Hard choice may lead to hard time for pot publisher Emery

Marc Emery, the self-styled "Prince of Pot" and the publisher of Cannabis Culture magazine (read earlier posts), has apparently accepted a plea bargain that will allow him to serve a 5-year prison sentence in Canada rather than face the near-certainty of being extradited and serving 20 years in the U.S.

According to a column by Ian Mulgrew in the Vancouver Sun, Emery felt he had no choice if he was possibly to save his co-accused associates and if he was to avoid a draconian sentence under U.S. drug laws.

The three -- Emery, Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams -- were arrested in Canada in August 2005 at the behest of U.S. authorities and charged for mail-order sales of marijuana seeds, even though none had ventured south of the border. Since then, they have been awaiting the extradition hearing, which is scheduled for next week. With the proceedings about to begin, Emery says his lawyer brokered the best deal possible.

Emery is frustrated by the Hobson's Choice he was faced with.

If accepted by the courts in both countries, Emery said he will serve the full term and not be eligible for Canada's lenient get-out-of-jail-early rules. [wrote Mulgrew]

"I'm going to do more time than many violent, repeat offenders," he complained. "There isn't a single victim in my case, no one who can stand up and say, 'I was hurt by Marc Emery.' No one."

The deal he was presented with by his lawyers followed years of cocking a snook at authorities on both sides of the board; everything from a full-press publicity campaign, to running for office in many different jurisdictions to sending his marijuana seed catalogue to MPs every year. It has been a prolonged crusade for the legalization of marijuana and it has angered the anti-drug law-enforcement community. Canadian authorities refused to prosecute Emery, but have executed a warrant against him and his two longtime lieutenants, on behalf of the U.S. authorities.

While he has long seemed to court martyrdom, Emery is by no means sanguine about what is happening. He is angry at local lawyers for failing to come up with a viable defence.

"They had two years and $90,000 and they came up with nothing," he fumed. "John Conroy called me up and said 'take the deal - Michelle will die in jail. Michelle will die in jail!' What can I say to that?"

Rainey, who has a medical exemption to smoke marijuana, has Crohn's disease. Incarceration in the U.S. would deprive her of her medicine, and she fears it could lead to her death....

"It's an ugly situation but Marc expects miracles," Kirk Tousaw, one of the lawyers involved, told me. "There aren't any here."

Here's The Canadian Press coverage of the same story.