|
 veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 6,529
|
 Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY]
#8856281 - 08/31/08 02:18 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
Hip Hop Hippies owner gets three years in prison
August 31, 2008 - gillettenewsrecord.com
CHEYENNE - A Gillette man was sentenced Thursday to three years in federal prison for selling pipes and bongs at his hippie-inspired head shops.
The sentence came more than two months after a federal jury convicted Jeffrey Wayne Doles of three felony counts of selling drug paraphernalia.
Two of the charges stemmed from selling pipes and bongs at his Gillette head shop, Hip Hop Hippies, while the third came from selling paraphernalia at a separate store in Casper.
The ruling, handed down by U.S. District Judge Clarence Brimmer, is the latest chapter in an ongoing legal battle over whether the pipes and bongs are in fact paraphernalia. Doles, 38, said he will appeal the conviction and is confident it will be overturned.
“I think my chances are 100 percent on winning on appeal,” he said.
Doles has argued that the pipes and bongs he sold were meant for smoking tobacco and legal herbs such as Merlin’s Blend, a commercial meditative herb often sold in smoke shops. He contends that it isn’t his fault that some people choose to use those products to smoke marijuana.
Over the years, the case has become a convoluted legal maze, with separate criminal trials in both federal and state court as well as a civil claim that was decided in state court. If there is an appeal, it will go before the U.S. 10th District Court of Appeals in Denver.
Police first raided the Gillette head shop in August 2005 and confiscated some 130 pipes and bongs. Doles was arrested two days later after reopening his store with an even larger shipment of smoking accessories.
A Campbell County jury found him not guilty in January 2006 of selling drug paraphernalia. Within days, Doles reopened his store in Gillette and in June of that year, he launched another head shop in Casper.
But the legal victory proved to be short-lived. State prosecutors won the right to destroy Doles’ hardware in a September 2006 civil proceeding in which District Judge Michael “Nick” Deegan ruled that the pipes and bongs were indeed drug paraphernalia. The Wyoming Supreme Court upheld that decision in August 2007.
Doles’ acquittal in state court was not at issue in the federal case. In fact, the defense wasn’t even allowed to mention the not-guilty verdict during the federal trial, an issue that likely will be the backbone of Doles’ appeal.
His attorney, Daniel Blythe, had argued that the federal charges constitute double jeopardy, or more than one prosecution for the same crime.
But in September Brimmer struck down this argument, citing a recent ruling by the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals in the killing of an Oklahoma Highway Patrol trooper during a drug raid. The ruling said federal and state charges based on the same facts are not double jeopardy.
He also denied the defense’s argument that prosecutors violated the Petite policy, which says federal charges are not to be filed after a case has been resolved in state court. The judges in the Oklahoma case found that the policy was neither law nor precedent, only a guideline to help prosecutors decide how to use their resources.
Yet Doles disagrees, calling his federal trial a “bold and blatant” case of double jeopardy.
“Something’s wrong with the system more than something’s wrong with Jeffrey Doles,” he said. “It’s just a sick process.”
The head shop in Gillette first opened in July 2005 at 610 S. Butler Spaeth Road. Doles told The News-Record that before it was shut down, the business brought in about $6,000 a week.
More than 500 pipes and bongs were confiscated from the Gillette head shop during three separate raids, according to police inventory records. Officers also seized several hundred packages of rolling papers and other smoking accessories, police Sgt. Chuck Deaton said.
|
 NobodyImportant
P-P-P-P-P-P-Panda Bear
Registered: 05/04/08
Posts: 553
Loc: Roswell, GA
Last seen: 10 hours, 30 minutes
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: veggie]
#8856346 - 08/31/08 02:30 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
LAME
fuck that man, how can they lock him up for that
|
Cognitive_Shift
Human Being
Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 4,589
Loc: Central Nervous System
Last seen: 7 hours, 16 minutes
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: NobodyImportant]
#8856435 - 08/31/08 02:51 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
US federal government at its best
--------------------
"Freedom means being in control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one's existence; food, clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control other people but the power to control the circumstances of one's own life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness."
|
EntheogenicPeace
Scholar
Registered: 10/04/05
Posts: 2,329
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: veggie]
#8856590 - 08/31/08 03:29 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
Quote:
CHEYENNE - A Gillette man was sentenced Thursday to three years in federal prison for selling pipes and bongs at his hippie-inspired head shops.
Police first raided the Gillette head shop in August 2005 and confiscated some 130 pipes and bongs. Doles was arrested two days later after reopening his store with an even larger shipment of smoking accessories.
State prosecutors won the right to destroy Doles’ hardware in a September 2006 civil proceeding in which District Judge Michael “Nick” Deegan ruled that the pipes and bongs were indeed drug paraphernalia. The Wyoming Supreme Court upheld that decision in August 2007.
Just some limited government-advocating, Constitution-respecting conservatives hard at work keeping the American people safe from those who wish us harm. 
--------------------
"Every part of this earth is sacred to my people. Every pine needle, every sandy shore, every humming insect is holy... We are part of the earth and it is part of us... The earth does not belong to man; man belongs to the earth." - Chief Seattle
"...the role our nation has taken... of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments... we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values... When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered." - Martin Luther King Jr.
|
0192837465
Stranger
Registered: 05/29/06
Posts: 17
Last seen: 2 months, 13 days
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: EntheogenicPeace]
#8856875 - 08/31/08 04:50 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
Does this mean all head shops will be getting raided?
|
Coaster
Psychosomatic Psychonaught
Registered: 05/22/06
Posts: 14,975
Loc: La La Land
Last seen: 3 hours, 44 minutes
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: 0192837465]
#8857142 - 08/31/08 06:23 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
only the ones making 6k a week
--------------------
|
Cognitive_Shift
Human Being
Registered: 12/11/07
Posts: 4,589
Loc: Central Nervous System
Last seen: 7 hours, 16 minutes
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: Coaster]
#8857206 - 08/31/08 06:44 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
Oh okay lets punish someone for owning and operating a successful legal business that rich white people morally morally object to, but directly conflicts with our rights as citizens.
--------------------
"Freedom means being in control (either as an individual or as a member of a SMALL group) of the life-and-death issues of one's existence; food, clothing, shelter and defense against whatever threats there may be in one's environment. Freedom means having power; not the power to control other people but the power to control the circumstances of one's own life. One does not have freedom if anyone else (especially a large organization) has power over one, no matter how benevolently, tolerantly and permissively that power may be exercised. It is important not to confuse freedom with mere permissiveness."
|
ToiletDuk
BORG9 Crew
Registered: 05/16/03
Posts: 38,513
Loc: EarthFarm 1
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: veggie]
#8857258 - 08/31/08 06:58 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
That's some harsh punishment for such a petty crime. Bongs, etc shouldn't be illegal to sell anywhere.
--------------------
|
Coaster
Psychosomatic Psychonaught
Registered: 05/22/06
Posts: 14,975
Loc: La La Land
Last seen: 3 hours, 44 minutes
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: ToiletDuk]
#8857269 - 08/31/08 07:00 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
u can crack a bat on some1s head and not even get 3 years federal
--------------------
|
dwtk
good vibes
Registered: 02/24/07
Posts: 1,018
Last seen: 8 hours, 43 minutes
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: Coaster]
#8857605 - 08/31/08 08:44 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
what the fuck.
|
Krackers
nobody
Registered: 06/24/08
Posts: 36
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: dwtk]
#8858090 - 08/31/08 10:46 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
anybody on the bar that can estimate the cost for those 2 years of legal proceedings?
|
Takemeaway
- +] [=(( o ))=] [+ -
Registered: 08/14/08
Posts: 130
Loc: Australien.
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: Krackers]
#8858364 - 08/31/08 11:41 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
this has happened in australia already  i just hope it dosent happen 2 the u.s.a as well.. bongs will be nowhere to be found in the world and we'll have to make our own! this is so sad, i  bongs
--------------------
Only Love Is Real
|
DoseMeHomie
I Got 5 On It!
Registered: 08/15/08
Posts: 794
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: veggie]
#8858379 - 08/31/08 11:45 PM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
i just don't get it. there are thousands of head shops around the us. how was he charged with clean pieces?!?!? around here almost every gas station sells cheap pieces, i don't get it.
--------------------
|
Hackyhaze
Born Green Thumb
Registered: 07/13/08
Posts: 135
Loc: Anywhere but here
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] *DELETED* [Re: DoseMeHomie]
#8858540 - 09/01/08 12:31 AM (3 months, 2 days ago) |
|
|
Post deleted by HackyhazeReason for deletion: :)
|
Homegrower3000
Irie Guy
Registered: 08/25/08
Posts: 67
Loc: South Africa
Last seen: 2 months, 21 days
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: Hackyhaze]
#8860091 - 09/01/08 11:55 AM (3 months, 1 day ago) |
|
|
OK, there's no denying that bongs are used to smoke weed, but do you think conviscating his bongs are gonna stop people smoking? There going to shut down all this person's hard work, time and effort from which he earns a living and punish him for setting up a legitimate business? Just because of what his customers put in his product? Have mercy please!
Anyway, someone else is just gonna fill the gap and start up another head shop, fucks sakes man, get a fuckin life and go arrest criminals.
And conviscating rolling papers is just stupid, I can't even bother to count how many I people I know that smoke Roll-Your-Own.
Sigh.
--------------------
"I'm not guilty. You're the one that's guilty. The lawmakers, the politicians, the Columbian drug lords, all you who lobby against making drugs legal. Just like you did with alcohol during the prohibition. You're the one who's guilty. I mean, c'mon, let's kick the ballistics here: Ain't no Uzi's made in Harlem. Not one of us in here owns a poppy field. This thing is bigger than Nino Brown. This is big business. This is the American way." - Nino Brown(Samuel.L.Jackson), New Jack City (1991)
"With a bit of luck, his life was ruined forever. Always thinking that just behind some narrow door in all of his favorite bars, men in red woolen shirts are getting incredible kicks from things he'll never know." - Hunter.S.Thompson, Fear and Loathing
|
Citratox
brb, Im in the f'in zone
Registered: 11/12/07
Posts: 182
Last seen: 14 days, 17 hours
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: Homegrower3000]
#8861038 - 09/01/08 02:54 PM (3 months, 1 day ago) |
|
|
bullshit
--------------------
I wanna talk to SAMPSON!
|
Charg6825152
Stranger
Registered: 08/14/08
Posts: 4
Last seen: 2 months, 20 days
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: Citratox]
#8861446 - 09/01/08 04:02 PM (3 months, 1 day ago) |
|
|
Washington DC - Fall 2009 "Feds confiscate and destroy all apples within the countries borders and outlaw the production & importation of aluminum foil due to recent reports linking the everyday materials to devastating underground drug use" .
We all know that these types of things are cyclical...I just hope that now that we are getting Bush out of office we are nearing the worst of this conservative hypocritical BS with the Feds targeting business's that the state has already declared legal ( Medical dispensaries & head shops).
|
tyler_0_durden
AspiringMycologist
Registered: 10/28/07
Posts: 816
Loc: The PNW
Last seen: 6 days, 20 hours
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: Charg6825152]
#8861812 - 09/01/08 05:06 PM (3 months, 1 day ago) |
|
|
Wow...that's fucking bullshit.
You know the funny thing, is my friend bought a wood TOBACCO pipe, you know, the sherlock holmes style type. And we smoke MARIJUANA out of it.
Just because someone sells glassware, that doesnt suggest that its "drug paraphernalia". The person who buys it is the one responsible for whatever they use it for. You can't give someone federal pound-me-in-the-ass prison for selling items that they aren't advertising for marijuana use, they're just pipes and water pipes. They could be used to smoke ANYTHING.
Fucking feds. What a bunch of dirtbags. <-- no sarcasm whatsoever
Quote:
Constitution-respecting conservatives hard at work keeping the American people safe from those who wish us harm.
The conservatives are actually the ones who don't give a shit about the first part of the constitution. They decide to interpret what our rights are, on a case by case basis, when it's clearly defined what they are in the first ten amendments. And it seems stupid as fuck that we don't have the right to choose what we put in our bodies. It's [my body] something I OWN, so why can't I do what I want with it???
I mean, seriously. The famous PREAMBLE, the first part of the constitution, is ALWAYS overlooked, because the federal government has taken a black sharpie over the words "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" ever since 1941-1960.
--------------------
Edited by tyler_0_durden (09/01/08 05:06 PM)
|
veggie
Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 6,529
|
Re: Man gets 3 years for selling pipes and bongs [WY] [Re: veggie]
#8868696 - 09/02/08 09:16 PM (3 months, 12 hours ago) |
|
|
DEA bust repeats mistakes of Prohibition
September 2, 2008 - gazette.com
You have to wonder what they're smoking up there in Wyoming.
Last week a federal judge sentenced a man to three years in prison on three counts of selling bongs and pipes - drug paraphernalia. Defendant Jeffrey Wayne Doles, 38, protested that the items he sold at stores in Gillette and Casper were intended to be used for tobacco and legal herbs and that he had no control over what his customers ultimately smoked.
No need to be alarmed, maybe, if you never use a bong, a hookah or other form of pipe commonly used to smoke illegal drugs.
But what's next? Felony possession of a butane lighter or a book of matches?
Lt. David Whitlock of the Colorado Springs Police Department said there's no crackdown in the offing, but when someone is busted for drug possession here, their paraphernalia is confiscated and sometimes misdemeanor charges are filed. Those aren't the sort of charges that can land you in federal prison for three years, however.
The Denver office of the Drug Enforcement Administration, which oversees operation in Wyoming, didn't return calls Tuesday, and a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Cheyenne, Wyo., was unavailable.
Lewie Lambert, co-owner of seven Independent Records outlets in Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Denver, said DEA is "just spending our tax dollars. We find it ludicrous."
Lambert said the federal law on paraphernalia "is very vague to begin with. It's a crap shoot." He recalled how Independent Records and other businesses lost a challenge to state law on paraphernalia in 1983 but ultimately won the case on appeal.
Lambert and his partners conceivably would be prime targets if the Justice Department decides to launch a bong crackdown in Colorado. To avoid that, signs are tacked to the wall with wording that sounds awfully close to what Doles told the federal judge last week in Wyoming.
On the wall at the Independent Records store at 3040 W. Colorado Ave., is a sign that advises the store's impressive collection of pipes are "for use with tobacco and legal smoking herbs ... and not intended for use with any illegal substance."
"We follow the law," store manager Cindy Sinclair said, adding that the Wyoming federal action merely amounted to "putting a small business owner out of business."
All head shops sell their pipes this way while winking at the law. On the wall on the other side of the Independent Records store are books and DVDs on how to grow marijuana.
Sinclair said it's all a bit ironic because the latest trend is smoking flavored tobacco in hookahs, which are sold in most head shops.
A small percentage of pot smoked in Colorado is legal too because voters approved a medicinal marijuana law.
Interesting stuff, but it misses the main point, which is that surely, DEA has more serious criminals to pursue than Doles. The next time you hear lawmakers or the Federal Bureau of Prisons complaining that federal prison guards in Florence are spread too thinly to keep track of all the inmates, ask why they're putting guys in prison for selling bongs.
Some of the nation's war on drugs is similar to Prohibition, one of America's worst-ever mistakes, making criminals out of ordinary citizens and jump-starting organized crime.
But even at the height of Prohibition, the feds didn't outlaw bottle openers.
|
cricket
Lord Cricket
Registered: 08/29/03
Posts: 755
Loc: in my house, in front of ...
|
Will good old "Razor City" ever cut it out? [Re: veggie]
#8881678 - 09/05/08 11:02 AM (2 months, 28 days ago) |
|
|
I did some time in Gillette. I refuse to admit that I grew up there.
We had to drive several hours to get to a headshop, sometimes you could get ahold of prieviously owned tools but they were expensive. Once you got a good pipe it never left the house.
When I was in High school residue was considered probable cause to search you and your car, but they didn't charge you with anything if they didn't find pipes or papers.
...AND FOR SOME REASON...
The minimum penalty for paraphenalia was more harsh then the minimum for under an ounce of weed.
Because of this disposable pipes were the tools most used. Rolled foil, bent tubing, pipe fittings, pop cans, produce. Anything that could be disassembled, distroyed, or eaten.
.... AT THE SAME TIME...
Every store that had a cash register sold the common tobacco pipes, rolling papers, rollers, those gator-clip things with the colored feathers.
... Most pot smokers didn't use them because...
If you Did Not,(and sometimes if you did) have a bag of rolling tobacco with you when Law enforcment found pipes or papers, you would get charged with paraphenalia.
Even shitty lawyers could get it thrown out if you had tobacco. But not untill you have paid Bail, Lawyers fees, and Court costs.
I was smoking weed for almost a year before I smoked my first joint. Almost 2 years before I tried rolling one myself. I didn't learn how to roll a decent joint untill I moved out of state.
--------------------
I tried to leave my signature but it didn't work...
By the way... Does anybody know how to get sharpie markers off of a computer screen?
|
|
login or 
register to post messages and view our members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, encrypted messages, file attachments, board customizations, and much more!
Previous
Index
Next
Threaded
Edit 
Reply 
Quote 
