Do you know the difference between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses?
Posted on 11/26/2005 5:10:56 AM PST by JTN
The federal war on medi-pot patients hit a new low last month when Royal Canadian Mounted Police nabbed 38-year-old Steven W. Tuck from his Vancouver, B.C., hospital bed, whisked him to the border, and relinquished him to the custody of U.S. officials, who wanted him on charges related to a 2001 marijuana bust in California. Tuck, an Army vet, uses marijuana to help treat chronic pain associated with injuries he received in a parachuting accident back in the 1980s (reportedly his parachute failed to open during a jump). In 2001, after his marijuana-growing operation in California was busted, Tuck fled to Canada in an effort to avoid prosecution, reports The Washington Post. For four years, he had been navigating the Canadian system, seeking asylum, but was abruptly, and surprisingly, denied that safe harbor last month, says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of NORML.
Police arrested Tuck on Oct. 7 after he checked himself into a Vancouver hospital seeking treatment for prostate problems. According to friend Richard Cowan, Tuck was on a gurney, fitted with a catheter, when RCMP nabbed him, cuffed him, and put him in an SUV bound for the border. "I would not believe it unless I had seen it," Cowan told the Post.
Tuck was turned over to authorities and thrown in jail, where he remained for five days with the catheter in place and with only ibuprofen for his pain – pain for which he'd been prescribed morphine and Oxycontin, among other narcotic drugs, says St. Pierre. He was finally taken to court on Oct. 12. "This is totally inhumane," Tuck's lawyer Douglas Hiatt told the Post. "He's been tortured for days for no reason." U.S. Magistrate James P. Donohue re-leased Tuck, at least temporarily, so that he could be taken to a hospital. Tuck's trip to the hospital was waylaid, however, by law enforcement officials who immediately picked him up on a detainer issued by Humboldt Co., Calif., officials in connection with state drug charges related to his growing medi-pot for him-self and others. (Although Tuck is a California state-registered medi-pot patient – meaning he's authorized under state law to possess and grow marijuana for medical purposes – he was also growing for others. At the time, California law enforcers were working under a patchwork of local regulations that defined who could grow for dispensary purposes and exactly how much each person could grow. Tuck had been busted in two different California jurisdictions for growing more than the local law allowed.)
After a flurry of phone calls, Tuck was taken to the hospital, and since then his attorneys have negotiated his release from jail – with the promise that he'll make his various California state court appearances. Sources tell "Weed Watch" that given Tuck's medical condition and the current state of California's medi-pot laws, his supporters are cautiously optimistic that the state charges against him will be dropped. If that happens, whether Tuck will face any prosecution will be left solely up to the feds, who want him on one count of unlawful flight to Canada to avoid the California charges. Whether the federal narcos will exercise their right to bully the sick remains to be seen.
Do you know the difference between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses?
If you don't smoke pot, then smoking it would make it about 100-110. If you do smoke pot, not smoking it would make it about 160.
Do you know the difference between malum in se and malum prohibitum offenses?>>
Quite well. A lot of people think that pot selling is a malum prohibitum. My dead friends cry from the grave that it is a malum in se.
It's not a crime to be stupid; it's a crime to make someone even stupider than they already are. I have high school classmates from the 70s who are still paying for getting high every day.
well that explains them ... what explains you?
I'm embarrassed for you.
Your circular anecdotal argument is fun...I have no answers for your infinite wisdom towards the evils of MJ...
I prefer the term "jack booted thug"!
Sig heil!
>>
The first person who invokes the Nazis in an argument has just lost the argument.
Then submit.
Okay, attribute this: "you can't handle the truth."
LOL! Tell that to commercial tobacco farmers and cigarette companies!
Grow up, boy. What ever happened to obeying the law until it's changed by your elected representatives?
And you base that on what? Your IQ pretty much remains the same throughout life. Nothing you have said makes the case for keeping marijuana illegal and people who want to smoke it do. And I believe it will continue to be further decriminalized and hopefully some day be completely legal, as it should be. It's a plant, for crying out loud! Prescription drugs are often much, much more dangerous. Where I live in the past year two young guys have died of prescription drug overdoses. Yet not one has died of an overdose of marijuana!
and what's your stand on alcohol and tobacco?
oops...
not one has died of an overdose of marijuana!
>>
Unless they're driving, using heavy equipment, or walking on the street and not paying attention to the light change when they try to cross--the cause of deaths of my three classmates.
Morning, Wheaties, Piss....
Actually there is scientific evidence that marijuana grows brain cells.
Any friends die because of alcohol which is perfectly legal? You need to do things responsibly. From people I've known, alcohol has done much more harm.
As for tobacco, stare decisis--it's been part of our culture for 500 years; we're stuck with it. But I don't smoke.
Alcohol? You won't buy this answer but here it is: My Lord and Savior made some for his first miracle; it can't be more evil than good.
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