BAD SEEDS LIKE ME

A civilized nation must deter its people from committing actions that go against its moral code. We have dealt with this issue since the beginning of time with little success. Notions of what is and is not criminal not only change with time but also with location. In Lake County Indiana possession of marijuana is a class B misdemeanor whereas it has been decriminalized in Marion County. That means that if a person were to be caught in Lake County with marijuana on their person they could face up to one hundred eighty days in jail while in Marion County the worst they would get is their bud confiscated. I say up to because in many cases one person may be let go when charged with a crime that another goes to prison for. Even more condemning, our legal system at times fails to punish those who commit violent crimes while favoring the prosecution of petty offenders. I propose that this is evidence of a corpocratic judicial system. One that favors pursuing lucrative cases over serving justice for the people they are expected to protect.

Indiana is a state divided on one topic specifically, the legality of weed. The state is surrounded by states where the drug is legal in some form. This is not to say, however, that there is no way to get your fix in the Hoosier state. As mentioned before marijuana is decriminalized in Marion County. That means that though it technically isn’t legal you will not face any kind of criminal charge for having it. This creates a conflict for the citizens of Indianapolis. Say I were to drive from Nora to Greenwood with a gram of pot in my glove box. For the majority of the trip, I haven’t broken any laws but as soon as I cross that line into Johnson County I’m at risk of being smacked with a misdemeanor. This is, of course, news to no one contraband is contraband and you will receive proper citation for possession of it. The absurdity of the situation comes from the fact that within the same state two contradicting laws can exist. How is it fair for a Circle City resident to possess weed but a Hamilton County resident can not? If this is the case what’s to stop such things from happening on a township or even city-to-city level? The decriminalization has proven that if weed were legalized the sky would not fall as some seem to believe. If anything I believe Marion County has exposed Indiana’s tight marijuana laws as the prison packing quota filling scheme that they are. An entirely unnecessary scheme I might add seeing as the state seems to pick and choose who to prosecute on baseless grounds anyhow.

I have, from a first-hand perspective, seen many people in the Hoosier state get dragged through the muck over offenses that others get away with scot-free. A friend of mine happened to get tacked with a drug charge, possession of a gram of marijuana, in 2019. He spent six months in a legal battle to come to an out-of-court settlement that would ultimately cost him thousands of dollars and thirty hours of community service. Not much later another friend got caught with the same amount of the same drug on his person. He however was let go with no charges on his record, no fees to be paid, and no community service to be done. What was the difference between these two cases? The defendants' legal council. The first friend hired a lawyer who had been through this type of case dozens of times before always to the same end. He goes before the prosecutor, cuts the deal, and everyone gets a nice paycheck at the expense of the defendant. The second friend on the other hand went with a lawyer who wanted to go to court to try to argue the legitimacy of the charge. Despite clear evidence of this friend's guilt they never saw the inside of a courtroom. To me this is clear evidence of racketeering however for the unsatisfied I do have another story to tell.

In Indiana, there is a distinction between violent and nonviolent crime as I believe we all agree there should be. Violent criminals are typically tried with more zeal than nonviolent offenders. They also lose access to certain rights like the ability to own a firearm. So far all is well but unfortunately, we now come to the faltering blind spot of the Indiana legal system, their refusal to see through long-term prosecution. I came to know a young man in Marion County who had an extensive criminal history at the age of seventeen. By his eighteenth birthday, he was fully entranced by the lifestyle and chose to spend the night indulging in all it had to offer. Come early morning two police officers arrived at his door. They spoke with his girlfriend and he was then hauled away in the paddywagon. His charge was one count of domestic battery. I will have you know that he was not sentenced to a single day in prison nor fined a cent. The means by which he escaped persecution were simple, prolonging the court date. His initial arrest was in the end five months out and several attempted court dates from the dismissal of his charge. On the day he finally made it to the courthouse for his trial he and his public defender were escorted to the prosecutor who dropped the charge because, to paraphrase, he was sick of looking at the case. A man guilty of hitting his girlfriend was let off the hook while another guilty of possession was dragged through the coals. That is the injustice that makes me sick when the assailant is set free to strike again while a nonviolent offender is ground up by the full might of the courts.

I do not mean to slander the individuals who make up Indiana's legal body. I look only to hold a light to the institution itself and the shortcomings I as an individual have seen. The good people who make up our courts are cogs in a machine designed long before their tenure. They work hard in a system that seeks to do right with its second chance laws but is still victim to all the faults any other court faces. In this state, we deal with inequality of rights, unlevel punishments, and outright uninterested public servants. Only by keeping an eye on these issues can we continue to improve upon them as we have been doing for the last two hundred seven years.

Dusty Hayes is an indigenous writer and psychedelic advocate living in Indianapolis, Indiana. He spends his days there engaging in Broad Ripple's bohemian culture. He never pursued a higher education in writing, choosing instead to hone his writing style independently. He writes about social injustice, mindful living, and psychedelia. Recently he has published his first book Rock and Terror : A Psychonomic Look at the Effects of Psilocybin. A gonzo journalistic documentation of a mushroom trip that gives the reader a full rundown on the substance and its effects. You can find him and his work on Twitter and anywhere ebooks are sold.