Meet One of the Two Million
In the story above we pointed out that the U.S. jail and prison population
has reached a record 2 million. Now meet one of the new breed of prisoner.
On Thursday February 17, Louis E. Covar of Richmond County, Georgia began a
seven-year prison
sentence. His crime: smoking marijuana.
Covar, age 51, is a quadriplegic. He broke his neck July 4, 1967. He has
been in a wheelchair since. He is unable to do more than raise his shoulders.
He suffers from severe and painful muscle spasms. Doctors have prescribed
many different drugs to help him control the spasms and ease the pain, but
Covar says prescription narcotics cloud his mind and disorient him.
Like many other paraplegics and quadriplegics, he discovered that marijuana
effectively relieved the pain and spasms and left his mind clear.
In March 1999, Covar was given
seven years of probation for a felony offense of marijuana possession. At
that time his judge, after hearing Covar's plea for the use of marijuana as
medicine, told Covar: "I'm not telling you to violate the law, but keep it
to yourself. Don't get others involved."
"I was keeping it to myself," Covar insisted after his latest arrest.
That arrest came on January 25, 2000 when six armed Richmond County
officers entered Covar's home and found 36 grams of marijuana. The police
obtained their search warrant based on "anonymous tips" on a telephone drug
hotline. Police claim that, prior to the raid, they stopped and searched
people leaving Covar's home and found marijuana. However, in court they
couldn't answer questions about how many had been stopped or what their
names were. Nor was anyone charged with drug offenses after the alleged
stops.
The same judge who had urged Covar to "keep it to yourself" revoked Covar's
probation, and Covar was ordered to jail to begin serving a seven-year
sentence.
Does everyone feel safer knowing that this dangerous criminal is at last
behind bars?
(Source: The Augusta [Georgia] Chronicle)
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