Woman Who Sold Dime Bag of Marijuana Given 10 Year Sentence Had No Prior Convictions - Criminal Justice Failure

This is an updated repost from March, 2011.

As someone who grew up in the 1960's and 70's when pot was a common drug used en masse at parties and rock concerts, it's shocking to read about stories such as the one I'm posting today.  I believe this is a huge fail for the criminal justice system.

The American justice system is looking for any excuse to incarcerate Americans these days. As was reported by News Oklahoma, back in 2009 an Oklahoma woman, Patricia Spottedcrow, 25, and her mother Delita Starr, 50, neither with any prior convictions, were hard up for cash.  Spottedcrow was a worker in a senior home facility.  A mother of two, Spottedcrow sold a small dime bag of marijuana to an under cover police officer for $31.

Because two children were in the room when Spottedcrow sold the drugs, a now retired judge of Kingfisher County, Judge Susie Pritchett, thought it worthy of a 10 year prison sentence.  The judge claimed drug dealing was a way of life for the mother and daughter duo in spite of the fact the mother had a job working at a senior care facility.  So let me get this straight, these are hard core drug dealers?   These are the people we train those with criminal justice degrees to arrest?  If they were a major drug operation, you know the government would have had more on them then this case. The fact the government couldn't produce any further evidence of hard core drug dealing makes the judge statements baseless.  It was a first time offense!

The grandmother Delita Starr claimed the cases have been “blown out of proportion” by lawmen and criticizes the sentences as stiff.  “It shocked me and we cried for days,” she said. In addition, Starr was fined $8,600. News Ok.com

So lets get this straight, times are getting tough for many people, and especially those with children, thanks much to the government's wasteful policies, tax payer bailouts, mortgage fraud and billions of dollars in fraudulent war mongering.  A mother makes a mistake in desperation as such and the judge has the audacity to give her a 10 year prison sentence?  People who committed manslaughter have received lesser sentences.  White collar criminals have received far less sentences who embezzled thousands of dollars from their employers as I've denoted on the Fraud Talk Blog in my various posts the past few months.

As I've stated previously throughout this blog, the court system is out-of-whack.  I would like to call on the ACLU to help this poor mother appeal her sentence. This is an example of how police officers and the judicial system work against good common sense to burden tax payers and people who make small first offense mistakes.  Our government is clearly looking for any lame excuse to incarcerate Americans and we must be vigilant to prevent this obscene pension hungry monster from running amok like this.

It's interesting to denote how many hundreds of thousands of dollars tax payers will have to pay to have the luxury of incarcerating Ms. Starr for the next 10 years of her life over a $31 pot transaction. Obviously the government isn't operating in the best interests of the tax payers under these circumstances.  In fact, I beg to say those judges and police officers across the country who are raping tax payers with their obscene pensions can be considered criminal as such. (See Former Police Chief Heather Fong's $277,656 per year Pension - SF Weekly)

How $31 Bag of Pot Gave Mom a 10 Year Prison Sentence. - News OK