Montana Jurors Refuse to Be Complicit in the Drug War

Public opinion is slowly but surely turning against the drug war, with more Americans than ever now saying marijuana ought to be legalized. But you'd never know it from listening to the country's politicians. Indeed, when voters asked President Obama whether he thought legalization was the right prescription for the nation's economic woes, he laughed off the question -- because throwing tens of thousands of people in jail for possessing a benign plant that has never killed anyone is funny!

So rather than wait for politicians to change the laws -- and wait, and wait, and wait -- prospective jurors in Montana chose to do something refreshing: rather than go along with a system and a set of laws they know is unjust, they outright refused to enforce them.

As Gwen Florio reports in the Missoulian, potential jurors in Missoula County last week "made it clear they weren't about to convict anybody for having a couple buds of marijuana." In fact, of 27 potential jurors -- several had already been dismissed for airing philosophical objections to drug laws -- "maybe five raised their hands" when Judge Dusty Deschamps asked if they would be willing to convict someone for possessing a small amount of marijuana, with several openly wondering why the state would waste taxpayer money prosecuting a case involving possession of 1/16th an ounce of pot.

“I thought, ‘Geez, I don’t know if we can seat a jury,’ ” said Deschamps. They couldn't. In the end, unable to find a jury willing to even consider a conviction, prosecutors were ultimately forced to work out a plea deal with the defendant.

And Judge Deschamps thinks that's going to be the norm from here on out.

"I think it's going to become increasingly difficult to seat a jury in marijuana cases," the judge told the Missoulian, "at least the ones involving a small amount."

It's often said that those who enforce bad policies should not be blamed, for they had no role in crafting them; they're just doing their job, after all. But without cops willing to arrest people for nonviolent, victimless crimes -- and without jurors willing to convict them -- the war on drugs couldn't persist, however much politicians in Washington (or Helena) might wish.

And while the oft-repeated establishment refrain is that people must work within the narrow confines of the electoral system to affect social change, that system is clearly broken, with both major political parties committed to maintaining the nation's draconian drug laws no matter the cost in dollars and lives. As throughout history, truly meaningful change comes not when people meekly request it from their leaders, but when they take to the streets and demand it -- or better yet, assume responsibility for affecting it themselves.

When two dozen Montanans decided they couldn't in good conscience convict someone of a nonviolent drug offense, they demonstrated how everyday people can in fact change the world simply by not being a good little cog in the machine. And there's no reason their actions can't be replicated in drug cases across the country, just as juries in the 19th century routinely refused to convict people for the "crime" of aiding runaway slaves. All jurors have the power not just to weigh in on whether someone violated a particular law, but on the merits of the underlying law itself -- a truly democratic check on power that, for obvious reasons, is universally loathed by the powerful.

Writing in Time magazine back in 2008, the writers of HBO series The Wire recommend jurors do just that: when presented with a drug case, vote "to acquit, regardless of the evidence presented," and make it near impossible for prosecutors to pursue drug cases. And they promised that given the chance, they'd do the same.

"Save for a prosecution in which acts of violence or intended violence are alleged, we will — to borrow Justice Harry Blackmun's manifesto against the death penalty — no longer tinker with the machinery of the drug war," they wrote. "No longer can we collaborate with a government that uses nonviolent drug offenses to fill prisons with its poorest, most damaged and most desperate citizens."

Here's hoping more jurors become cognizant of the power they possess and refuse to collaborate with a corrupt criminal justice system that places one out of a hundred of their fellow Americans behind bars. Maybe then their politicians will stop laughing and start paying attention.

Photo Credit: Elyce Feliz