Teen faces life in prison over hash brownies

[bananas]

Source: Yahoo News

'They’ve weighed baked goods in this case. It ought to be a misdemeanor,' lawyer says

A Texas teenager is facing five years to life in prison for allegedly baking and selling pot brownies.

Jacob Lavoro, a 19-year-old from Round Rock, Texas, was charged with a first degree felony because he used hash oil instead of marijuana, allowing the state to weigh the brownies as a whole — including the sugar, cocoa, butter and other ingredients — to calculate the weight of the drugs.

Police searched Lavoro's apartment, where they allegedly found 660 grams — or 1.45 pounds — of baked goods (six bags of cookies, nine bags of brownies) along with 16 ounces of marijuana and $1,675 in cash.

"I’ve been doing this 22 years as a lawyer and I’ve got 10 years as a police officer and I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Jack Holmes, Lavoro’s attorney, told KHON-TV. “They’ve weighed baked goods in this case. It ought to be a misdemeanor."

<snip>

Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/life-in-prison-pot-hash-brownies-texas-150807587.html

[Orrex]

1. Well, that seems reasonable

[billhicks76]

13. Not Unusual

Maybe life is but there are thousands of people doing 5 years for possessing one plate of pot cookies or brownies. Many in Illinois, Indiana, Utah, Wisconsin etc. the fact that this exists means we are not a civilized country. We are more like oppressive regimes in the old USSR, Turkey and the Middle East. We used to jump at horror stories from those countries but we have way worse here with the out of control drug war, police shootings and NSA surveillance. Obama could do something but curiously he seems to afraid. Of what I don't know.

[blkmusclmachine]

2. There's some good ol down home Texas style conservative Republican justice for you, right there.

[immoderate]

4. Credit where it's due...

--imm

[marble falls]

3. Williamson County is fucked up. Austin in mainly in Travis with a little NE tip in Williamson .....

one side of the street an oz of pot will get you a ticket for $250. On the Williamson side a roach will get you a minimum one night in jail and a $1,000 or so in costs plus lawyer.

This is the county that the DA railroaded a guy to death row for twenty years before justice caught up. The DA went to jail.

[Comrade Grumpy]

9. I always tried to avoid Williamson County. Austin was a different world.

[marble falls]

19. Austin mostly ain't Texas.

[Comrade Grumpy]

31. That was part of its charm.

[catrose]

20. Amen

can't go get links now, but a deputy sheriff who abused a girl from age 7 to 15 got deferred adjudication, not a day in jail.
A woman who had an affair with a 16-year-old boy got 30 years in jail.
And now a kid who baked brownies gets...

Insanity.

Last year I served on a grand jury, and in drug cases they instructed us about "so many grams means possession w/intent to distribute" and so on. I cannot imagine not calling bs on this as a grand juror. Even w/o screwed up stuff like this, the laws are wacky and punish people way beyond their harm to society.

[marble falls]

22. I am ashamed of 90% of our elected officials, too.

[YOHABLO]

5. This is complete insanity. It just keeps getting worse and worse. Is it time to leave the U.S.?

Uruguay is looking better and better.

[Comrade Grumpy]

10. Or just move to Colorado or Washington. Or, come November, maybe Alaska, Oregon, and DC, too.

Those three states should get legalization initiatives on the ballot, and they should win.

[FrodosPet]

16. There's A Lot More To Uruguay's Legal Weed Than The $1-A-Gram Price

They need to quit bogarting those joints (my friends) and pass it over to non-citizens!

------------------------------------------------

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/uruguay-marijuana-regulat_n_5276097.html

~ snip ~

The law contains other limitations. Those who purchase marijuana under the new law must be either Uruguayan citizens or permanent residents, a move aimed at limiting international weed tourism. The regulations that went into effect Tuesday prohibit advertising for weed.

The government will sell it. The Uruguayan government plans to sell clones of approved weed plants, according to AP, in order to keep track of marijuana distribution. It will be a crime under the new law to possess marijuana that doesn’t have the government weed’s genetic markers.

Uruguayan President José Mujica said the restrictions were needed to keep the legalization of marijuana from undermining public health.

“We aren’t going to promote smokefests, bohemianism, all this stuff they try to pass off as innocuous when it isn’t,” Mujica told The Associated Press. “They’ll label us reactionaries. But this isn’t a policy that seeks to expand marijuana consumption. What it aims to do is keep it all within reason, and not allow it to become an illness.”

~ snip ~

------------------------------------------------

And according to this poll, the Uruguayan people are opposed to legalization by 2 to 1

http://www.factum.edu.uy/node/1080

Any kind of significant right turn in Uruguay could easily turn the list of authorized smokers into a round-em-up list.

[Sunlei]

24. "bohemianism"...Some group must be reusing the old USA playbooks & setting their Gov up for

private 'for profit' prisons.

[FrodosPet]

26. And this is the left-leaning leader that supports legalization saying this!

The vote was 16 to 13. And a public opinion poll in Uruguay is anti-legalization by a ratio of 61% to 29%.

Hopefully legalization can reduce organized crime quickly and visibly enough that the supporters of recriminalization cannot get their likely referendum passed.

[Comrade Grumpy]

30. Mujica is an old leftist, not a hipster. But he is a pragmatist.

He doesn't even like pot, but he likes the black market even less.

[sakabatou]

6. WTF?!

[woo me with science]

7. Have we had enough yet?

[appal_jack]

8. It OUGHT to be entirely legal.

It OUGHT to be entirely legal. After plenty of readings of the US Constitution, I still can't find a grant of power to the state allowing it to ban plants.

-app

[lib87]

11. But I can walk into Walmart

and buy liquor or moonshine (everclear) which is a whole heckuva lot more deadly than some space cakes?

Makes sense to me too.

[olddad56]

12. destroying the kids life over this is a tad inhumane.

[billhicks76]

14. A Tad?

Do people here really understand what a destroyed life is? If this was happening to right wingers they would be going after the authorities with their hallowed automatic weapons. We need to end the war on cannabis. It's been destroying real filies forever.

[nilram]

15. Texas. Oh.

Poor kid.

[AnalystInParadise]

17. Would you like to expound

on your thoughts on Texas. We Texas residents love it when people do that.

[Liberaltalker]

18. Texas...

[link:<a href=".html" target="_blank"><img src="" border="0" alt=" photo thewrongplace_zps2d235d03.gif"/></a>|

[byronius]

21. Well, that'll teach him

about the insanity of certain cultural ideologies.

Ruining a kid's life and creating a traumatized, damaged adult who has trouble finding a job because of prison record over a pot brownie just helps our society grow in so many ways.

Parts of Texas are Hell. And yes, I was born there, and have lived there.

Parts are awesome. Other parts are still dangerous to drive through with long hair or red eyes. And I have personal experience.

[Sunlei]

23. Thats Texas. Lots of people in prisons, many for life under the Texas 3 strike laws.

[Beacool]

25. Well, it's TX......

Poor kid, I hope that the attorneys can get the charge lowered to a misdemeanor. This is crazy!!!

[Jefferson23]

27. Outrageous and so damn cruel. n/t

[PumpkinAle]

28. Oh yes definitely a hardened criminal

I mean what could this lead to invading another country and having countless people killed - oh wait that was another Texan who drank "legal" alcohol and committed murder thousands of times of over.

This is not getting tough of crime, this is pure grand-standing by the prosecution.

[chrisa]

29. He'll make a private prison some money.

You know, the one that has this particular town in its pocket.