55 Years for a Few Bags of Pot
Jacob Sullum | November 17, 2004, 10:11am
Weldon Angelos, founder of the rap music label Extravagant Records, was sentenced yesterday to 55 years in federal prison for selling a few bags of marijuana. U.S. District Judge Paul G. Cassell, who imposed the sentence, called it "unjust, cruel, and even irrational" but said his hands were tied by mandatory minimums for people who engage in drug trafficking while possessing a gun: five years for the first offense and 25 years for each subsequent offense. Angelos was convicted of three counts for carrying a pistol in an ankle holster twice and in a briefcase once while selling marijuana on three occasions. He never took the gun out, let alone used it.
He would have been better off if he had. If Angelos had merely murdered his customers instead of selling them pot, his sentence probably would have been lighter. Cassell noted that the same day he sentenced Angelos, he gave 22 years to a man convicted of beating an old woman to death with a log.
slim | November 19, 2004, 3:01pm | #
Hmmmmmm ...
Let's try this again:
The story goes to great lengths to equate a murder conviction sentence with a drug distribution/weapons carrying conviction sentence.
It does this for a purpose ... to attempt through the use of a canard to suggest that drug laws are somehow whacked because you can kill someone and only get 22 years, but if you carry a gun and sell dope, you get 55 years.
The story does not tell us how many bags of dope Mr. Rap was distributing ... just a "few." That's a pretty telling omission meant to suggest that this guy was some small-time dealer when in fact he may not have been.
The story further takes great pains to note that, while the defendent routinely totes a gun around during his drug dealing ... he never takes it out and shoots anyone with it. Here again, the straw man comes out to suggest that the carrying of the gun was totally beside some point, since, after all, nobody was shot and killed. "He would have been better off if he had (taken the gun out and shot someone)" the straw man defense goes ... because he would have gotten less time.
Which, is total UN-reasoned BS and wouldn't pass the sniff test at a high-school debating society.
Look ... I don't care if you people want to smoke dope. Please, be my guest. It makes it much, much more likely that you won't be in the same job market as I am and thus, much much more likely that your dope smoking substantially increases my desireablity in the job market, dramatically, over the long-term, increasing my earning potential. Puff away daddies.
But if you are going to trot out discrepant sentencing and suggest that rap "producers" who tote guns around and are only selling "a few bags" of marijuana are basically harmless individuals caught up in wrongful sentencing guideline laws, then you aren't gonna get much sympathy from most people who aren't consuming your favorite product.
I agree that there is a sentencing discrepancy here: the judge who gave the guy 22 years for killing the little old lady with a log could and should have eliminated the discrepancy, not by reducing the 55 years Mr. Rap got, but instead ensured that the killer got life.
That this judge thought it fitting that a log-weilding little-old lady murder only deserves 22 years is quite, quite telling of this person's intellectual capacity - and is the SINGLE BEST argument for removing from idiot judges the discretion they so desire when it comes to cap-busting-capable dope dealers.
Rebuttals?
