No allocation of valuable resources such as manpower, equipment, or jail space is beyond the reach of a police agency dedicated to crushing and fleecing anyone who comes close to pot. In my state, Washington, local law enforcement agencies think nothing of sending a dozen officers, and a large number of vehicles, including planes and helicopters, on a week long foray across the state and even into Oregon, just to bust a couple of pounds of pot. I have recently seen highly sophisticated investigations, utilizing National Guard airplanes and helicopters, gps locators placed on vehicles, detailed investigation discovery packages involving pounds rather than pages of investigative materials. Despite the fact that money spent on domestic marijuana doesn’t reach the hands of terrorists, if recent cases this writer has seen are the example, marijuana interdiction in 2004 prioritizes marijuana right up there with terrorism. Stomping on the ants while the rhinos come over the walls? Maybe so. Meanwhile in many counties in Washington, methamphetamine accounts for 75% of all referrals to Children’s Protective Services. But no matter the relative harm, marijuana arrests are climbing towards one million a year – more than all other drugs and violent crimes put together. And, despite the clear fact that the war on marijuana is a footless fraud, no end appears in sight. So you’d better get ready.

Marijuana cases are different. You and your lawyer need to understand that marijuana prosecutions are different from any other criminal prosection for at least four reasons: First, no other type of law violation has spurred police to develop such intrusive investigative techniques or to habitually bully and terrorize an entire class of harmless citizens; second, when you fight a marijuana prosecution it is the defendant, not the government who occupies the moral high ground; and third, when you try a pot bust case, the only victim in the courtroom is the defendant, which means that fourth Marijuana cases make good appellate law because the court can often free the defendant on constitutional grounds without turning loose a dangerous criminal.

They are also different because America’s fastest growing indoor hobby/cottage industry has provoked law enforcement to respond aggressively with intrusive investigation techniques – some employing space-age technology and many bringing the eyes, ears and noses of law enforcement into the home, a place American citizens have long considered to be at the hard core of the right to privacy. Remarkably, enforcement against indoor cultivation has become an issue of primary importance now that the Drug Enforcement Agency and local law enforcement have prioritized the “war” on domestic marijuana. In the State of Washington, for example, where the large majority of the marijuana, Washington's number one cash crop, is grown indoors, a well-publicized $5000 reward awaits informants who will turn in marijuana farms. Remarkably, no advertised reward encourages those who turn in murderers, rapists, robbers, child molesters or criminals who prey on the vulnerable. Even dealers of the harder drugs have no advertised bounty on their heads. How can this be? Marijuana is not a dangerous drug. Its use is not a danger to society. Extreme measures to enforce the marijuana laws are not justified.

The resultant pressures on the privacy of the home are difficult to reconcile with traditional American values such as tolerance, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. But, privacy is a fragile right. No one ever got elected for defending it. It comes as no surprise that it retreats in the face of three decades in which everyone has indulged the drug warriors. More alarmingly, however, as the following discussion will explain, even the usually robust rights of private property are no longer secure. The entire U.S. Constitution has retreated in the face of the assault. Any defense attorney – for that matter, any reasonably industrious federal agent – knows that for those who depend for protection upon the U.S. Constitution, few places remain that are truly private. In many state courts, however, there is room for creative and aggressive response to the war on privacy. Indoor marijuana gardens are a relatively new phenomenon. Many of the intrusions they provoke have not yet been tested under state constitutional theories. Where there has been a test, states have often found enhanced protection in their own constitutions. No defense attorney practicing in state court can afford to overlook those few remaining opportunities to have someone in a robe say the word “suppressed.”

Provided by:

The Law Office of Jeffrey Steinborn
3161 Elliott Avenue., Suite 340
Seattle, WA 98121
(206) 622-5117

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