Growing would be an appropriate charge for a quantity of plants to support personal consumption. That number is substantially less than the 1,000 plants seized during the raid. The quantity alone establishes intent to commit the crime whether or not actually caught in the act of distribution at the time of arrest.
A parallel example is being arrested for DUI while standing next to your car fumbling with the keys to open the driver’s door (or, better yet, seated inside the car fumbling to get the keys into the ignition lock or with the engine running but not in gear). Save for the arrest (on public safety grounds), intent to commit DUI is pretty well established.
I agree that it should not have taken 7 years for the trial. But lack of a speedy trial does not negate the evidence of his guilt. And insisting on going to trial was one of the primary factors in creating the delay. That insistance also precluded any pre-trial sentencing agreement and exposed him to the full sentence possibilities for his crimes.
Once he did have a trial, he was convicted and sentenced to 20 years. Now the indictment is dismissed. In theory, he got 18 years off of his sentence. The article does not say if the dismissal was with prejudice or not.
I am going to assume it was. But If not, he could still be indicted again and essentially be back to square one. He and his attorney might want to factor that into their calculations about filing suit for false imprisionment, or whatever. If they do sue, I would expect the state to argue that it is a perversion of justice for the obviously guilt to profit from their crime since the crime, which was established at trial and could be established again if necessary, began the unfortunate chain of events.
This is not the case of an innocent man finally being vindicated. He is a guilty man who is the unworthy beneficiary of the appellate court using the case to send a sharp rebuke to the prosecutors and lower courts over the delay of justice.
I do not agree.
Perhaps not applicable in this case as I don’t know what sort of evidence was presented when he finally got a trial, but in general there is bound to be a degradation and a decreasing reliability of any eyewitness testimony either for the defense or the prosecution, or eyewitnesses may have even died after seven years. There are also concerns surrounding the validity and chain of possession of any physical evidence after such a long time.
But what I find the most egregious is this:
It was at this point that a strange case took an even stranger turn. In January 2014, Mr. Tigano’s standby lawyer filed a motion asking the court to force her client to take a third competency test. She was concerned, the motion said, that “in refusing to plead guilty and insisting on his right to a trial,” Mr. Tigano was acting “imprudently.” Judge Skretny referred the matter to one of his magistrates, saying, “Whatever time it takes, it takes.”
The magistrate ordered Mr. Tigano to undergo a 15-day examination at Manhattan’s federal jail — and that, too, was delayed when the warden there reported that the jail had a “high volume of cases.” When he finished the test on May 2, 2014, he was once again deemed fit to stand trial. But instead of returning him to Buffalo, the Marshal Service, which often transports prisoners, “seems to have lost track” of him, the order said. He missed two pretrial hearings, which led to more delays.
So insisting on one’s Constitutional right to a trial by jury now makes one crazy? Having a court appointed attorney do this is OK?Then having him deemed fit to stand trial, getting "lost"? How does one "lose" a prisoner?
“This is not the case of an innocent man finally being vindicated. He is a guilty man who is the unworthy beneficiary of the appellate court using the case to send a sharp rebuke to the prosecutors and lower courts over the delay of justice.”
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Yup, bottom line.
Good, well reasoned comment, thanks.