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"I saw another article the other day about someone in Seattle, sentanced to 10 years for attempted possesion of a precurser substance (ergot) for LSD. 10 Years? not for possesion, not for sale, for attempted possesion of a presursor!!"

I'm no expert on manufacturing LSD but it is my recollection that this stuff is extremely difficult to manufacture. A gram of LSD crystal of average purity is enough to make around 10,000 hits of acid, which means each ounce would produce somewhere around 280,000 doses of LSD. LSD is not like meth in that it is easily made in small batches all over America. There are relatively few LSD labs and I have never heard of one that wasn't producing at least thousands of doses at a time.

If they had enough evidence to prove that this guy was obtaining a LSD precursors with the intent to manufacture LSD, you can almost bet that this guy was planning to produce thousands if not hundreds of thousands of doses. Ten years doesn't seem that unreasonable in that light.

"Being a lawyer do you know off hand the average sentence for rape or murder? I think I read it was 3 1/2 years for rape. But damn you get 10 years if you even attempt to posses something that may be used to make drugs. Crazy!"

I do not know the average sentence, but I will say that people often get longer sentences for relatively minor drug crimes than they do for serious violent or sexual crimes. The last few child molesters I have represented have all gotten suspended sentences. I just pled a guy today to 20 years with 10 of those being suspended for one possession of methamphetamine charge, and a separate delivery of methamphetamine and possession charge. He had less than a gram on him both times when he was busted and he only sold a half a gram ($50 dollars worth) to an undercover narc a "friend" of his brought over to his house on two occasions. He's an addict who did some small time dealing. He could have gotten 10 years each on the two possession charges and technically could have gotten 40 to life on each of what should have been two counts of delivery of meth. He got off easy.

This sort of thing happens all the time with drug charges. I have several pending cases where people will get fairly substantial pen time when they finally plead guilty. And almost all will plead guilty because drug cases are so easy to make stick. These are almost always cases where the guy basically gets his hand caught in the cookie jar. The only witnesses in these cases are often police officers who know exactly how to testify to win in court. They have built in credibility, unlike the civilian witnesses who the state must rely on in other types of cases. Most people charged with drug crimes here know they will almost assuredly be found guilty and that our juries here are notorious for handing out ungodly sentences for drug crimes, so very few ever risk a trial. Since the statutory sentences are so high here and since we all know what the likely outcome is when someone goes to court, people tend to take pretty much whatever the prosecutors offer in these drug cases.

Things are different with some of the violent crimes and sex cases. Often the state's witnesses have credibility problems. The players often have a history together and the victims and witnesses often have skeletons in their closets. There are often ulterior motives behind the accuser's story, or at least reasons for bias that we can expose. There are so many variables and so many things that can go wrong at trial. The prosecutors still win most of these cases, but they are aware of the increased possibility that they might lose and be embarrassed in the newspaper so they'll often offer much better deals in these much more serious cases. It's not fair but that's just the way things go.

Personally, I'd rather see the really dangerous people locked up a lot longer than the drug addicts caught selling a little or even cooking a little meth. I'd rather these people be forced into strict, regimented drug court programs where they will be drug tested so often they won't be able to cheat for long without getting caught and going to jail. A strict drug court program that lasts at least a year or more where these people receive counseling and sometimes some inpatient treatment and are forced to leave the stuff alone or suffer increasing jail sentences works better than prison. It's rare that I see straight prison make anyone a better person, but I've seen a lot come out a lot worse. A strict, well run drug court won't have anywhere close to a 100% success rate either, but it will help substantial numbers of people learn to live in their community without using drugs and it's a hell of a lot cheaper than warehousing these people in prison. Besides, I think that when drug using peers watch these people start looking better, putting on weight and putting their lives in order, it gives them hope that hey can do it too and inspires some to at least think about changing their ways.