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Emery does the honorable thing
By Hempology | January 16, 2008
National Post, Canada
15 Jan 2008
Ian Mulgrew
POT ‘PRINCE’ FAVOURS JAIL TIME IN CANADA
VANCOUVER – Marc Emery, Vancouver’s self-styled Prince of Pot, has tentatively agreed to a five-year prison term in a plea bargain over U.S. money laundering and marijuana seed-selling charges.
Facing an extradition hearing Jan. 21 and the all-but-certain prospect of delivery to U.S. authorities, Mr. Emery has cut a deal with U.S. prosecutors to serve his sentence in Canada.
He also hopes it will save his two co-accused –Michelle Rainey and Greg Williams –from prison time.
The three were arrested in August, 2005, at the request of the United States and charged, even though none had ventured south of the border. Since then, they have been awaiting the extradition hearing.
With the proceedings about to begin, Mr. Emery says his lawyer brokered the best deal possible.
If accepted by the courts in both countries, Mr. Emery said he will not be eligible for Canada’s lenient parole rules.
“Basically it promises that I would serve five years in custody on a 10-year sentence in Canada and … this will prevent my co-accused Greg and Michelle, who suffers from Chron’s disease and would not do so well in jail, it prevents them from going to jail. And it will allow me to be in a Canadian prison, for the most part, which is probably preferable for me. At least that’s how it was sold to me,” he said in an interview with Global News yesterday.
“I’m going to do more time than many violent, repeat offenders,” he said in a Canwest News Service interview.
“There isn’t a single victim in my case, no one who can stand up and say, ‘I was hurt by Marc Emery.’ No one.”
The last time Mr. Emery was convicted in Canada of selling pot seeds, in 1998, he was given a $2,000 fine.
“I’ve been belligerent toward the United States. I’m very clear in my political aims. We want to overthrow the U.S. government, we want to thwart the U.S. justice department’s war on drugs,” he said yesterday. “We want to have the DEA abolished.”
From 1998 until his arrest, Mr. Emery even paid provincial and federal taxes as a “marijuana seed vendor” totalling nearly $600,000.
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