A Rastafarian musician could smoke medical marijuana in Oregon. But in Mississippi he was sentenced to 8 years in prison.
Driving
through the Mississippi Delta, Patrick Beadle had to offer his respect
to B.B. King.
A Jamaican-born Rastafarian musician from Oregon, Beadle,
46, was on a cross-country trip when he was pulled over in Madison
County, Miss., on the morning of March 7, 2017, Mississippi Today recently reported.
In the car was nearly three pounds of marijuana, which Beadle said he
obtained legally in Oregon with his medical marijuana license to help
treat the chronic pain in both of his knees after years of playing
college basketball.
In Oregon, he might have
faced a civil fine for possessing too much marijuana at one time. But it
was a different story in Madison County, where he was arrested and
charged with trafficking in a controlled substance, an offense with a
maximum sentence of 40 years in prison. In July, an all-white jury took
all of 25 minutes to convict Beadle, who is black.
On Monday, Beadle was sentenced to eight years without the possibility of parole, the Clarion Ledger reported. Under
the Mississippi penal code, a trafficking conviction does not allow
parole or probation. Beadle’s attorneys indicated that they planned to
appeal.
Beadle’s
case highlighted the splintered nature of marijuana penalties across
the United States as more states move toward decriminalization or
legalization while others remain resistant.
During
the course of his trial, prosecutors had conceded that, beyond the
large amount of marijuana stashed in his vehicle, there was no evidence
of trafficking, such as a scale, bags for distribution, large sums of
money or weapons, the Clarion Ledger reported.
As a result, Beadle’s attorneys urged Madison County Circuit Court
Judge William Chapman to sentence Beadle for simple possession instead.
But during Beadle’s sentencing hearing this week, Chapman declined,
saying he must have respect for the jury’s findings.
“Judge,
I’m asking you for mercy for my son,” Beadle’s mother, Tommy Beadle,
said during his hearing, according to the Ledger. She added that it was
part of Rastafarians’ religion to smoke marijuana for medicinal
purposes. “I wouldn’t stand here before you if my son was trafficking in
drugs. As a mother, I’m asking you to please don’t lock him up behind
bars.”
But
while it was enough to earn some leniency, it was not enough to stave
off a prison sentence.
Chapman, after taking the circumstances into
account, wavered from the 10-year mandatory minimum to give Beadle an
eight-year sentence.
“This is not the typical defendant you see,” Randy Harris, Beadle’s trial attorney, told the Ledger. “He is not a drug dealer.”
During
the trial, Beadle’s legal counsel argued that he had been a victim of
racial profiling and denied that he crossed the fog line, which was why
police claimed they had pulled him over in March.
For
this reason, the case also brought renewed attention to an American
Civil Liberties Union lawsuit filed in 2017 against Madison County that claims black people there are targeted aggressively
by the police while going about their everyday lives. The suit claims
that they are regularly subject to unreasonable searches and seizures,
both in their homes and on the streets, in their cars and on foot, in
violation of the Fourth and 14th Amendments.
Oregon
law allows those with medical marijuana cards to possess 24 ounces, or
1.5 pounds, of marijuana at one time. Civil penalties for violating the
statute could cost $500 or more, and under federal law even people who
purchased marijuana legally are not allowed to transfer it across state
lines.
Oregon legalized medical marijuana in
1998 and recreational usage in 2014. According to the National
Conference of State Legislatures, nine states and the District have
legalized small amounts for recreational use, and 30 states and the
District have legalized medical marijuana. By the time Beadle is out of
prison, as his attorney Cynthia Stewart noted, according to Mississippi Today, Mississippi’s laws could even change.
“In five years, this may not even be a crime,” she said.
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