In today’s WaPo:
A disabled black veteran drove through Alabama with medical marijuana. Now he faces five years in prison.
You see, medical marajuana is legal in Arizona, but not in Alabama. So, if you are a veteran with PTSD and major pain, you are much better of with a drug that you can hide, than with one that has an odor. Especially if you are black.
The first mistake that left Sean Worsley facing a five-year prison sentence was choosing to stop for gas in tiny Gordo, Ala. The next was blasting music at the pump loudly enough to catch the attention of a local police officer.
And the third error was letting Officer Carl Abramo, who said he smelled marijuana in Worsley’s car, to search the vehicle.
What was the worst that could happen? The marijuana in his back seat had been legally prescribed to him in Arizona. Worsley, an Iraq War veteran with a traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), had used the substance for years to calm his nightmares and soothe his back pain.
Yet unbeknown to him, even his legal prescription was illegal in Alabama. The worst-case scenario was far more severe than Worsley could have ever imagined: a years-long legal fight that plunged him into homelessness, cost him thousands of dollars in legal fees and recently concluded in a 60-month prison sentence.
“I feel like I’m being thrown away by a country I went and served for,” Worsley wrote in a letter from the Pickens County Jail to Alabama Appleseed, a criminal justice organization that recently published a detailed account of his case. “I feel like I lost parts of me in Iraq, parts of my spirit and soul that I can’t ever get back.”
Besides painting a damning picture of Alabama’s criminal justice system, Worsley’s tale underscores the wildly inconsistent legal landscape across states on marijuana. While recreational use of the drug is legal in 11 states and the District of Columbia and medicinal use is allowed in 33 jurisdictions, the substance is entirely banned in Alabama.
Not so in Arizona, where the substance has been legal for medical purposes since 2011. Worsley, a Purple Heart recipient who spent five years in the military, including a 14-month deployment to Iraq, used his legal prescription to relieve his short-term memory issues, depression and chronic pain, according to the Appleseed report….
Now struggling with homelessness, he failed to pay $250 months later to renew his medical marijuana card. When he was arrested at a traffic stop in Arizona last August, according to the Alabama Political Reporter, police found him in possession of the substance without a valid medical marijuana card.
Pickens County demanded that he be extradited back to Alabama — and made Worsley pay for it, more than doubling the $3,800 he already owed in court costs. In April, the Pickens County judge sentenced Worsley to five years in prison.
Worsley is appealing the sentence. But he is also back in Pickens County Jail, waiting for a spot to open up in the Alabama prison system.
You see a big part of the problem, right? No, hard right, as in the judges that dominate large chunks of this country, with help from local racists and Moscow Mitch.
We so much need to get the back justice, from those who made it so much worse.
And, properly treating our damaged ex-military members might be nice for once as well.
I cannot wait to Make America America again—and then start working toward greatness, an inch at a time. Stories like this make me so depressed.