Should This Be Considered Deviant

Hi class-
Please read the following article and decide whether or not you would consider Tracey's behavior deviant. http://www.spokesmanreview.com/local/story.asp?ID=171054
Sara

Marijuana patient won't be sent to jail

Gene Johnson
Associated Press
January 26, 2007

SEATTLE – A medical marijuana patient who lost her case before the state Supreme Court last fall was sentenced Thursday to 60 days home confinement, after her lawyers argued that she was too sick to spend any time in jail.

Sharon Tracy, 53, said she was "overjoyed" with the sentence handed down by Skamania County Superior Court Judge E. Thompson Reynolds. She also must perform 30 days of community service and pay $3,000 to help cover the cost of her appeal.

"He could have gone ahead and let me go, but it's the best I could have gotten in a bad situation," Tracy said.

Tracy, of Hayward, Calif., was arrested in 2003 when a detective found her with about 40 grams of marijuana and four pot plants in 2003.

At the time, Tracy had been splitting her time between California and Skamania County, on the Columbia River in southwestern Washington. She suffers from coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes and migraines, and has undergone reconstructive surgeries to repair a ruptured colon and a congenital left hip deformity. She turned to marijuana to reduce her usage of addictive painkillers such as Vicodin.

Though she presented a Skamania County sheriff's detective with a valid California medical marijuana card, the judge barred her from presenting a "compassionate use" defense under Washington's medical marijuana initiative, on the theory that the doctor who gave her the card was not licensed to practice medicine in Washington.

She was convicted of felony possession of marijuana as well as manufacturing marijuana, and she appealed. Last November, the state Supreme Court upheld her convictions in a 6-3 decision.

Prosecutor Peter Banks asked the judge to reimpose her original sentence, 60 days in jail plus 30 days of community service, but later in the hearing said he would not object to having her serve the time at the home of a friend, with electronic monitoring.

A few dozen supporters, some of them medical marijuana patients themselves, attended the hearing, said her lawyers, David Schultz and Douglas Hiatt. During the hearing they passed a hat and collected more than $500 to help pay the costs of the electronic monitoring, Hiatt said.

Hiatt and Schultz maintained that Tracy should have received no jail time or home confinement because she believed she was complying with the state's medical marijuana law. They noted that three of the Supreme Court justices agreed with her.

Syllabus and Blog Questions

If you have any comments or questions in respect to ANY aspect of the syllabus or blog, then please post the question/comment here. No question is too simple or basic... those are the best questions, usually.

Please practice leaving a comment here even if it's just to say that you've read the syllabus and it's crystal clear.

Alex

Blogging Instructions

Blog Instructions

A blog or web log is a personal web site made up of usually short, frequently updated posts that are arranged chronologically. The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly from links and commentary about other web sites to observations about news or politics, diaries, photos, poetry, essays, project updates, even fiction. Blogs are a fast growing segment of the web. An article in the August 26, 2002 Newsweek estimated the number of blogs at 500,000 with a new one coming online every forty seconds.

We have a class blog! As indicated in the syllabus, I will post something to the blog most weeks. I will ask you to comment on it – similar to how I ask you to comment on something in class. However, your response will be in text. Responses do not have to be lengthy – but I encourage you to be thoughtful about what you write so that you are awarded the maximum points. ‘Thoughtful’ means that you consider what is being commented about in light of the reading, class discussion, etcetera. Also, I encourage you to check back to the blog after you have left your comment so that you can see what your classmates think.

The blog, then, should be thought of as an ongoing class discussion… and for those of you who are a little shy this will be away for you to increase your participation. Also, some people do their best thinking in writing…

Instructions:

1) click on the link to the blog: http://crimeanddeviance170.blogspot.com/
2) Posts appear in chronological order but they are archived in the sidebar.
3) Read the blog and from the main page, click the Comment link under the post on which you want to comment. On an individual post page, scroll down to the end of the post if necessary.
4) You can choose to sign-in and create a blogger account and profile (you will need a name and email address to do this)… If you choose to do this but are not comfortable with having your real name out there in blogger world, you can create a ‘name’ for yourself. Obviously you will have to let me know what your screen name is…
5) You can also leave posts anonymously, but you will have to identify yourself in the body of your comment so that I know who you are
6) You will need to post at least one comment in response to a blog.
7) The blog is public for now. However, if there are a lot of comments from people not in the class which are not appropriate, I can make the blog private (i.e. only the class will be able to access the blog).
8) If there are any inappropriate class comments I can delete the comment.. and I can also make the blog so that I moderate the comments before they’re posted (I’d much prefer not to do this.. so keep it clean and respectful…)
9) You should check the blog regularly – at least twice week.
10) Finally, thanks to tracking software I can see how often your computer is logged into the blog, and for how long!
11) Any questions? please let me know.