Weedman jury split on witnesstampering charges
TRENTON » What a drag.
Ed “NJ Weedman” Forchion will remain locked up after his witness tampering trial ended Thursday in a partial verdict that failed to convict him of any crimes.
A jury of Forchion’s peers found him not guilty of one count of witness tampering but could not reach a unanimous decision on the other count.
Forchion, better known as the NJ Weedman, represented himself pro se with technical assistance from a stand-by counsel as he used his layman charms in a semi-successful effort to introduce reasonable doubt into the minds of the jury members.
“Thank you!” Forchion shouted as the jurors left the courtroom Thursday afternoon.
Although Forchion was partially exonerated, the jury being hung on the second witness tampering count means that the state could retry him on that count or dispose of it.
But Mercer County Assistant Prosecutors Stephanie Katz and John Boyle appear committed to retrying the marijuana legalization advocate.
Katz after the partial verdict told the press corps that the witness tampering case against Forchion remains “open” and Boyle said, “He will have another trial.”
The 12 jurors unanimously agreed that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Forchion committed seconddegree witness tampering, but they could not all agree on whether Forchion was guilty or not guilty of thirddegree witness tampering.
Forchion, 53, who called himself “Political Prisoner #420,” was charged with two counts of witness tampering in a case that was intrinsically linked with another pending criminal case against Forchion. The NJ Weedman used to operate a restaurant on East State Street in Trenton and is accused of using the joint as a den for drug use and distribution.
Police relied upon a confidential informant to build that 2016 drug case against Forchion, and Forchion subsequently identified that person on multiple video sessions and social media postings, calling the person “the rat” and describing him as “a slimy dude,” adding, “I don’t claim to be an angel, but I’m not a slimy dude.”
Rife with self-confidence and diabolical laughter, Forchion in one of his monologue videos said he will be “fighting it out” rather than pleading guilty to resolve his legal troubles. He accused the informant of cooperating with the police “to put me in a cage for a plant.”
The marijuana legalization advocate has a lengthy rap sheet and four active criminal cases pending before Mercer County Superior Court. One of the pending matters is a cyber harassment case. The other pending matters are the witness tampering case and two drug cases, including the high-profile police raid of April 27, 2016, when the Mercer County Narcotics Task Force executed a search warrant at Forchion’s former East State Street businesses and allegedly seized more than $19,000 in marijuana in an operation that ended with Forchion and several other defendants getting arrested. The confidential informant who NJ Weedman refers to as “the rat” helped police develop probable cause to initiate that April 2016 raid. Forchion posted bail in that case and soon thereafter engaged in a prolonged social media crusade to expose “the rat” even as prosecutors filed a protective order motion seeking to safeguard the confidential informant from being entrenched under the public spotlight.
A grand jury on Feb. 28 handed up a direct indictment charging Forchion with one count of seconddegree witness tampering and one count of third-degree witness tampering. Several days later, police on March 3 arrested the self-described peaceful pothead at his business partner’s home in Parsippany. The arrest occurred while Forchion was livestreaming on Facebook.
Forchion for the last eight months was being incarcerated without bail at the Mercer County Correction Center on pretrial detention. During that time, his case went through a series of theatrics with the melodrama of a soap opera. For example, Forchion had a very public falling out with his former defense attorney Edward Heyburn.
The jurors in the witness tampering trial were presented with a sanitized version of events and ultimately could not unanimously decide whether Forchion’s social media conduct was criminal in the third degree — although they were firmly convinced Forchion’s conduct did not rise to the level of a seconddegree crime that could command 10 years of prison time.
Forchion previously served time in state prison on drug charges and last week said he was scared of the potential consequences of a conviction.
“I’m facing 20 years. This is scary,” Forchion said in an interview last week after the jury began deliberating his fate.
With the jury acquitting him on one count and being hung on the other, Forchion said he plans to file a motion seeking a new detention hearing. He currently remains incarcerated without bail on pretrial detention but wants to argue that he should be released from jail because his circumstances have changed in light of the partial verdict.
The so-called “rat” in Forchion’s witness tampering trial did not testify in the case, but the victim’s father last week delivered sworn testimony describing the NJ Weedman as “a sick person.”
“This person has a great deal of hatred for my son,” the father said last Tuesday, testifying to how he felt upon receiving two packages in the mail from Forchion last year that contained vulgar contents. The father felt “threatened” when he received the first package and also testified to feeling more frightened when the second parcel arrived days later.
“Now I know there’s somebody stalking me. … He’s out to get my son,” the father said, adding the experience of receiving those mailings has impacted his way of life.
“I’m even more aware of my surroundings where I go 24/7,” he said. “The only place I really feel safe is in my house.”
This person who Forchion labeled as “the rat” was the victim of NJ Weedman’s alleged witness tampering. If Forchion could have questioned the victim under oath, he said he would have asked the victim how he felt about the postal mailings and social media chatter that had been admitted into the trial as evidence.
Relatives of the witness in question testified under oath during the criminal trial, saying NJ Weedman’s postal mailings frightened them.
“My one regret is I wasn’t able to say to the family members that I am sorry,” Forchion said in an interview with The Trentonian last week. “The prosecution gets to prep them for their case. They got to prep these people to come in and say they are scared to bolster their case. I’ve said I wasn’t getting a fair trial.”
Forchion in an interview with The Trentonian last year suggested he was willing to go to great lengths to win legal exoneration.
“If you ask me straight up would you do seven years or let this guy get shot in the head, I’d let him get shot in the head. My concern is beating this case, by any means necessary,” Forchion said in that September 2016 interview about “the rat.” Prosecutors said that published statement was an example of Forchion issuing a “threat of force” against the witness — a second-degree crime.
Forchion was accused of knowingly engaging in conduct that a “reasonable person” would believe would cause a witness or informant to do at least one of the following four things: (1) Testify or inform falsely; (2) withhold any testimony, information, document or thing; (3) elude legal process summoning him to testify or supply evidence; or (4) absent himself from any proceeding or investigation to which he has been legally summoned.
Mercer County Superior Court Judge Anthony Massi restricted what Forchion could say during the criminal trial. For example, the NJ Weedman, if he was allowed, would have told the jurors that the goal and motive of his conduct was to get the witness to come to court and testify truthfully in the April 2016 drug case.
In the end, a jury of Forchion’s peers acquitted him of one count and failed to reach a verdict on the other count in his witness tampering trial.