You probably have seen this story elsewhere, about the 19 year old kid who got 26 years in jail for
selling marijuana:
Alexander was 18, a senior at Lawrence County High with two classes left before graduation. The “new kid” turned out to be an undercover drug agent. And four sales, together worth about $350, landed Alexander a 26-year prison sentence.
Which is bad enough and has been the cause of much outrage and astonishment in the blogworld. But if you read on, it gets worse:
Alexander was not arrested with marijuana at school. Prosecutors secured enhancements on his sentence because of a state law that adds five years when someone sells drugs within three miles of a school or housing project.
Though on an isolated country stretch, the Alexanders’ property met both standards.
Now I can understand the law being tougher on people selling (illegal) drugs to minors, but this sort of automatic sentencing is just silly, as you can see in this case. This is a case of a teenager selling dope to other teenagers, not an evil drugs dealer addicting kindergarten kids. That the place of the “crime” was in technically in the limits but in reality fairly isolated makes it all the more absurd.
He doesn’t deny he sold marijuana. It was easy money. But authorities’ depiction of him as some sort of kingpin is far from the truth, he said. “I’ve been in maybe one fight in school my whole life, and now I’m sentenced to 26 years in the pen,” he said. “That doesn’t make any sense to me.”
After his arrest and expulsion, Alexander found a private school where he completed his classes and got a high school diploma. He also graduated from a drug treatment program, found a job as a bricklayer and enrolled in Calhoun Community College.
In other words, even after his life got ruined and with the threat of along prison sentence hanging over him he’s doing quite well. Doesn’t sound like a dangerous criminal who needs to be kept away from society, does he?
But what lead to Alexander’s arrest in the first place? Overzealous school officials.
The crackdown that led to Alexander’s arrest began soon after Ricky Nichols took over as principal in fall 2001.
Nichols, an Army Reservist who target-shoots with sheriff’s deputies, considers himself a front-line soldier in the war on drugs. His training includes police courses on drug identification. The drug task force has given him pointers on searching students’ cars for contraband.
Once a girl came in the school office asking for aspirin. She admitted having a hangover and failed a breath test. Nichols searched her car. “She didn’t really have a choice,” he said. “I don’t have to have probable cause. The police have to have probable cause.”
Glad I went to school in a sane country. Sure, drugs prevention should be part of a principal’s job, but car searches? Undercover police officiers? In this sort of fascistoid climate it’s easy to justify hitting a teenager with a prison sentence longer then he has been alive, for a “crime” that didn’t hurt anybody, which is only a crime because the government choose to make it a crime, not because it’s inherently immoral.
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