Plea deal for Canada’s Prince of Pot falls apart

Plea deal for Canada’s Prince of Pot falls apart | Canada | Reuters
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) – Canada’s “Prince of Pot” believes the Canadian government wants to punish him by blocking a plea deal with U.S. authorities, who want him to face charges of selling marijuana seeds from his Vancouver store to American customers.

Canada refused to go along with Marc Emery’s deal with U.S. prosecutors to plead guilty in return for the United States dropping charges against two co-accused and allowing him to serve most of the sentence in a Canadian prison, the marijuana activist said on Friday.

The B.C. Marijuana Party founder said Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government is pursuing a get-tough policy on drug use and is upset by his long-running campaign for marijuana legalization.

“They want to make an example out of me,” Emery told CKNW radio in Vancouver. “They just don’t like me.”

Emery was arrested in 2005 at the request of U.S. officials for allegedly selling millions of dollars in seeds to U.S. buyers, mostly by mail-order, from the seed business he operated openly in Canada for years.

A U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency statement in 2005 hailed Emery’s arrest as blow to the “marijuana legalization movement” and cited his financial support of pro-pot groups in Canada and the United States.

Emery is also charged with money laundering, but he says he can prove he declared all his earnings to Canadian tax officials and gave most of the profits to charities and political candidates.

He is scheduled to appear in a Vancouver court next month, with an extradition hearing likely to start late in the year.

The Marc Emery case shows just how crazy the international War on Marijuana has become.  Emery was openly operating his seed business from a storefront in Vancouver, BC.  The Canadian government could have shut him down and arrested him at any time; instead, Health Canada was actually recommending his business to their medical marijuana patients.  Emery’s been paying federal and provincial taxes the whole time; the Canadian government certainly didn’t object to that.

But now the US DEA wants to make an example of him and demands extradition from Canada so he can face a potential life sentence under the mandatory minimums for being a drug kingpin.  To the Americans authorities, every seed he ever sold is treated as a full-grown plant.

This was unacceptable to the Canadians, because under their laws, Emery would be facing a punishment far less severe.  The Canadians rightfully saw turning Emery over to the Americans to be a cruel and unjust punishment.

So the Canadians and Americans negotiate this plea deal – Emery will accept a ten year sentence from the American courts, in exchange, Emery’s two co-defendents will be set free.  Also, five years of the sentence will be suspended, and Emery will serve only the first 45 days in an American prison before spending the remainder of his five years in a much safer and more comfortable Canadian prison.

However, now that plea deal is denied, not because the Americans thought it was too lenient, but rather because the Americans were insisting that there be no early release from prison for Emery’s five year sentence.  Canadian law forbids a judge from imposing such a guarantee, so Emery is in this strange situation where Canada can’t agree to the five year prison sentence they want and he volunteered to serve, and Canada may end up shipping him to the US for life in prison.

Did I mention that this is a guy who sells plant seeds for living?