The NJWeedman sits in jail and keeps on fighting
I will give Ed Forchion this: He knows how to push my buttons. I’m sitting in the Trentonian offices Monday when my boss comes over and hands me a fat envelope from Forchion — aka the NJWeedman — sent from Mercer County lockup.
“Ugh,” I said. “I’ve had enough of him. In fact, I told him a few months ago to just quit fighting and move to a marijuana-friendly state. He’s won enough battles. He should enjoy it.”
So I open the envelope and the first words after “Jeff” are “I know you told me months ago I should retire. I didn’t, couldn’t, and can’t. Fifteen years ago when I was jailed for making commercials I filed a writ of habeas corpus before Judge Irenas. You informed the public and covered the 5 months I was in jailed until Judge Irenas ordered me released. Deja vu dude.” He’s right. Fifteen years ago, Forchion was jailed for making commercials. For real. He was running for some office or another and produced a trio of commercials railing against the War on Drugs. At the time, he was enrolled in the state’s Intensive Supervisory Program (ISP), a sortof heightened state of parole. (He was in the ISP due to a — wait for it — marijuana charge.) Anyway, the terms of the ISP — according to the state — detailed how Forchion couldn’t advocate the use of marijuana. I wrote, at the time, the commercials did not advocate the use (they didn’t), but the state threw Forchion in prison anyway, where he spent five months before his writ of habeas corpus was heard by the now-deceased United States District Court Judge Joseph E. Irenas, who agreed with Forchion and released him. (In case you need to look it up — I did — a writ of habeas corpus is basically someone who’s in jail asking the court to get them out of jail because they don’t belong in jail in the first place.)
And that’s where we are right now, and that’s the bulk of the fat envelope: Forchion’s hand-written writ of habeas corpus that is landing on the desk of United States District Court Judge Peter Sheridan as I type this.
Broad strokes, cribbed from our own recent stories: Forchion is sitting in Mercer County Correctional Center because officials believe he might “threaten, injure or intimidate a prospective witness.” Forchion is facing charges stemming from a raid at his East State Street restaurant and he claims the police used an informant against him, that it was entrapment, and he’s been busy telling Facebook who the informant is. He was arrested last Friday on charges of witness intimidation. The gist is this: He’s in jail until his trial because he’s seen as a threat to the informant.
Listen: I’ve known Forchion for a long time. Violence is not in his DNA. Why was he alerting the world to the informant’s name? Who knows. He has his reasons. I do know there was no gag order in place to silence Forchion, and that’s one of his points of argument.
“Mr. Forchion is a true freedom fighter, First Amendment, free speech and marijuana activist, and now a political prisoner,” said one of his attorneys, John Vincent Saykanic. “As to the witness tampering charge, Mr. Forchion never threatened any individual nor ordered any individual to threaten any individual. Bail is not meant to punish, but to ensure a defendant’s appearance at trial. The fatal flaw with the State’s pre-trial detention is that Mr. Forchion is that one-in-a-million defendant who actually wants to go to trial and is looking forward to his pending drug case. If released, he will be no danger to any individual and his presence at all trials will be assured as he relishes his courtroom battles ahead.”
In the meantime, Forchion is sitting in prison for marijuana related charges for the umpteenth time.
And also in the meantime, Forchion is almost certainly in the right, again. I imagine it must be pretty embarrassing for the Trenton police and Mercer County prosecutor’s office when your star witness in outed by the defendant. It’s unclear to me what law Forchion broke to keep him sitting in prison.
So while Forchion stews in jail, I’ll once again make my plea to him: Get out after this. Move to Colorado. Enjoy the fruits (and stems and seeds) of your labor.
But Forchion being Forchion won’t stop, probably ever. He’ll continue to fight against the system that jails people for smoking marijuana, and despite his own flaws, you can’t argue against the successes the man has had in this fight. He’ll never stop. Heck, I could see Forchion dead in heaven, sitting outside the Pearly Gates (where smoking is allowed), sucking down a blunt with Bob Marley and Jah himself, and he’d file suit to be allowed his heavenly right to smoke inside the Pearly Gates. And he’d have a point. I mean, it’s heaven. Why segregate?