Pubdate: Wed, 18 Oct 2006
Source: Willamette Week (OR)
Copyright: 2006 Willamette Week
Contact:  http://www.wweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/499
Author: Ian Demsky
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)

ONE TOKE OVER THE LINE

A Mistake By The Oregon Legislature Makes Selling Pot The 'King' Of Drug Crimes

Here in liberal Portland, marijuana's practically legal, right, dude? 
Hell, pot-smoking grandpa Don DuPay got more votes last spring in his 
run for Multnomah County sheriff than County Chair Diane Linn got in 
her reelection bid. And backers of a measure that would have made 
marijuana the 'lowest priority' for local law enforcement came close 
to getting that proposal on the city's November ballot.

So how can it be that last year, the state Legislature accidentally 
made selling pot the king of basic drug crimes in Oregon--and the 
only one where sentencing guidelines for drug offenses recommend 
prison for first-time offenders.

Senate Bill 907, a bipartisan effort to beef up penalties for 
manufacturing meth and make it easier to track different drug crimes, 
inadvertently lumped in the statute for 'unlawful delivery of 
marijuana' with others setting stiffer sentences for drug crimes 
committed within 1,000 feet of a school.

'This was a meth bill,' says state Sen. Ginny Burdick. 'It was not 
our intention to elevate any of the penalties for marijuana.' Burdick 
chairs the Judiciary Committee, which sponsored the 30-page bill with 
the inadvertent changes.

There are currently 23 people in Oregon prisons who were convicted of 
unlawful delivery of marijuana.

As a practical matter, nothing has actually changed in Multnomah 
County, says Senior Deputy District Attorney Mark McDonnell, who 
heads the county's drug prosecution unit. Even large busts rarely 
result in prison time unless the offender has a long criminal history, he says.

'We couldn't argue with a straight face that the Legislature actually 
intended to make this a more serious crime than the delivery of 
heroin or methamphetamine,' says McDonnell, who first noticed the 
gaffe over the summer. 'This is not a conspiracy by the White House 
or drug czar.'

The county's presiding judge, Dale Koch, says he doesn't know of any 
buildingwide directive to ensure judges use their discretion to give 
light sentences. Circuit Court Judge Julie Frantz, who oversees 
criminal cases, was attending a conference and could not be reached 
for comment.

Still, Portland defense lawyer William Walsh says the specter of the 
harsher sentence arose at one of his recent trials. The case went a 
different direction, but Walsh says it can still come up again in 
other cases. 'It may be a typographical error, but it's still the 
law,' he says.

And, Walsh points out, legislators may hesitate to slash criminal 
penalties, even based on a typo, because it might make them seem soft on crime.

During the 2007 session beginning in January, the Legislature will 
have to make a statutory change if it wants to fix the error, 
lowering the pot penalty back to a 'level four' on the sentencing 
grid from its current position as a more severe 'level eight' charge, 
Burdick says.

But she says that's not a certainty because 'we just have to worry 
that somebody will come in and say, 'Let's put them all at an eight."
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MAP posted-by: Beth Wehrman