Editorial:
Long,
Hot
Summer
9/11/98
The passage of Labor Day traditionally signifies the end of summer, and for the people of Oklahoma, who have suffered through scorching, searing, record-breaking heat, relief cannot come soon enough. But daily temperatures in the triple digits have not been the only factor in equating the Sooner State with hell this year. There is also the case of Will Foster. Foster, a rheumatoid arthritis sufferer arrested in 1996 for cultivating and using marijuana to ease his pain, began the summer as he had the previous two, serving an astounding 93-year prison term for his victimless "crime". But now, just as the end of summer portends a break in Oklahoma's Hades-like weather, there is a chance that Will Foster will gain reprieve from his own hellish odyssey. At the time of his arrest, Foster was 38 years-old, was sole proprietor of a growing computer software business, and was living with his wife Meg, and three children. An anonymous tip brought more than a dozen police, both state and county, to their home, and, after kicking in the door and holding the family, including a seven year-old girl, at gunpoint, spent the next four hours tearing apart everything the Fosters owned. They found Foster's garden under lock and key in a converted bomb shelter under the house. More than 60 plants, many of them just inches tall, were seized. The state offered Foster a deal. Twelve years for him and ten for Meg. But Foster, a former U.S. Army MP, would not agree to any terms which would result in jail time for Meg. Instead, he went to trial and Meg was forced to testify against him in return for her freedom. Local attorneys could not remember the last time that anyone had taken a drug case to trial in Tulsa county. Foster was about to find out why. Despite Foster's condition, and owing to the fact that the state of Oklahoma does not recognize a medical necessity defense for the possession of marijuana, Stuart Southerland, his attorney, decided not to call a doctor to the stand in his defense. Neither did he call Will to the stand. Despite an absence of evidence that Foster had ever sold marijuana (he admitted to sharing some with a friend in his home, and with Meg - police found a total of $23 in the house) the prosecutor painted Foster as a scourge and a menace to society. "Pick a number, any number" he urged jurors during closing arguments, "and add two or three zeroes to it. Make sure that this man never walks free in our community again." And they did. Seventy years for cultivation. Twenty years for possession in the presence of a minor (his daughter). Two years for intent to distribute, and an additional year for failure to have a state tax stamp for his crop. Ninety-three years for a man who had never so much as been accused of hurting a soul. Long enough to insure that he never breathed free again. Longer, in fact than Oklahoma has been a state. Just months after Foster's sentencing, another story emerged from Oklahoma. This time a man who had admitted guilt in the beating death of his four year-old child was sentenced to four years in a plea bargain deal. The outcry was so great that the state's Governor, Frank Keating, wrote an op-ed in an Oklahoma newspaper blaming the short sentence on a lack of prison space and calling for money for more to be built. Still, Will Foster sat in jail, taking up a space that was not being used for a violent, dangerous criminal. In a stroke of sheer irony, within a year of Foster's arrest and imprisonment, two states, California and Arizona, passed, by significant margins, initiatives which legalized the possession and use of marijuana for medicinal purposes. In addition, while Foster was shuffled from institution to institution, far from his family, research conducted at the University of California showed that certain cannabinoids in the marijuana plant were quite effective in the control of the pain and inflammation of rheumatoid arthritis. None of this, of course, would be of any use to Foster, who sat, under-medicated, behind bars. Over the past two years, Will Foster and his case have become a rallying point for people around the country, and in fact around the world, who have become concerned by the excesses of America's Drug War. Supporters, united primarily over the Internet, wrote letters and spread the word. Foster's case was featured on national and international television, in magazines and on web sites. No one, it seemed, could stomach the thought that this man had been sentenced to 93 years, to death, really, for choosing to treat his pain in an unauthorized manner. Foster's family, Meg's family really, dug deep. They hired the best appellate attorney in the state, and despite the fact that they are people of modest means, have spent over $100,000 trying to free Will. Finally, after serious questions were raised about the validity of the (unsigned) search warrant, about the veracity of the police claims regarding the confidential informant (the warrant claimed that the informant, who was not required to appear at trial, had bought methamphetamine from the Foster home just days before the bust, yet absolutely no evidence of methamphetamine was found, not a trace) and even regarding the existence of an informant at all, a ruling came down from the Court of Appeals. In it, the appellate court said that the sentence handed down to Will Foster "shocked the conscience," and ordered that the four, consecutively-running sentences be reduced to a single, twenty-year term. As it happens, the Oklahoma legislature, during its 1998 term, passed a law called the "Truth in Sentencing Act," requiring that violent offenders serve at least 85% of their sentences before being eligible for parole. But because they could not decide whether to include non-violent offenders under the act, and because the bill was considered late in the short term, the legislature adjourned before making the decision, thus leaving such offenders out of the equation. The exclusion, combined with the appellate decision, made Foster eligible for parole immediately. The Oklahoma parole board heard Foster's case within weeks of the appellate ruling, and, noting Foster's condition, as well as the knowledge of at least one board member of an acquaintance who benefited from the medicinal use of marijuana, and the absence of any conceivable threat that Foster posed to the community, recommended his immediate parole. Suddenly, summer had broken in Oklahoma. So now, the recommendation of the parole board is on its way to the desk of Governor Frank Keating. And the same Governor Keating who was so justifiably outraged that a child murderer in his state was able to cop a plea to a four-year sentence because of a lack of prison space, has the opportunity to free up a cell, Will Foster's cell, by releasing a man who has never, in his life, harmed a soul. Over the past several days, concerned citizens from around the world have been contacting Keating's office and urging him to do just that. It would be a victory for the cause of justice, and would mean the world to Will Foster's family. Foster's release would herald the coming of the end of Oklahoma's long, hot summer of oppression. And it would pull the man himself from the very depths of hell.
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