Medical marijuana users have long decried Michigan’s state and local police and prosecutors as unfair but Tuesday’s target was the federal government.
Two dozen marijuana advocates — including lawyers and advocates from as far as Seattle and Phoenix — gathered at noon outside the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit to protest the sentencing of Gerald Duval Jr., 53, a Monroe-area farmer who was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted last year of conspiring to manufacture more than 100 marijuana plants, manufacturing plants with an intent to distribute them and maintaining a place of distribution.
The federal charges stemmed from a raid of Duval’s farm and pot-filled greenhouses by federal officers.
“Jerry Duval and his 10-year sentence is emblematic of how the Obama administration has been undermining state medical marijuana laws,” said Brandy Zink, chair of the Michigan chapter of Americans for Safe Access.
At the moment that federal agents raided his farm, “I was 100% legal” under Michigan’s medical marijuana act, Duval told the crowd. Standing beside him was Duval’s mother Sharon Duval, holding a sign that said: “No one should go to jail for medical marijuana.”
– Read the entire article at Detroit Free Press.
