Woman Sells $30 Worth of Weed Gets 12 Years!

Patricia Spottedcrow in prison waits on line

According to a story at REASON, an Oklahoma woman's "lack of remorse" over selling $30 worth of weed has netted her a 12 year prison sentence.  That's right folks, $30.XX, not $30 million, three-oh...here's the from Mike Riggs via KFOR-TV story:

"In January 2010, Dee Starr and her grown children William Lamebull and Patricia Spottedcrow were arrested in an early morning raid after selling $31 worth of marijuana to undercover police. According to Oklahoma City's KFOR-TV, it was their first felony arrests. Each was held on $100,000 bond. Each pled guilty. Here's what that got them:

William Lamebull faced the least serious charge, possession of marijuana around children.
He pleaded guilty and got two years probation, no jail time.
Dee Starr, who was facing more serious charges, two felony counts for dealing drugs and for having drugs in front of children, got 30 years probation, again no jail time.
Patricia Spottedcrow pleaded guilty to her crimes as well.
She faced the very same two felony charges as her mother, Dee Starr.
However, Spottedcrow got a 12 year prison sentence, no probation.
She was sentenced to 12 years behind bars for selling two baggies of marajuana worth about $30.

According to KFOR-TV, [Kingfisher County Associate District] Judge Susie Pritchett (pic), who retired a few months after ruining Spottedcrow's life, said the 'sentence fit the crime' because 'Ms. Spottedcrow showed no signs of remorse, nor did she seem to even care about what she was doing to her children.'  Incidentally, Judge Pritchett does not ruin every drug offender's life. She once heard the case of a police officer's wife who was caught hiding marijuana in her panties. The woman 'was asked to apologize to the judge and never served a day in jail,' a decision Pritchett defended, arguing, 'I treat drug users differently than I treated those who pushed drugs, especially when they sold in front of children.'

Mark Clayborne, Spottedcrow's attorney, did not 'challenge' his client's pre-sentence investigation report, which Spottedcrow says is rife with inaccuracies. Six months later, Clayborne was convicted of perjury in a different case. Spottedcrow now has a new attorney who will ask for a sentence modification next year. Until then

Patricia Spottedcrow's mother is now raising Patricia's four children.
They don't have the money to visit her in prison.
One-year-old Ja'zalynn doesn't recognize her mom anymore.

According to KFOR-TV, which deserves much praise for reporting this out, Oklahoma incarcerates more women than any other state in the union."
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I've never been a fan of organics for any reason, not out of moral outrage or anything like that...I guess alcohol did what I needed to be done and committing even a minor crime to have some sort of "high" on weed made zero sense to me.  But come on folks, marijuana prosecutions in this day and age absent some sort of other underlying crime makes utterly no sense to me.  What a waste of limited resources, 

But this story resonates for another reason.  This is a fine example of an intemperate judge caught playing favorites to punish someone who pissed her off. 

Maybe the Governor of Oklahoma has brains enough to right an incredibly stupid judicial wrong and commute this poor kid's sentence.

What's Wrong With the Justice System?

Mike Thomas at the Orlando Sentinel has this story of disparate treatment in Florida's system of justice that should outrage anyone who cares about justice.

"Dr. David Mackey (pic, left), the former chief of staff at Winter Park Hospital, hired a hit man to kill a business partner who cheated him. It was captured on videotape. Yet Mackey never saw the inside of a jail cell for that crime.


Malenne Joseph (pic with her children, above) a poor and deeply religious immigrant from Haiti, was arrested for vandalizing a home. She did not do it. Yet she sat in a jail cell for three months, praying to be returned to her young children, as the State Attorney's Office sat on information that proved her innocence.   Welcome to law and order in the Ninth Judicial Circuit.

Dr. Mackey was arrested in 2003 after the hit man he hired turned out to be an undercover cop.  'If I could kill this guy and get away with it, I would,' Mackey told him.  Possible penalties ranged up to life in prison.

But Mackey hardly needed defense counsel, as prosecutors and the judge rushed to his defense.  Assistant State Attorney Bill Vose said that  'sending a person of Dr. Mackey's stature for this offense away to prison would certainly not be justice.'

Judge Bob Wattles seemed to agree.

'I don't believe this is the end of you practicing medicine,' he told Mackey.  'You're a tremendous asset. I'm not going to waste that.'
Mackey got probation.

'All I can say,' said Bill Vose, 'is there is not two systems of justice in the cases I prosecute, and I manage all the prosecutors in the office, and we do our best to make sure that doesn't happen.'
Malenne certainly lacked Dr. Mackey's stature.

She was 29, poor and worked menial jobs. And it was her misfortune to be black and speak with an accent — because that vague description also fit a woman hired by a contractor in 2007 to paint the inside of a house.  The contractor did not pay her. Angry, the woman splashed paint over the interior of the house.

Malenne Joseph was not a painter. She never set foot in the house. She never met any of these people.  But that didn't matter once Orlando police Detective Jose Varela was on the case.  The contractor gave Varela the painter's cell-phone number. He dialed it and got a woman named  'Marlene' who confessed to the crime but would not come down to the police station.  Varela never traced the cell-phone number to see whom it was registered to. Varela had another clue.

He told prosecutors that the owner of the house gave him the tag number of a vehicle that she saw the painter driving. And Varela said he traced that tag to Malenne or a relative.  In fact, the owner of the house had said she saw a black man driving a truck slowly in her neighborhood and got suspicious — so she gave the tag number to Varela.  The truck belonged to a black man with the last name of Joseph. Apparently, Varela then went fishing through motor-vehicle records until he came up with a black woman with the last name of Joseph — Malenne Joseph.

Varela got a photocopy of her drivers-license picture and showed it to the owner of the house and her sister. A more conscientious detective would have put that picture in with other pictures to see whether the women could pick out Malenne.  He did not. And, not surprisingly, the two women identified Malenne as the painter. This happens so often there are studies about it. Witness identifications are the most unreliable evidence, especially when white victims are identifying black suspects. Cops know what they are doing. Why else would a cop be showing me this picture if she didn't do it?

The phone number wasn't linked to Malenne. The truck wasn't linked to Malenne. She wasn't picked out of a photo lineup.  None of that bothered the State Attorney's Office, which took the case to trial in June.  It also didn't seem to bother Judge Walter Komanski, who allowed — over defense objections — Varela to testify about  'Marlene's' phone confession.

The jury heard eyewitness identification and a confession. Guilty.   A pre-sentence investigation would take two months. Komanski could have released Malenne, given her lack of a record and the fact this was a nonviolent crime.  Instead, he sent her to jail.

When new lawyers took over her case from the Public Defender's Office and asked for a retrial, that cost Malenne another month in jail, almost as if she were being punished for insisting on her innocence.   She continued to sit there after her lawyers filed evidence that proved her innocence — evidence that included phone records linking the number Varela dialed to a woman named Merline, and work records that showed Malenne was working at a nursing home on two of the days she supposedly was painting.

She continued sitting after Sentinel reporter Anthony Colarossi reported that evidence on the front page.

'The State will NOT reconsider it's [sic] position on the defendant being released…' prosecutor Mexcye Roberts wrote defense attorneys on Sept. 10.

The State Attorney's Office, so anxious to keep an obviously guilty Dr. Mackey out of jail, was set on keeping an obviously innocent Malenne Joseph in jail. But faced with the overwhelming evidence, it finally relented and set her free Sept. 15."
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Fickle Finger of Fate--Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason

Actually it was "the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate" an award (pic) given by Rowan and Martin on the 60's television show Laugh-In.  According to TV Acres.com: 

"Flying Fickle Finger of Fate Award - Called the Rigid Digit, the Winged Weenie, Wonderful Wiggler, Friendly Phlange, and the Nifty Knuckle, this weekly satirical award was presented by comedians Dan Rowan and Dick Martin on the weekly comedy variety series ROWAN & MARTIN'S LAUGH-IN/NBC/1968-73 for the dumbest/craziest news item of the week. Gold/Silver in color, the award was a "hand" mounted on a trophy base. Its index finger adorned with two small wings rotated in a 'Whoopee!' circular motion. Recipients of this 'uncoveted' award included then Los Angeles Chief of Police, Ed Davis who suggested that 'gallows' be put in all airports for the hijackers so they could be hung on the spot; the City of Cleveland for their Cuyahoga River (It caught fire due to its high pollution levels); and a Wonderful Wiggler went to William F. Buckley for his philosophy 'Never clarify tomorrow, what you can obscure today.' Top awards went to the Pentagon. They won five times."

As readers of the Bad Lawyer blawg, one of the themes of this journal is the fickle nature of justice, and as I read accounts of "justice," more often injustice I am struck by the sheer randomness of crime and punishment.  You would think a 55 year old, 28 year veteran lawyer would be cynical enough to let it all roll off his back, but you must bear in mind that I am a Bad Lawyer.  I still struggle to find some sort of narrative to make sense of it all. 

This morning my pal, rightwing Chuck the retired tax-denier, sent me a link to the Cleveland Plain Dealer article about the county prosecutor, Bill Mason.  This crime fighter, according to accounts from local attorneys told his high school classmates he planned to be President of the United States by age 50, apparently it's not working out.  Mason enjoyed a run of luck, though, succeeding the legendary late-Stephanie Tubbs Jones, who vaulted from the county prosecutor's position to Congress succeeding longtime civil rights pioneer Lousi Stokes, brother of Carl Stokes, the first Black Mayor of a major American city which Cleveland was in the 1960s.  All of this is by way of digression,--but it does indicate that there was a path available to Mason if he was good prosecutor.  But our man Mason fell in with a bad crowd, a county bribery and corruption scandal involving his closest political allies is dragging the blue-eyed wanna-be-president-of-the-united-states down.

I don't know Mason, personally, but a Judge I know related to me how he, the Judge,  had won the endorsement of his political party for higher office and was ORDERED by Mason, and his corrupt political cronies to stand down from the office the Judge aspired to, in favor of someone clearly less qualified but someone more politically important to Mason, et al.   Mason threatened the Judge with the promise that his political life would be turned into a living hell if he did not comply.  The Judge refused to stand down, and the position was snatched from him anyway. 

Mason also has been known to do the bidding of the corrupt former Sheriff.  There are well-documented instances where Mason prosecuted fabricated felonious accusations against lawyers involved in security scuffles identical to the ones discussed here, where ill-trained security officers of the corrupt Sheriff claim non-existent injuries after pounding the snot and pepper spraying  a lawyer. The lawyer who objected to the rude treatment of citizens entering and exiting the Justice Center where Mason and the disgraced sheriff have/had their offices.  

Mason was also behind the indictment of a Cleveland-area mother and father of the "special education" student-football captain who was raped by a local female teacher--the parents obtained and turned over evidence including digital photos taken by the kids who were having sex with the teacher.  The parents' crime? They were indicted for posession of child porn while the charges were ultimately dismissed the parent-victims ended up paying attorney fees and were required to enter a diversionary program!  What outcome did the school teacher, "star" of the child porn images get?  Count 'em, three days in jail.  Good job, Prosecutor Mason! 

Mason is one of those lawmen like Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Mason runs an operation more notable for its public relations claims than for actual achievement unless you count his striking blindness or indifference to the pay-for-play operation run by his foolish friends who are all headed to federal lock-up.  One of the mysteries of the scandals in Cleveland was how Mason seemed to have a teflon like quality as all around him, others were being indicted, charged, targeted in lengthy federal charges as the subject of the bribery schemes.  Part of what was going on was a changeover in journalism in Cleveland.  The Plain Dealer transformed itself into a serious muckracking enterprise with a laser-like focus on the things that matter, or should matter to the citizens of northeastern Ohio. 

Mason and a drinking buddy were recently pulled over for drunk driving.  The cops cut these guys a major break, a break they would not cut you or me.  Mason's buddy, a Cleveland-area politician was intoxicated and driving.  Mason, the passenger, was given a free pass.

Mason appears to be in the media cross-hairs, and in large part it's largely because of thieving lawyers.  The Plain Dealer piece by Mark Puente relates how Mason apparently has a pattern of willful ignorance where it comes to corruption.  Not only does Mason not see, hear, smell or speak it when it involves County Commissioners, political bosses, County Recorders, of his own political-persuasion--it doesn't occur to Mr. Mason to prosecute a former associate, the lawyer-pal who steals $300,000, from a client--while a laundry list of relative petty thefts by other lawyers land those lawyers in prison.  Some pay, some pay all, some pay nothing. 
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My friend Gayle after reading this blawg suggested that I read, Heinrich Von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas.  The 1811 novella was an apt recommendation.  Kohlhaas is an upright citizen, a successful horse dealer by trade, and someone who readily embraces the law.  One day Kohlhaas is in transit with two beautiful black horses he intends to sell in Dresden.  He is waylaid at a minor aristocrat's property by a demand for a toll and a permit that had not been required of him previously.  What ensues is a legal nightmare. The denial of any justice including "a justice center scuffle" fataling injuring Frau Kohlhaas ultimately drives Kohlhaas to armed insurrection. 

My mocking tone about fickle finger of fate, is to highlight the argument that the reason for law is the need for certainty, or, at least predictablity in human affairs.  We all need to know what the rules are, we all need to know and agree what our rights are, and we all need to agree what the consequences, leavened with mercy--should be.  When public officials like Bill Mason use their very powerful offices to favor friends, and enable injustice--they degrade respect for the law, for justice.  ENOUGH!

Oh,  it does seem that the Flying Fickle Finger of Fate has finally found a worthy honoree.