The gag order imposed by a Rapid City judge on medical marijuana advocate Bob Newland as part of his sentence is an unusual penalty that injects political views over public policy into a legal process, a spokesman for a national criminal-defense association said Friday.
Jack King, director of public affairs and communications for the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers in Washington, D.C., said Judge John “Jack” Delaney took an unusual step in forbidding Newland from taking any public role in the campaign to legalize marijuana for medical uses for one year. The restriction was part of the judge’s sentence issued Monday for Newland’s conviction for felony pot possession.
Delaney sentenced Newland to a year in jail but suspended all but 45 days, with stipulations including random searches and weekly drug tests and a ban on public advocacy for medical marijuana. Newland could end up serving all or part of the remaining jail time if he violates terms of the sentence.
Delaney lectured Newland on the problems of marijuana use, particularly among youths, and told the outspoken advocate for legalizing marijuana for medicinal use that he was “not going to take a position as a public figure who got a light sentence.”
King said the order was probably within Delaney’s authority. Sioux Falls lawyer Jon Arneson, who represents the South Dakota Newspaper Association, also said the judge likely had the authority to impose the speech limitation at sentencing.
“It’s an interesting question and certainly merits some discussion,” Arneson said. “But I think you’ll find that judges can do about anything they want” in that situation. “Obviously, we’re taking civil rights away from people in those cases. And this is one of those civil rights.”
Robert Doody, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of South Dakota, said he wasn’t prepared to say whether he thought the gag order was legal. But it is unsettling.
“Even if legal, I find it troubling that we’re going to take away someone’s right to even speak about something,” he said. “It would be different if we said you can’t speak about how to grow marijuana, or something like that. But this is just advocating for a public measure.”
Imagine if the judge had forbidden Bob Newland from campaigning for Republicans for one year. That would be presumably legal as well, but do we really want to have judges squelching political free speech? We don’t sentence those convicted of gun crimes from advocating for the NRA, do we? People who are busted for barroom brawls aren’t forbidden from organizing a pay-per-view boxing match, are they? I find Judge Delaney’s sentence absurd and chilling – if this is precedent, why shouldn’t law enforcement begin tailing outspoken medical marijuana activists in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, hope to pull them over with some weed, and sentence them to give up their campaigns for medical marijuana? What an easy way for our opponents to silence our voices.
