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SMOKE SIGNALS
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| JEFF EDELSTEIN, Staff
Writer |
December
03, 2001 |
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File
Photo Ed "Weedman" Forchion, of Browns Mills, is seen in this
file photo from March 2000 smoking a marijuana joint in the
New Jersey Assembly chambers. Forchion is accusing officials
in Camden County of covering up details of his trial to delay
his a
| Ed
"Weedman'' Forchion, of Pemberton Township, is looking for justice
in the form of eight court transcripts he thinks could get him out
of prison if authorities hadn't made them disappear.
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Forchion, best known for lighting up a marijuana joint on the
floor of the New Jersey Senate, is two years into a 10-year prison
sentence for a 1997 arrest in which he was nabbed with 25 pounds of
pot.
Never one to shy away from the spotlight, Forchion has
dropped a bomb on the state judiciary, accusing the public
defender's office of covering up details of his trial as he readied
his appeal.
In particular, Forchion claims eight court
transcripts that he needs are mysteriously missing.
"All the
dates I considered very important for my appeal are the exact same
ones that Camden County Court Reporters Office say don't exist,"
Forchion said in a letter to Camden County Superior Court Judge
Richard Williams.
"This is absurd. I was there at each court
date...this is a deliberate denial of due process and it's official
corruption and it should be regarded as a crime."
The ravings
of a condemned man?
Perhaps. Except that Forchion does have
in his possession the transcript of an evidence suppression hearing
in Camden County Superior court on July 7, 2000, which the record of
the authorities shows was "postponed."
The Supervisor of the
Court Reporters, Sharon Alphonse, said Forchion is wrong.
"He
is getting everything available to him," Alphonse said.
As
to why her office has the July 7 date listed as postponed while
Forchion has a copy of the proceedings, Alphonse chalked it up to an
"error in computer entry and it has nothing to do with me."
A
call to the Camden County Public Defender's office yielded even less
information about the missing dates -- or anything to do with
Forchion.
"We will not discuss this case," said First
Assistant Deputy Public Defender James Klein, who represents many
suspects with no money and no influence. "No
comment."
Forchion's battle for appeal of his sentence, and
his decade-long push for the decriminalization of marijuana, is long
story within a longer one.
In his effort to show what he sees
as the inherent unfairness of marijuana laws, Forchion has lit up
joints in the New Jersey legislative chambers and in other public
places.
He's also run for office -- getting 2,706 votes for
Burlington County freeholder and 1,983 votes when he ran for
congress.
As marijuana activists go, Forchion is lauded
across the nation and into Canada for his work.
And he
doesn't dispute the fact that he was in possession of 25 pounds of
pot on that 1997 night. He contents the weed was meant for ill
people and for members of the Rastafari religion, where marijuana is
a sacrament.
Forchion smokes pot for both those reasons and,
he says, a chronic bad back.
His goal at trial was to
convince the juror that marijuana laws are inherently unfair and
that they should refuse to convict him.
He planned on using
jury nullification as his strategy. Problem was, no lawyer in the
Public Defender's office would try a case using that method. Reason
being, it's illegal.
Jury nullification, in it's pure sense,
is when a jury decides that a law is unjust, and thus refuses to
convict.
The trick to this strategy, however, is that it is
illegal in Jersey to inform a jury of this right.
Forchion
decided to defend himself, and, going against the judge's orders,
immediately presented his jury nullification defense.
John
Wynne, the prosecutor, decided not to object.
"A lawyer is
ethically bound to not tell the jury to ignore the law," Wynne said.
"Forchion is not a lawyer, so I let him do it."
But Forchion
will never know if his strategy would've worked. Midway through the
trial, he accepted a plea bargain.
And the story, once again,
gets muddied.
Forchion contends the deal was that he would
serve three-to-six months in prison and then be released into a
supervisory program.
Wynne contends the supervisory program
was not a promised deal -- Forchion would have to convince a
three-judge panel to let him out of prison.
Forchion was
sentenced to 10 years, and immediately attempted to withdraw his
plea, which was denied.
"Now he's saying he was promised
this, he was promised that," Wynne said. "He understood exactly what
he was doing."
Forchion is now working with the Newark Public
Defenders office as he prepares his appeal.
His case is not
expected to be heard until 2003 at the earliest.
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| ©The
Trentonian 2003 |
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