is morally worse than that pillar of British society the corner shop keeper - the purveyor of tobacco and alcohol. In fact, I think tobacco and alcohol are far more dangerous than anything he was selling.

not_important - 29-7-2006 at 18:20

@Elawr

Too reasonable, and it threatens the job security of those working in the agencies that regulate and enforce, not to mention prison guards, so your idea will never, never be considered.

len - 29-7-2006 at 19:24

Mr Mussolini (forum member rather than historical figure) I agree with you, especially the second paragraph. My thoughts precisely, we have nothing to argue about. I was responding to the first post in the thread, who reckoned the verdict political, because of the words quoted. In fact the same words can be quoted whenever personal beliefs conflict with the law. That should not be a problem because personal beliefs can not justify behaviour.

Actually your first point, is just my point, that if its victimless, it is not a crime. But to me thats a separate issue. As far as the issue of the first post, it is my view that there is nothing wrong with saying "the public and governments of civilized modern democracies take a different view", because they do, the problem is that they take it. The majority of people are vindictive. Theres also the minor complicating issue that he sold his drugs, which invalidates our defence.

Your second point, that penalties are frequently dished out not according to the validity of your case or the case against you, but by image and how well you licked up in court, is very true. If we've lived a while we all know that deep inside, although its not taught in schools. That is the reality of human nature for the majority of people. We dont really live up to 1/10 of the image of ourselves we like to portray as individuals in most cases, and as a society without exception. In films, in books, on TV, in the legislation, on this forum. All that assumes a world of reasonable people in a rational society, which we are not.

[Edited on 30-7-2006 by len]

Nicodem - 29-7-2006 at 23:17

Quote:

Originally posted by len
At the risk of beeing lynched on this forum, this is not a political statement, it has that superficial appearance, but its import is not. You might equally well meet a person who considers random murder of people he meets on the street as morally right, what would you say to him?

I would say to such person that I fully respect his beliefs and in showing respect for them I will randomly kill him. But don’t get scared. I will not call for lynch since that does not fit my beliefs. Instead it is exactly this kind of creative discussion that I like.

I got your point, but murders are unpleasant to all except murderers. Even masochists don’t want to get kill (it would end the fun!). I’m sure even suiciders would prefer to do the job by themselves. So, am I wrong in assuming that murdering is fully and consensually prohibited except in times of war when we are allowed to enjoy the relief from the frustration arising from such a harsh taboo? But the case I presented is punished more severely than a murder and is anything as consensual as the aforementioned murder prohibition. The case was based on laws prohibiting manufacture and trafficking of regulated substances (the scheduling of LSD might be debatable but it is still a fact). Yet the punishment was not in proportion to the law used against the accused (you can compare with the sentences given to heroin traffickers). There was no victim, actually the people even benefited from his doings, and yet the sentence was the same as for a terrorist responsible of killing 29 people. Supposing both trials were indeed based on ideological conflicts, you can note that one accused supported his beliefs in a peaceful way (like you and me) and the other trough killing. I’m sure I’m not the only one seeing something terribly wrong here! Should we then prosecute the members of the organization distributing bibles in the hotels because they peacefully impose their ideology? Perhaps we should give them the same punishment as we give to the caught terrorists?

I agree on that, the judge’s citation can’t be taken as an indication that he made his verdict mostly on ideological grounds but only if considered out of context. That is why I provided all those links in support of my thesis. It is certainly not a coincidence that only "the public and governments of civilized modern democracies take a different view" (I can attest from first hand experience that uncivilized and nonmodern peoples don’t share such view). One also needs to know some history on LSD to understand the attitude of those in power towards it. I don’t even want to imagine what those fuckheads from the CIA’s MK-Ultra project recommended on LSD to their superiors in their rapports, but I’m sure that when their documents will get declassified (if ever?) you will be able to read all kind of horrors they performed on unwilling “patients” to support their ideas. With all this considered you will understand that there is an enormous difference between the consensus on murder prohibition which can be considered as a spontaneous evolutionary achievement in the building of human communities and the prohibition of LSD which is nearly not as strong a consensus and furthermore achieved trough propaganda, imposed by those on the top of the pyramid and not based on human experience (hence the term “civilized”).

Quote:

The fact is that laws are made by society, and to do without them is also, unfortunately, not an option.

Perhaps that is so in your country but in my country the laws are made by various supporters of economic and power interest groups (also known as parties). They don’t bother for public interest before doing laws since they all have the same ideological orientation. That is neoliberalism in two or three of its slight variations. Currently, the radical neoliberals have the majority (the kind of people that would want to privatize even nuclear stations, prisons and their mothers!). They take many of their ideas from their United Kingdom ideological predecessor, Margaret Thatcher, so instead explaining why your thesis is wrong I will just quote her extremely neoliberal view on the concept of society:

“There is no such thing as Society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. (Margaret Thatcher)”

In as much as she preferred to be cynical in nearly all of her speeches, she was surprisingly honest in saying this. Obviously, she realized that the concept of society is one of the most dreadful things that can shatter the very fundamentals of democracy based capitalism where for the sake of ending the class warfare, the capital owners and any other similar entities (like corporations nowadays) must take much effort on controlling the public morals and beliefs instead of ruling them directly as they used to do in the old days. Only families, these weak basic communities, are allowed because if the parents are well conformed then they will do their best to conform their defenseless children as well (it is way cheaper than brainwashing directly, so the profits don’t suffer from extra expenses).

I fully agree that the society can’t function without laws, but I know from experience that individuals can. That’s as much useful as I learned from the ruling ideology and dear Margaret. Our laws are not tribal laws anymore. They are not made consensually by the community for the community. People should realize that by now. Doesn’t the public realize that today we live in “civilized modern democracies”? The laws are made by the ruling class for the ruled class by imposing consensus.

[Edited on 30-7-2006 by Nicodem]

not_important - 30-7-2006 at 09:09

A side note here - a lot of the CIA's documentation on MK-Ultra and LSD research were shredded by order of Richard Helms, also noted for his work regarding Ngo Dinh Diem and Salvador Allende.

wa gwan - 30-7-2006 at 11:42

His sentence was much too harsh, I agree completely, but Hardison represented himself in court in order to make a political defense, in other words he petitioned the jury to accept his own personal ideological beliefs and find him not guilty on the grounds they shared his beliefs and not whether or not he broke the law, which he clearly did. Defendants must represent themselves in these kind of defenses, a lawyer cannot do it for you.

Unfortunately for him he gambled and lost. It didn't help his appeal to the jury that he was a non-UK national and probably less so that he was an American. As len said, it also didn't help his case that he'd sold the drugs and admitted earning £125,000 (about $235,000) from drugs sales.

Do you honestly think drug dealers can make a good case for legal reform? I don't.

Mr_Benito_Mussolini - 30-7-2006 at 12:43

In the UK, the jury merely decides guilt, not the sentence. The judge decides the sentence based on sentencing guidelines and personal prejudices. There was no way that the jury would find him not guilty based on the evidence and there was no way the judge would give him a lenient sentence based on the defendent's representation.

He would have received a lighter sentence if he ate humble pie and accepted that he had mislead himself etc. and now saw the error of his ways. He will be deported following completion of sentence and may face charges in the US, so it might be better for him to benefit for as long as possible from the less harsh UK prison regime.

Edit:

The UK government is currently reassessing controlled substances according to risk in a rational manner. It would be ironic if he ends up doing 20 years for substances that are classified as less hazardous than alcohol or tobacco:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/5230006.stm#drugs

[Edited on 31-7-2006 by Mr_Benito_Mussolini]

wa gwan - 31-7-2006 at 14:24

Quote:

Originally posted by Mr_Benito_Mussolini
There was no way that the jury would find him not guilty based on the evidence.

In the UK it is a jurors right to find not guilty should they agree with a political defense (the unfair law arguement). It isn't often explained to the jury that this is so but it is nonetheless. The establishment of this right is commemorated by a plaque on the Old Bailey.

Mr_Benito_Mussolini - 31-7-2006 at 18:08

Yes, the jury's right to acquit if the law is unjust superceeds the authority of the Crown, state and court. However, the chance of a jury doing so in this case is remote.

Nicodem - 1-8-2006 at 00:07

Quote:

Originally posted by not_important
A side note here - a lot of the CIA's documentation on MK-Ultra and LSD research were shredded by order of Richard Helms, also noted for his work regarding Ngo Dinh Diem and Salvador Allende.

Quite interesting. It also says so in Wikipedia entry for Richard Helms:

Quote:

In 1972, Helms ordered the destruction of most records from the huge MKULTRA project, over 150 CIA-funded research projects designed to explore any possibilities of mind control. The project became public knowledge two years later, after a New York Times report. Its full extent may never be known.

Another funny thing there, kind of related to the issues on sentences given for political crimes, is the punishment this former CIA director got for lying to the congress:

Quote:

Helms' answers to Congress on the CIA's role in the Chilean affair were proved to be false and he was prosecuted and convicted in 1977. He received a two-year suspended sentence and a $2000 fine. He wore the conviction as a badge of honor; his fine was paid by friends from the CIA.

and furthermore:

Quote:

In 1983, President Ronald Reagan awarded Helms the National Security Medal.

So, it seams that even in USA one can get along with a symbolical punishment for having abused a high ranking power position and lying to the highest democratic institution. He can even mock on congress and then receive a medal by the president himself. What a weird country!

PS: Benito and Wa gwan, is that right the jury have ever used in practice and how often? It is interesting that such a power is allowed to citizens. How was it obtained? How is the jury summoned in UK? In my country these people are volunteers that went trough some training. They are generally retired old people with moralizing tendencies seeing this as an opportunity to revenge for their suppressed wishes when young and they get along with the judge quite well (at least the few cases I know of, but surely there are exceptions). They are certainly not statistical representative of the population. I wander how it is elsewhere?

S.C. Wack - 1-8-2006 at 03:11

Quote:

Originally posted by Nicodem
What a weird country!

In the US, jury nullification is fully legal, but juries are generally not allowed to be told of this, in fact they are told repeatedly by the judge that they must find the defendant guilty no matter what, if the facts of the case are provable, even though this is a total lie.

Jurors may (will) be replaced if they give any indication that they might be willing to acquit based on the wrongness of a conviction.

YT2095 - 1-8-2006 at 03:31

7g is a LOT of acid!
drop in a litre of water and mixed, and then a single drop of that on tissue makes a bloody strong tab!
what did he want with all that, seriously, it`s more than a whole group of folks could ever want for a lifetime.

he must have been Trippin to think he could use all that much!

EDIT: a quick calculation, 7g will make 140,000 50 microgram tabs.
I`ve no idea what the street value is per tab, but I`ll bet it`s not 5 millions worth.
(or 20 years prison worthy either).

[Edited on 1-8-2006 by YT2095]

Vitus_Verdegast - 1-8-2006 at 07:24

50mcg is a rather low dose, 100-200mcg is more common for obtaining the full spectrum of activity.

But suppose he made 140,000 tabs from it, the street value of a single tab is around £5.

This would mean he would have made £700,000 if he would have sold it per single tab (which would have taken him many years, and by then his LSD would probably have decomposed).

More realistic is that he sold it per 1000 tabs to distributors, which should bring the value per tab down to around £1, even lower when larger amounts are sold.

What the media always does is taking the highest price possible for a single dose unit, and multiplying this with the huge amount of dose units found. The real value is usually less than 1/10th of what they claim.

(Of course, he did send cash to buy a 34ft yacht to his father. Although I think his sentence is far too harsh, he should not have sold these large amounts of compound.)

[Edited on 1-8-2006 by Vitus_Verdegast]

garage chemist - 1-8-2006 at 11:29

Have you read on how he was caught?
He had been sending ecstasy tablets over the border, into the US.
If this isn't extremely thoughtless and stupid, I don't know what is.
Couldn't he just keep his experiments secret and make everything only for his own consumption? I think he would have been able to do that and never arouse any suspicion.

Of course, the sentence is incredibly harsh.
What's the maximum sentence for something like that in germany? Five or ten years?

[Edited on 1-8-2006 by garage chemist]

wa gwan - 1-8-2006 at 11:43

Quote:

The Tryal of Penn and Meade
In the trial, the Recorder of London and the Lord Chief Justice applied enormous pressure on the jurors to get them to pronounce a verdict of "guilty" on both Penn and Meade for creating an "unlawful assembly" of Quakers at a street meeting which the court said had led to a "tumult." But the jury persisted in their view that Penn and Meade were not guilty of creating a tumult. In desperation, the Lord Chief Justice required that all the jurors be kept in the "hole" for three days and nights without food, water or even a chamber pot. Still the jury did not yield, and so they were thrown in jail again and fined to boot. The result of the jury's steadfastness was that the British Parliament passed a definitive statement which thenceforth protected the independence of juries, specifying as it did that the practice of fining or imprisoning jurors for verdicts was illegal.
http://www.quaker.org/fqa/types/t01-tryal.html

Here is an account of the trial from 1670.

The right is rarely used because most people don't know about it although there is anecdotal evidence that UK juries are increasingly acquitting in medical marijuana cases.

Another trial of note is the Clive Ponting case. Ponting was a civil servant who released details, in breach of the Official Secrets Act, of the sinking of the Argentinian vessel Belgrano during the Falklands War. The case is relevant though slightly different in that he too had clearly broken the law but his defence was not political. The jury was instructed by the judge to decide on the law as it stood and to ignore his defense of the publics right to know. They refused to be browbeaten and he was acquitted.

Juries are summoned at random.

Mr_Benito_Mussolini - 1-8-2006 at 16:17

Juries may be summoned at random in the UK, but more important is the pool that they are selected from. If you have any spent convictions, you won't be selected, nor will you be selected if you are on any of lists that the authorities keep.

The_deadly_dustbin - 2-8-2006 at 09:11

Quote:

Originally posted by garage chemist
Of course, the sentence is incredibly harsh.
What's the maximum sentence for something like that in germany? Five or ten years?

[Edited on 1-8-2006 by garage chemist]

Depending on the judge I'd say 7 to 10, out in 5 (considering that more than 50.000 hits will be taken into account as "nicht geringe Menge" and the German law does not make a difference between substances that are not "Verkehrsfähig" whether it's Heroin or LSD)

But there's also the case of that guy who got 7 years for supplying his wife with medical MJ. :mad:

[Edited on 2-8-2006 by The_deadly_dustbin]

Sandmeyer - 7-8-2006 at 15:15

Originally posted by Nicodem

Quote:

"Perhaps you, my judges, pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it."

[Edited on 7-8-2006 by Sandmeyer]

LSD25 - 22-2-2008 at 14:14

Quote:

Originally posted by len

Quote:

I disagree in entirety with the sentence given this person, incidentally I disagree with the fact that when police are prosecuted for manslaughter they will escape unless they are proved to have intended to kill the person (normally not relevant to manslaughter, whereas intent to kill normally makes manslaughter murder).

What the judge appears to have been saying in that particular trial (summing up) was that unfortunately his hands were in fact tied by the legislative authority of the parliament. He 'had' made the substances and irrespective of what use he made of it, if the amounts exceeded those arbitrarily imposed by the government as demonstrating a trafficable quantity - whether or not there was evidence of trafficking - the judge was compelled to sentence him as a drug-trafficker.

In a case such as this, the only question which would have been left for the jury is whether or not the prosecution had proved to beyond a reasonable doubt that he had in fact produced a trafficable quantity of a dangerous drug (as defined in the legislation). The jury had no input insofar as whether or not they were willing to accept any idealogical argument or even their thoughts on the same. The judge, irrespective of his/her personal views was similarly given no scope to enter into the idealogical argument, but was compelled to apply the law as it stood.

What the judge was able to do however was to state that in his/her opinion, the person sentenced was quite probably not being imprisoned for their actions but for their beliefs. The judge appears to have reached this conclusion for much the same reason as Nicodem, the person was prosecuted and convicted of a crime there is no evidence they actually committed (trafficking), as a byproduct of legislative interference, because they actually made a substance. The inescapable inference from this is that they were prosecuted predominantly as a means of silencing them.

Nicodem is right on the money on this, this shit really does need to be publicised or many more people will be silenced this same way.

Sauron - 22-2-2008 at 20:43

In Malaysia or Singapore he would have been condemned to death. In Thailand he might also have been but very likely, his sentence would have been commuted to life in prison, twenty years would have been a very light sentence here.

The American drug laws and their penalties are draconian for a reason. They are intended to deter anyonefrom oding what this fellow did.

If you don't want to do the time, don't do the crime.

7 g LSD is if I recall somewhere between 70,000 and 140,000 effective doses, if we assume 50-100 micrograms/dose.

Which is a lot of LSD.

So the court and the jury agreed with the prosecutorial argument that there was intent to distribute, and that and the street value (or even the wholesale value) of the LSD, which would have been arguendo in 6 or 7 figures in dollars, were part of the judge's deliberations when measuring out justice.

So if anyone wants to second guess the judge and jury, fine, but, my advise is: do not ever put yourself in the position of such a defendant.

Also at risk of repeating myself, what this fellow did was NOT amateur chemistry. No one makes 100,000 hits of acid for amateur chemistry. And since this was drug manufacture for distribution, rather than amateur chemistry, this is OFF TOPIC in this forum, which is set aside for LEGAL AND SOCIAL ISSUES OF CONCERN TO AMATEUR CHEMISTS.

It is ABSURD to couch this in terms of "political crime" and for our newly appointed moderator Nicodem to have done so by initiating this thread, IMO casts serious doubt on his suitability for that position.

Or, Polverone, can someone be a moderator and a pro-druggie activist at the same time?

[Edited on 23-2-2008 by Sauron]

Polverone - 22-2-2008 at 23:06

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron
It is ABSURD to couch this in terms of "political crime" and for our newly appointed moderator Nicodem to have done so by initiating this thread, IMO casts serious doubt on his suitability for that position.

Or, Polverone, can someone be a moderator and a pro-druggie activist at the same time?

Having unconventional and strong opinions is no mark against a member's suitability as a moderator, as long as they're able to respect the rules here. It was posted 2 years ago in any case. I have full confidence that Nicodem will remain an asset to sciencemadness in his new role as moderator.

This was posted before we had a moratorium on political discussion. To my knowledge Nicodem has respected the moratorium as well as anyone. To preserve the moratorium I'm now locking the topic.