IA - Another glorious drug war victory

[Anti Federalist]

God damn every juror that does not vote to acquit this man.



Another glorious drug war victory

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/07/08/another-glorious-drug-war-victory/

By Radley Balko July 8 at 12:27 PM

Perhaps you thought the drug war couldn’t get any crueler . . .



A 48-year-old terminal cancer patient was rushed to the hospital from an Iowa courthouse Monday during his trial over felony charges for growing marijuana he uses as a treatment for his rare condition.

Brian Wellner of Iowa’s Quad-City Times’ first reported that paramedics took Benton Mackenzie, who was expected to take the stand in his trial in Scott County District Court on Monday, from the courtroom to a local hospital after he complained of extreme pain and hallucinations related to his angiosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer of the blood vessels which has produced large lesions on Mackenzie’s skin.

Despite Mackenzie’s deteriorating condition, his trial is expected to be completed Friday, Linda Bowman, the judicial trial court supervisor at the Scott County Clerk’s Office, told The Huffington Post. If Mackenzie is found guilty, he faces at least three years in prison — a punishment that he’s said equates to a death sentence . . .

According to FreeBenton.org, a website documenting Mackenzie’s case, Mackenzie has never cultivated cannabis to sell or distribute, but instead has used the plants for personal medical purposes to make the CBD oil and treat his cancerous tumors.

Iowa’s CBD law protects use of the same marijuana-derived oil that Mackenzie uses, but the law’s narrow focus on treatment of only “intractable epilepsy” does not apply to or legally protect Mackenzie.

District Court Judge Henry Latham ruled in May that Mackenzie is barred from using his condition as a defense in court during his trial as a reason for why he was growing marijuana, the Associated Press reported.

“I’m not allowed to give proof why I was using,” Mackenzie told the Quad-City Times.




So many at fault here — the prosecutor, for cruelly bringing this case in the first place; the legislature, for passing these laws; the judge, for refusing to let the jury hear about Mackenzie’s condition. And of course there are the drug warriors in general, who are willing to tolerate the occasional gunning down of a man in his own home or imprisoning of a suffering, lesion-covered cancer patient in order to demonstrate their opposition to getting high.

[aGameOfThrones]

You can't give your side on why you needed that plant, but your web activity can be use to convict you.

[WM_in_MO]

Get a rope.

[Anti Federalist]

You can't give your side on why you needed that plant, but your web activity can be use to convict you.

Silence, you...

[invisible]

Hopefully this will trigger the same sort of backlash that is going on in OK right now. These cases need to be pushed to the forefront on a national level.

[tod evans]

May that judge and DA both rot in hell...:mad:

[specsaregood]

God damn every juror that does not vote to acquit this man.


I showed up for jury duty last week wanting to be that juror. I and everybody else got sent home -- it seems every single person accepted a plea deal.

[willwash]

Clearly this dangerous maniac needs to be removed. This is your brain on drugs.

[dannno]

You mean the court can ask what kind of porn you prefer to watch, but you can't tell them that the reason you use cannabis is to help keep yourself alive?

That's messed up.

[phill4paul]

May that judge and DA both rot in hell...:mad:

And sent there. Soon.

[heavenlyboy34]

You mean the court can ask what kind of porn you prefer to watch, but you can't tell them that the reason you use cannabis is to help keep yourself alive?

That's messed up.
Welcome to Amerika.

[DamianTV]

Illegal Treatment Saves 8 Yr Old From 20k Seizures Yr
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/07/06/8-year-old-girl-was-having-20000-seizures-a-year-and-was-given-only-a-few-months-to-live-until-she-tried-this-illegal-treatment/

[phill4paul]

Illegal Treatment Saves 8 Yr Old From 20k Seizures Yr
http://www.collective-evolution.com/2014/07/06/8-year-old-girl-was-having-20000-seizures-a-year-and-was-given-only-a-few-months-to-live-until-she-tried-this-illegal-treatment/

The Dogma of Drug Prohibition: Neither Your Life Nor Your Death Belongs to You

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-dogma-of-drug-prohibition-neither-your-life-nor-your-death-belongs-to-you/

[presence]

So many at fault here — the prosecutor, for cruelly bringing this case in the first place; the legislature, for passing these laws; the judge, for refusing to let the jury hear about Mackenzie’s condition. And of course there are the drug warriors in general, who are willing to tolerate the occasional gunning down of a man in his own home or imprisoning of a suffering, lesion-covered cancer patient in order to demonstrate their opposition to getting high.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9bZqpOtQxrU/UQgg8S2WALI/AAAAAAAAF0A/QwlsI1vq_Bs/s400/charliebrown.jpg

[Root]

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9bZqpOtQxrU/UQgg8S2WALI/AAAAAAAAF0A/QwlsI1vq_Bs/s400/charliebrown.jpg
That's so patheticly sad.

I feel bad for this dude. #CrimesAgainstHumanity

[otherone]

I showed up for jury duty last week wanting to be that juror. I and everybody else got sent home -- it seems every single person accepted a plea deal.

http://blogs.phoenixnewtimes.com/valleyfever/blind%20justice.jpg

[rambone]

LONG GROVE, IA — A man with terminal cancer of the blood vessels is being put on trial (along with his whole family) for growing marijuana plants that he used to ease his suffering. If he survives long enough to be convicted, he could face 3 years in prison, which he believes will be a certain death sentence.

As if the situation were not unjust enough, the defense team is being gagged from discussing in front of the jury the man's illness or the reason he was growing the marijuana.

“I’m not allowed to mention anything,” Mackenzie said Thursday, the day Judge Henry Latham’s ruling was filed. “I’m not allowed to give proof why I was using. Now, there is no fair trial.”

On July 7th, Mr. Mackenzie was rushed from the courtroom on a stretcher. The judge didn't allow the jury to see that either.

Terminally-ill man charged with felonies for treating himself with marijuana (http://www.policestateusa.com/2014/benton-mackenzie-marijuana/)


[ Pictured: Benton Mackenzie and his 73-year-old parents, all charged in the so-called drug conspiracy. ]

http://www.policestateusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Benton-Mackenzie-1.jpg (http://www.policestateusa.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Benton-Mackenzie-1.jpg)


How evil must a person be to support this?

[Pericles]

I showed up for jury duty last week wanting to be that juror. I and everybody else got sent home -- it seems every single person accepted a plea deal.

Some day I hope to have that opportunity.

[Anti Federalist]

Annnnnnd GUILTY.

Of course.

Benton MacKenzie will now die in the gulag.

'MeriKa!!!


The Victim Will Die of Torture in a Cage; the Torturers Will Die Peacefully in their Beds

William Norman Grigg

https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/the-victim-will-die-of-torture-in-a-cage-the-torturers-will-die-peacefully-in-their-beds/

Someday, perhaps decades from now, Judge Henry Latham will die, most likely in comfortable surroundings and in the company of his loved ones. If he retains so much as a particle of his conscience, Latham will spend every day until his expiry haunted by the fact that he arranged for the death, through torture, of an innocent, harmless, terminally ill man.

Latham is the robed functionary who presided over the “trial” of Iowa resident Benton MacKenzie, a 48-year-old man who was found guilty of the supposed crime of marijuana possession. MacKenzie has never been found guilty of harming another human being, but because he had two previous drug convictions in his record, he faces mandatory prison time. This means that the terminally ill man – who suffers from a rare and acutely aggressive form of cancer – will die in a cage as the claimed property of the criminal syndicate calling itself the government. In that setting he will be denied access to the medication that has granted him some measure of relief. MacKenzie’s wife, Loretta, and son, Cody, have also been convicted on multiple charges arising from their efforts to help him find relief for the unbearable symptoms of his incurable condition.

Police in Scott County, Iowa stole 71 marijuana plants from MacKenzie’s home in May 2013. Their owner was using them to harvest cannabis oil, which is recognized in Iowa as a legitimate medicine – but only for the treatment of epilepsy. Several weeks prior to the trial, Latham – his demeanor utterly devoid of anything resembling a human quality – ruled that MacKenzie “may not comment on his condition … and may not testify to the medical use of marijuana” during the trial.

Because Latham decreed that the motive of the alleged criminal was “not relevant to the facts of this case,” the defendant was explicitly forbidden to tell the “whole truth, and nothing but the truth.”

This derangement of judicial discretion, and MacKenzie’s principled honesty, greatly simplified the task of Assistant Scott County DA Patrick McAlyea: All the prosecutor had to do was to ask a handful of questions and turn the matter over to a typically incurious jury. Not a single member of that panel questioned the propriety of prosecuting the visibly suffering man, who had to bundle up in a blanket in order to give testimony in his own show trial, and was rushed to the hospital on Monday after being incapacitated by pain.

I expect that at some point in the near future we’ll hear from one or more of the jurors who endorsed the torture-death of Benton MacKenzie and the official persecution of his wife and son. We’ll be told that they were given a difficult, unpleasant, but necessary task – that they had to set aside their sentiments and apply the “law,” as if that term properly applied to a political edict mandating such an outcome.

The jurors who were complicit in this crime probably fit Isabel Patterson’s description of the “good people” of every age and culture who consciously participate in state-licensed cruelty, torture, and murder on behalf of what they have been convinced is “a worthy object.”

The jurors might find some extenuation – a very tiny amount – in the fact that they were conscripted to participate on pain of imprisonment if they refused. This is not true of Latham and McAlyea, who are paid from the proceeds plundered through the evil system that they serve, and should be reminded of the evil that they embody every single day until they depart the mortal realm and join Roland Freisler and Andrei Vyshinsky in hell.

[Anti Federalist]

God damn every juror that does not vote to acquit this man.

I stand by that...

[Anti Federalist]

Update bump

[phill4paul]

I stand by that...

I second it. May they be sent on their way to stand judgement sooner rather than later.

[Anti Federalist]

I second it. May they be sent on their way to stand judgement sooner rather than later.

I probably should have made a new thread for the verdict...

[kcchiefs6465]

I probably should have made a new thread for the verdict...
hxxp://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2014/07/09/dying-iowan-facing-prison-after-drug-conviction/12416687/

hxxp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/08/benton-mackenzie-testimony_n_5568275.html

Comments are overwhelmingly in support of Mackenzie.

Well above 95% from what I've seen.

Hell, it's 100% at the Desmoines Register. And Huffpo surprisingly is close to the same.

[phill4paul]

hxxp://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2014/07/09/dying-iowan-facing-prison-after-drug-conviction/12416687/

hxxp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/08/benton-mackenzie-testimony_n_5568275.html

Comments are overwhelmingly in support of Mackenzie.

Well above 95% from what I've seen.

Hell, it's 100% at the Desmoines Register. And Huffpo surprisingly is close to the same.

Theye don't give one f*ck. What is one gonna do about it?

[Anti Federalist]

hxxp://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/crime-and-courts/2014/07/09/dying-iowan-facing-prison-after-drug-conviction/12416687/

hxxp://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/07/08/benton-mackenzie-testimony_n_5568275.html

Comments are overwhelmingly in support of Mackenzie.

Well above 95% from what I've seen.

Hell, it's 100% at the Desmoines Register. And Huffpo surprisingly is close to the same.

And not one single juror could be found to nullify?

We're either all preaching to each other in an echo chamber, or the government has stitched up the jury pool selection process so tight that they really will seat a jury that would convict a ham sandwich.

[phill4paul]

And not one single juror could be found to nullify?

We're either all preaching to each other in an echo chamber, or the government has stitched up the jury pool selection process so tight that they really will seat a jury that would convict a ham sandwich.

I've yet to hear, in my lifetime, a nullification by a jury. So, to me, that leaves only one choice. The simple fact that it may not be mentioned by the defense is proof enough.

[Anti Federalist]

I've yet to hear, in my lifetime, a nullification by a jury. So, to me, that leaves only one choice. The simple fact that it may not be mentioned by the defense is proof enough.

There was that case up here in NH, where it is completely legal to mention nullification in the defense presentation.

Lemmee see if I can dig that up...Search Fu don't fail me now.

[kcchiefs6465]

And not one single juror could be found to nullify?

We're either all preaching to each other in an echo chamber, or the government has stitched up the jury pool selection process so tight that they really will seat a jury that would convict a ham sandwich.
He was barred from making a proper defense. From what I've read, even his medical complications at trial were hidden from the jurors.

They threaten people. Try the facts, the end.

Regardless, reading the comments doesn't bother my ulcer as much as some of the others (or even at all... it is seriously 97.5% or better in his favor). Some even got it right for the right reasons.

[heavenlyboy34]

SMFH. :( :mad: At least the hapless victims of Soviet persecution knew whatever trials they got were bullshit. Here Boobus Americanus still likes to pretend that there's some justice in The System. Mass delusion. /ramble

[Lucille]

It's a war crime.

Dying Man Deserves Help from Governor, Iowan Demands
http://whotv.com/2014/07/12/dying-man-deserves-help-from-governor-iowan-demands/