11 Reasons We Need Drug Law Reform Now

The United States is without a doubt the greatest country in the world...at incarcerating its citizens.  With 5 percent of the world's population, we keep 25 percent of the world's prisoners in our jails.    How do we do it?  We pass "war on drugs" laws that criminalize non violent offenses and drug addiction. 

Alternet features a list of the top 10 harshest sentences for marijuana in the U.S., put together by Kristen Gwynne.  In the spirit of Halloween, it's absolutely shocking.  Here are a few of the ten:

• Patricia Spottedcrow learned firsthand how a small-time pot bust can completely derail an offender’s life. A $31 pot sale got her a stunning 12-year prison sentence.
• Jonathan Magpie, paralyzed from the neck down after being hit by a drunk driver at the age of four, was charged with marijuana possession in 2004 after cops found a joint and a loaded gun in a vehicle in which he was the passenger.  This was a death sentence, he died in jail with no ventilator to assist his breathing.
• John Knock received two life sentences plus 20 years behind bars for his alleged involvement in marijuana trafficking from Pakistan and Lebanon to the United States and Canada in the mid-'90s.

Number 11 is Hemedah Hasan.  Hamedah was indicted and convicted of conspiracy to distribute crack cocaine. Despite her previously clean record, her sentencing judge found his hands tied by a combination of mandatory minimums for crack cocaine and the then-mandatory sentencing guidelines based on those minimums. Hamedah received a life sentence.




Her sentence was later reduced to 27 years, but had she been convicted of an offense involving powder cocaine, she would no longer be in prison at all. Her judge has publicly urged that her sentence be commuted and the ACLU last year filed a petition asking President Obama to do so.