Vale, Oregon
“I'm going to be
burning weeds today – the right kind,
that is,” Bill Esbensen wryly informed me as we met at his abandoned rental
property. He was careful to obtain the required permit before igniting the
assembled yard debris. Since he will be on probation until June 2016, Bill could
wind up in prison for even the most trivial ordinance violation, the
people running what passes for the “justice” system in Oregon’s Malheur County
have an incontinent lust to send him there.
A few weeks
earlier, in a courthouse a few blocks away from the rental home in Vale, the
Malheur County DA's office briefly considered confiscating the property before
deciding that it wasn't worth the effort. The two-story house had been
remodeled to contain a greenhouse and a “grow room” for the production of marijuana.
The college-age renters who abandoned the house while Bill was in jail grew and
used marijuana legally and without harassment from the same people who put him
behind bars, and have destroyed him financially.
“I am wiped the
hell out,” said Esbensen. “I have no money at all, and unless a miracle occurs
I’m going to lose this house and the dispensary in Ontario. But I suppose that
I’m fortunate, because unlike a lot of people I had properties to lose. There
are plenty of people who have it worse than I do.”
The dispensary,
or at least the attention it attracted from powerful and opportunistic people,
was the source of his problems. The building – a repurposed butcher shop --
housed the 45th Parallel medical marijuana co-op, which dispensed a
legally recognized palliative remedy to qualified clients.
On September 11,
2012, the co-op, along with more than a dozen other sites on both sides of the
Oregon/Idaho border, was raided by the High Desert Drug
Enforcement Task Force. Hundreds of pounds of marijuana – most of it still
unaccounted for – were seized, along with a substantial amount of money and the
co-op’s business records.
In June,
following a bench trial, Bill and his former business partner Scott Kangas were
convicted of “racketeering” under
a law that was no longer in effect. Despite the ardent desire of Malheur
County Deputy DA William Dugan, they were sentenced to probation, rather than prison.
One condition of Bill’s probation is the requirement that he liquidate the 45th
Parallel Corporation, which he cannot do without access to his business and tax
records. On October 15, trial Judge Gregory Baxter denied a motion requesting
the release of those records.
“I’m ordered to
liquidate the 45th Parallel by the same judge who won’t let me have
the records I need to carry out that order,” he pointed out to me. “I can’t
just guess where the taxes are concerned. I need the records.” Caught between
the pit and the pendulum, Esbensen at this point will either violate a term of
his probation, or risk trouble with the IRS.
This is not the
only way in which Esbensen is required to make bricks without straw. He
has also been ordered to pay $18,000 in “restitution” costs to the Malheur
County DA’s office, which had
already seized tens of thousands of dollars from him through the state-licensed
larceny called “civil asset forfeiture ,” and used the money to prosecute
him. When Esbensen’s defense attorney, Susan Gerber, sought details about that
seizure, Judge
Baxter suffered a courtroom meltdown, and the DA’s office obtained a motion in
limine forbidding her to pursue that line of inquiry.
“I sold my car
lot in Idaho to begin this business several years ago,” Esbensen points out. “And
it wasn’t as if the 45th Parallel was a hugely profitable
enterprise. Over the course of three years I cleared about $18,000.”
That figure
translates into about $500 a month, which doesn’t suggest that Esbensen and his
associates were building a narcotics empire. Yes, he did expect that Oregon would soon
decriminalize the recreational use of marijuana.
The same is true of the people
on the other side of the Malheur County criminal” justice” system. Esbensen was
depicted in court as a “kingpin” – an embryonic Heisenberg or Tony Montana – by
the same people who are positioning themselves to profit from the same “illicit”
activity for which they sought to send him to prison.
Next week,
barring widespread electoral fraud, Oregon
will probably enact Proposition 91, a measure that will decriminalize (but
alas, not deregulate) the recreational use of marijuana. On October 28, in
anticipation of that development, the
Vale City Council approved a measure imposing a 5 percent tax on gross sale of
medical marijuana, and 10 percent on gross sales of recreational marijuana.
By this time next
year – assuming that Oregon’s experience is in any way similar to those of Colorado
and Washington – Vale’s municipal government will be reveling in
marijuana-derived revenue. Vale is the seat of Malheur County, which abuts
Puritanical Idaho. This means that county he potential for marijuana tourism is
immense, as is the anticipated tax windfall for the county and city
governments.
Undersheriff Travis Johnson |
Renee Churchill,
administrative manager for the Vale City government, told me that the marijuana
taxation measure was approved by three members of the City
Council – Travis Johnson, Heidi Zanotelli, and Randy Seals. Significantly,
Johnson is both a member of the Vale City Council and Undersheriff Malheur
County. His colleague on the City Council, Brad Williams, is a Malheur County
Sheriff's deputy and was the chief investigator in the 45th Parallel
case.
Although Williams
wasn't present for the October 28th City Council vote (Churchill
told me he was attending a function in Bend), there is no record that he
opposed the marijuana taxation measure, which was actively supported by
Johnson, his superior officer in the MCSO.
Deputy Williams was
involved in every phase of the 45th Parallel case. He was approached
by Dustin
Bloxham, a corrupt, Boise-based DEA agent, about mounting an investigation
of the co-op. Williams was cc’d in the March 29, 2012 email from Bloxham to
assistant US Attorney for Idaho Marc Haws after Esebensen had
been subjected to a pretext traffic stop and illegal search of his car by the
Task Force. During that search, the business records for the 45th
Parallel were confiscated.
“Thought maybe if
you guys had a moment, you might be able to look through [the records] and see
if they are doing some good business,” Bloxham suggested to Haws and Williams. “I
had glanced over it and it appears to me that some decent money is coming out
of the business.”
Acting outside
his jurisdiction, and without authorization from US Attorney Wendy Olson,
Bloxham targeted Esbensen and his business. In doing so he committed at least
two acts of interstate wire fraud, and
suborned a physician in Idaho to falsify medical records so he could qualify –
under the pseudonym “Dustin Hankins” -- for an Oregon Medical Marijuana Program
card. His marijuana purchases at the 45th Parallel were made
with petty cash provided to him by Deputy Williams out of the MCSO’s budget.
In those
transactions, the personnel from the 45th Parallel acted in good
faith and in strict compliance with Oregon laws and regulations. If Bloxham
couldn’t claim “qualified immunity” – which may not apply here, given that he
acted without authorization from Wendy Olson, or being deputized by the MCSO – he
would probably face prosecution for several felonies, as would Brad Williams,
his accomplice.
It’s worth pointing out that Scott Kangas was charged with “racketeering” solely because he was Esbensen’s partner in a government-licensed business. (He was also being punished for turning down a deal in which he would testify against him). The same theory of criminal liability that justified the racketeering charge against Kangas should apply to Brad Williams’ colleagues at the MCSO – particularly Undersheriff Johnson, who was present for the marijuana tax vote on October 28.
The behavior of
the MCSO and Malheur County DA’s office in this case was that of a privileged
criminal syndicate. Rather than protecting the public, they were using the “justice”
system to profit from “illicit” marijuana sales, until they would be able to
accomplish the same thing through taxation.
Brad Williams was
in attendance during every day of Esbensen’s trial. When the
guilty verdict was pronounced on June 6, Judge Gregory Baxter ordered that Esbensen
be taken directly to jail. The officer who carried out that order – wearing full
uniform and a triumphant, self-satisfied smirk as he handcuffed Esbensen – was Brad
Williams.
By this time next
year, as a member of the Vale City Council, that same Deputy Williams will be
deeply involved in the same “criminal” activity for which Esbensen is still
being punished: Receiving money as a result of marijuana sales. The most significant
difference is that Esbensen received those proceeds through honest commerce,
while Williams and his comrades will do so through the state-consecrated form
of theft called “taxation.”
The Malheur
County Sheriff’s Office, meanwhile, will continue to bank money it receives in
the form of fines imposed on more than a dozen members of the 45th
Parallel. It has already taken in tens of thousands of dollars in fines and
confiscated funds – and we shouldn’t forget that nobody has properly accounted
for most of the hundreds of pounds of marijuana that were seized in the
September 11, 2012 raids.
The MCSO found
another way to leverage funding out of the 45th Parallel case: Earlier
this month it was announced that Malheur County “has been listed among 26
counties in 11 states designated as high-intensity drug trafficking areas,”
according to the Argus Observer.
Given what we
know about the bureaucratic perversities that characterize drug prohibition, it’s
likely that the HIDT designation was, to some extent, a reward for the 45th
Parallel case – and we can expect to see the MCSO do everything it can to
duplicate that triumph. Sheriff Brian Wolfe explained that with the coveted HIDT
designation his agency will receive funding to pay overtime costs and to “make
larger purchase[s] that can lead to bigger drug busts.”
What this will
mean, in all likelihood, is that Deputy Williams and Undersheriff Johnson will
tirelessly seek to ensnare people on drug charges during the day, while
moonlighting as state-employed marijuana “kingpins.” Meanwhile, Bill Esbensen, like countless others, will continue to serve a sentence inflicted on him as punishment for doing something no longer considered to be a crime, even by those who foolishly believe that government has the authority to regulate what people freely choose to consume.
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7 comments:
Will,
I asked this before on an earlier post of your regarding this story. Do you know why there was a bench trial and not a jury trial?
Thanks
Susan Gerber, Bill Esbensen's attorney, requested a change of venue and was denied. Both Gerber and Esbensen, along with Gary Kiyuna (who represented Scott Kangas), were convinced that prejudice against medical marijuana is so intense and pervasive in Malheur County that they wouldn't get a decent jury. That perception was fortified by the outcome of a jury trial of two other 45th Parallel defendants that ended just before the Esbensen/Kangas trial began.
Since they couldn't get a change of venue, Gerber requested a bench trial in anticipation of an appeal.
Ironically, if she hadn't recused the original trial judge, Patricia Sullivan, things may have worked out better, despite the fact that Sullivan has filed five purely retaliatory bar complaints against Gerber. Sullivan, as I reported earlier, actually testified before the County Commission requesting an increase to the DA office's budget so they could prosecute the 45th Parallel case. Speaking ex parte about the case in public is bad enough -- but Sullivan was lobbying for the prosecutor to get more money for a case Sullivan was going to try as both judge and finder of fact.
There is abundant reversible error in the 45th Parallel case. If Sullivan had been the trial judge, the outcome would have been the same, but the case for overturning the verdict would have been unassailable.
All of that being said, I still think a jury trial would have been preferable -- but I wasn't the one making that decision.
Re: "decent jury". The way govt. prosecutions corruptly cherry-pick braindead statist dupes instead of actual peers to man juries, "decent jury" prospects have to be few and far between.
Thank you for the very detailed response. Everything about this event is tragic.
Just a feeling based on the way the courtroom events panned out. A jury trial would have ended the same. Because how does a jury get to hear and see evidence from the defense. The compound word, roadblock comes to mind. Juries are dumbed down all the time by not hearing the full truth. On to the people in the story working for the government. Do any of them have any skills where they could earn the same in the private sector?
History repeats itself. Centuries ago, China had large sailing ships that did trade in many places in this world. At that time Europe was lucky to have rowboats. All of this trade ended with China's government parasites feeding off the productive. These government parasites were the Mandalins, the freaks with the long fingernails. Strangely, with this story in mind, the Mandalins engaged in smoking opium as their pastime while living off the productive.
By definition, the trampling of peoples inalienable rights such as their choice of what they choose to ingest, is treason against we the sovereigns.
I would like to see this clearly put into State constitutions, so that we could go on the offensive, and try and if convicted, execute criminal cops that violate our God given rights rather than protect them.
I bet only a very small number would have to be executed before the rest started to behave themselves, and took their oaths to defend the Constitution and our rights seriously.
While I agree that violation of individual rights through violence is a serious crime, and consider armed self-defense a paramount property right, I don't support the death penalty. :-)
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