The Drug War Chronicle has written several times about the trials and tribulations of medical marijuana patient Will Foster, who is currently sitting in once again in an Oklahoma prison, jerked back from the new life he had made in California by a vindictive and corner-cutting Oklahoma parole bureaucracy.

But while Foster certainly appears to have been the victim of vengeful parole department employees, who charged him with ficticious parole violations--causing him to be locked up in a California jail for 16 months before being extradited back to Oklahoma--the parole board itself has done the right thing. In a hearing last week, the board rejected the charges against Foster and recommended he be released.

But there's one more step. Under Oklahoma law, the governor signs off on all parole board decisions. This is where you can help. There is still time to write or call the governor to encourage him to follow the parole system's recommendation and FREE WILL FOSTER. Please ask that Will be given time served and set free to return to his family in California.

Please call Gov. Brad Henry's office at 405-521-2342

Or fax a letter to 405-521-3353.

Make sure you identify Will as Will Foster, #25271. The argument is simple: Will Foster is a non-violent offender who has served enough time and plans to leave the state to settle in California. Keeping him in prison or on parole in Oklahoma serves neither justice nor public safety and is not worth Oklahoma taxpayers' money.

Read the link above to get informed before you call or write if you need to. Be polite and to the point. Will Foster, who never did anything to anybody, has been in the clutches of Oklahoma justice for 15 years for growing some plants to ease his pains. He's almost free. You can help open that prison door. Do it.

Will Foster’s nightmarish saga continues. Foster, you may recall, is the medical marijuana patient who was sentenced to 93 years in prison for growing a few plants in 1997. Thanks in no small part to a publicity campaign by Stopthedrugwar.org, Foster’s sentence was eventually reduced to 20 years, and he was paroled to California.

After three years on parole, California officials decided Foster no longer needed supervision, but Oklahoma officials disagreed. When Foster was arrested in California for driving on an Oklahoma drivers’ license, Oklahoma issued a parole violation extradition warrant, but Foster filed a successful writ of habeas corpus to quash that warrant.

Then, last year, Foster was arrested on bogus marijuana cultivation charges--those California charges were dropped after he spent a year in jail--and Oklahoma again sought his extradition as a parole violator. Oklahoma officials took Foster from the Sonoma County Jail in California, and he is now residing in prison in Oklahoma until 2011--or 2015, as Oklahoma parole officials are now claiming.

In Oklahoma, the governor ultimately decides on whether to revoke parole or not. Foster had an administrative hearing Tuesday, which unsurprisingly found he had indeed violated his parole (by refusing to sign paperwork agreeing that his sentence had been extended). An executive hearing will take place sometime in the next one to three months, then that decision goes to the governor for approval or rejection.

Foster and his supporters are urging the public to write to the parole board to ask it to recommend pardoning him or commuting his sentence, and to write or call the governor asking for the same thing. Key points:

* Foster is a non-violent medical marijuana patient seriously ill with rheumatoid arthritis;

* Foster plans to return to California and never set foot in Oklahoma again;

* The after-the-fact extension of his sentence from 2011 to 2015 is unfair and unwarranted;

* It does not make fiscal or budgetary sense for the state of Oklahoma to spend thousands of scarce public dollars to incarcerate Foster again for this non-violent offense.

I just spoke to the parole office in Oklahoma, and they don’t yet have the information in their system required to send letters to parole board members, so instead, fax your concise, respectful letters to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board at (405) 602-6437. Mention Foster’s full name, William Joseph Foster, and his prisoner number, ODOC #252271.

Fax your letter to Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry at (405) 521-3353 or, better yet, call his office at (405) 521-2342. In either case, mention Foster’s full name and prisoner number, and be polite.

Drug War Chronicle will continue following Foster’s saga. Look for a feature article on the latest twists and turns on Friday.

Medical marijuana patient Will Foster is behind bars in Oklahoma after being picked up last Friday by Oklahoma law enforcement officials.

Medical marijuana patient Will Foster is en route to prison in Oklahoma after being picked up Friday by Oklahoma law enforcement officials. He had been held at the Sonoma County Jail in Santa Rosa, California, for the past 15 months as he fought bogus marijuana cultivation charges there--he was a registered patient with a legal grow--and, after the California charges were dropped, on a parole violation warrant from the Sooner State.

Foster had been arrested and convicted of growing marijuana in Oklahoma and sentenced to 93 years in prison in the 1990s. After that draconian sentence focused national attention on his case, he was eventually resentenced to 20 years in prison. He later won parole and moved to California, where he served three years on parole and was discharged from parole by California authorities.

That wasn't good enough for vindictive Oklahoma authorities, who wanted to squeeze more years out of Foster. He refused to sign Oklahoma paperwork requiring him to return there to serve out the remainder of his sentence. He also refused to sign paperback that extended his original service. Oklahoma authorities issued a parole violation warrant, and the governors of both states signed it.

Foster had sought to block extradition by filing a writ of habeas corpus--he had won a similar writ against Oklahoma earlier--but that effort failed on Friday, and Oklahoma authorities were there to whisk him away. Foster is scheduled to be held at the Tulsa County Jail before being assigned to a prison in the Oklahoma gulag.

Efforts by Foster supporters to secure his release continue and are now focusing on Oklahoma parole authorities and the state governor. For more information about the Foster case, see our Chronicle story here and at Ed Rosenthal's blog here.

Drug War Chronicle will continue to follow the Foster case. Look for a feature article next week.

You remember Will Foster: The Oklahoma arthritis sufferer who was sentenced to 93 years in prison for growing a closetful of pot plants, eventually got his sentence reduced to 20 years, got paroled to California, and finished parole there, but whom neanderthal Oklahoma parole officials want to drag back to that benighted state to extract yet another pound of flesh.

Will has been sitting in the Sonoma County Jail for 16 months now after a bogus bust of his legitimate medical marijuana garden. The local charges were eventually dropped, but Foster remains behind bars and deprived of his liberty because of Oklahoma's pending parole violation extradition warrant.

The extradition warrant has been signed by the governors of both California and Oklahoma, but either could end this tragedy by rescinding his signature. Those are the two obvious political pressure points. Will has fended off extradition by filing a writ of habeas corpus (he won an earlier one), but that means he stays in jail in California for as long as it takes to resolve that--unless one of those governors acts.

I wrote about his plight here.

Ed Rosenthal has organized a campaign to Free Will Foster. Go there and do what he asks.

So, anyway, I went to see Will last night. It was my second attempt to visit him. I was turned away a few nights ago because I was wearing steel-tipped shoes. Who knew? Well, I didn't see him last night, either. After his girlfriend, Susie Mueller, and I arrived at 7:15 to get in line for the 7:30 sign-in for the visits set for 8:15, then waited before getting in line for the actual 8:15 visit, the whole place went into lockdown. We waited awhile to see if the lockdown would be quickly lifted, but it wasn't, so we left. I'll try again next week. Sheesh, it's starting to feel like it's as hard to break into one of these joints as it is to break out.

For most of this decade, Bob Newland has been the voice of marijuana law reform in South Dakota.

I wrote about the Will Foster case in the Chronicle last week. Here's a brief summary: Foster had a small medical marijuana garden in Tulsa that was raided in 2005. Two years later, he was sentenced to an insane 93 YEARS in prison. Only after a publicity campaign in which DRCNet played a vital role was he resentenced to merely 20 years, and after being twice denied parole, he was paroled to California.

Although Oklahoma thought Foster should be on parole until 2011, California decided he didn't need any more state supervision and released him from parole after three years. That wasn't punitive enough for Oklahoma. Although Foster had left the Bible Belt state behind with no intention of ever returning, Oklahoma parole officials issued a parole violation warrant for his extradition to serve out the remainder of his sentence. When Foster had to show ID in a police encounter, the warrant popped up, and he was jailed. Desperate, Foster filed a writ of habeas corpus and won! A California judge ruled the warrant invalid, and Foster was a free man again.

But not for long. It's thirst for vengeance still unslaked, the state of Oklahoma issued yet another parole violation warrant for Foster's extradition because he refused to agree to an extension of his parole to 2015--four years past the original Oklahoma parole date. Then he got raided in California, thanks to bad information from an informant with an axe to grind. Foster had a legal medical marijuana grow, but it took a hard-headed Sonoma County prosecutor more than a year to drop charges, and Foster has been jailed the whole time.

Now that the charges have been dropped, Foster still isn't free because Oklahoma still wants him back. Extradition warrants have been signed by the governors of both states, and he was days away from being extradited in shackles when he filed a new habeas writ this week. Filing the writ will stop him from being sent back to Oklahoma, but it also means he's stuck in jail for the foreseeable future. The writ is a legal strategy; his real best hope is to get one of those governors to rescind the extradition order.

You can help. Click on this link to find out how to write the governors. I think a campaign of letters to the editor of Oklahoma papers might help, too. Those letters might ask why Oklahoma wants to continue to spend valuable tax dollars to persecute a harmless man whose only crime was to try to get some relief for his ailments--and who has no intention of ever returning there.

...So, anyway, I went to see Will at the Sonoma County Jail Saturday night. But I didn't get in. The steel-toes in my footwear set off the metal detector, and I quickly found out such apparel was a security risk. Who knew? I'll go back later this week. I guess I'll wear sandals.

In the meantime, there are letters waiting to be written. Keyboard commandos, saddle up!

From the 1970s until 2000, anyone caught possessing, distributing, or producing heroin in Louisiana was eligible for a prison sentence of life without parole.

American states spent about $52 billion on corrections last year, the vast majority of it on prisons, and that's not smart, the Pew Center on the States said in a report released Monday.

For more than 35 years, New York state has had the dubious distinction of having some of the country's worst drug laws, the Rockefeller drug laws passed in 1973.

Join the New York Campaign for Telephone Justice at a special meeting this month!

Susan Wright, President of the Coalition for Parole Restoration, whose husband has gone before the parole board 6 times, will answer questions about the current parole process, present her work to change the parole system, and let you know how you can get involved.

For Immediate Release: May 17, 2007 Contact: Naomi Long (202) 669-6071 or Laura Jones: (202) 425-4659

Lawmakers, judges, and advocates rebuke Gov. O’Malley’s veto of sentencing reform bill;

O’Malley “clinging to the failed policies of the past” in a “lapse of leadership”

Coalition vows to continue educating O’Malley, promoting treatment instead of prisons

Annapolis—A coalition of advocates, law enforcement officials, drug treatment providers and policy experts today denounced Governor O’Malley’s veto of a bill that would have provided the possibility of parole for non-violent drug offenders. The sentencing reform bill, HB 992, was one of the only bills vetoed by O’Malley, despite its support from the legislature, the coalition, and the editorial pages of the Washington Post and Baltimore Sun.

“The veto is a disappointing mistake,” said Justice Policy Institute executive director Jason Ziedenberg. “Instead of taking a baby step in the right direction towards treatment instead of prison, O’Malley is stubbornly clinging to the failed tough on crime policies of the past. The governor failed to show leadership and vision in this decision.”

States across the country have taken steps to reform ineffective mandatory sentencing laws that remove discretion to consider the individual facts of the case. Newly-elected Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick (D) recently called for wide ranging mandatory minimum sentencing reform. Newly-elected New York Governor Elliot Spitzer added language in his budget for a prison closure commission, and is considering a bill to further reform the state’s Rockefeller Drug Laws. Under the comparatively modest Maryland reform, individuals convicted of a 10-year sentence for a nonviolent drug reform would have been eligible for, but not guaranteed, parole. Individuals convicted of violent crimes would serve the full 10-year sentences.

“Governor O’Malley has put Maryland out of step with other states that are moving in the direction of smarter, more effective sentencing policies,” said Naomi Long, Director of the Drug Policy Alliance District of Columbia Metropolitan Area project. “This veto was a lapse of leadership, and hurts Maryland’s efforts to implement the kinds of real reforms that would actually make a difference.”

The state of Maryland spends millions of dollars each year incarcerating nonviolent drug offenders, the vast majority of whom would be better served by drug treatment options. A recent report by the Justice Policy Institute found that Maryland's sentencing laws disproportionately affect communities of color and may be the least effective, most expensive way to promote public safety.

“The fight for more effective and fair sentencing policies isn’t over,” said Delegate Curtis Anderson (D-Baltimore), a sponsor of the legislation. “Maryland voters want more fair and effective sentencing policies. We will keep working with the Governor to implement those reforms.”

The Partnership for Treatment, Not Incarceration supported HB 992, and is a consortium of organizations and individuals including members of faith communities, public health and drug treatment professionals, public defenders, judges, police and other law enforcement.

For more information about bill, or to interview spokespeople who can respond, contact Naomi Long (202)669-6071. To learn more about sentencing reform work in Maryland, visit: www.justicepolicy.org and www.drugpolicy.org .

The International Community Corrections Association (ICCA), The Sentencing Project, and the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office and National Prison Project, in collaboration with the Justice Roundtable Reentry Coalition invite you to a Congressional Staff Briefing: "Can Probation and Parole Supervision Reduce Recidivism?" hosted by Representative Bobby Scott, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.

In this update:

1. IDPI helps attain a sentencing reform victory in Maryland
2. IDPI mobilizes 50 clergy to support a medical marijuana bill in Illinois and generates substantial media coverage
3. Troy Dayton moves on, Tyler Smith is promoted to associate director

[Courtesy of the Sentencing Project]

Dear Friend:

The Sentencing Project has released a new study reporting growing momentum for sentencing reform designed to limit prison population growth and reduce ballooning corrections budgets in the United States.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics annual report on use of the criminal justice system has come out, and there is landmark grim news: There are now seven million people under criminal justice control -- in prison or jail, on probation, or or parole -- in the United States.

I am having trouble finding a link to the report -- maybe it's not posted yet -- but Phil will be covering this in Drug War Chronicle tonight. So check back for more details on the bad news...

The new Congress has huge implications for FedCURE and its two legislative initiatives: H.R. 3072 (Federal Parole) and H.R. 1704/S.1934 (The Second Chance Act). As you may know, FedCURE authored H.R. 3072 and its predecessor H.R 4036. H.R. 3072 is a bill to revive the system of parole for Federal prisoners and is our champion cause. The bill has been stuck in committee in the 109th Congress and we anticipate having to reintroduce the bill in the 110th Congress. However, H.R. 1704/S. 1934, a bill we also strongly advocate in favor of, has bipartisan support and has already cleared the House Judiciary committee and the likelihood of the Second Chance Act’s passage during the upcoming "lame-duck" session remains promising in the Senate. But even if does fail, its broad bipartisan support will likely continue in the 110th Congress, hopefully carrying it towards final passage.