A 75-year-old disabled veteran has been sentenced to death due to a mandatory sentence involving marijuana possession. Lee Carroll Brooker grew marijuana plants in his son’s backyard in Alabama for his own medical use. When Alabama officials found out, they arrested Brooker, and sent him to prison for life without the possibility for parole. Vox.com reports: How did this happen? Jesse Wegman explained for the New York Times: [Brooker] said the plants were for his own medicinal use only — he suffers from multiple chronic ailments — and prosecutors did not dispute that. Remarkably, they didn’t have to. Alabama, like three other states, mandates a life without parole sentence for simple possession of small amounts of marijuana by people with certain prior felony convictions — and Mr. Brooker had been convicted of a string of robberies twenty years earlier in Florida, crimes for which he served 10 years in prison. In such a case, the law doesn’t require prosecutors to prove any intent to sell the drug. In Mississippi, 30 grams — barely one ounce — is enough to send someone to prison for the rest of his or her life, with no chance of release. Alabama’s cutoff is slightly [...]
