Texas Criminal Lawyer Blog

Medical marijuana has been in the spotlight this past month, with a focus on its shaky legality. One of the main reasons is because the federal government, which was tolerant of state medical marijuana laws for the past couple of years, has started cracking down in California. Federal government officials argued that they were only targeting those who took advantage of the medical marijuana law to sell the drug for profit. Now advocates of medical marijuana are suing the federal government.

Anti-medical marijuana states such as Texas are no more tolerant of other states' medical marijuana laws than are the Feds. Under Article IV of the U.S. Constitution, the "Full Faith and Credit Clause," states have to respect the "public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state." However, there are limits to this respect -- such as if the laws of one state conflict with the laws of another state. Therefore, states do not necessarily need to apply another state's conflicting laws when deciding issues to which their own laws speak. Here in Texas, this has meant direct conflict with other states with medical marijuana laws, and with "prescriptions" written by doctors in California or Oregon or other states in which marijuana is prescribed legally.

Section 481.116(a) of the Texas Health and Safety Code states: "Except as authorized by this chapter, a person commits an offense if the person knowingly or intentionally possesses a controlled substance listed in Penalty Group 2, unless the person obtained the substance directly from or under a valid prescription or order of a practitioner acting in the course of professional practice." Penalty Group 2 under the Code includes certain forms of marijuana. Someone who commits an offense under Section 481.116(a) faces punishment ranging from a state jail felony to imprisonment in the institutional division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for life-- depending upon the amount of drug in possession. It has been my experience that California medical marijuana tests out as hashish-a second degree felony in Texas.

Texas prosecutors claim that Section 481.116(a) prohibits all possession of marijuana -- even if it was obtained through a valid prescription in a state where medical marijuana is legal, such as California or Washington. Therefore, if a police officer found medical marijuana during a vehicle search and seizure, the owner would be left alone in California, but would be treated just like someone using recreational marijuana in Texas. Yet does Section 481.116(a) really criminalize prescription marijuana from states where it is legal? Given that Texas itself does not legalize medical marijuana, could its silence imply that Section 481.116(a) criminalizes out of state prescriptions?

So far, evidence suggests overwhelmingly that the Texas approach is to prosecute people with medical marijuana. Last year, for instance, two Texans were charged with felonies for possession of medical marijuana in hash and pill form from a California dispensary. One suffered from severe asthma, while the other was a quadriplegic. Meanwhile, Texas legislators have successfully banned K2, a synthetic substance similar to marijuana.

Maybe the term "white collar crimes" needs to be changed, to something like "blue-and-red collar crimes." That's because white collar crimes are branching out -- or rather, other groups are branching into crimes once thought to be limited to business executives in their offices. Recently, it was revealed that national gangs like the Bloods and the Crips are committing their drive-by shootings through cyber space crimes that are white collar in nature.

Both gangs have increasingly committed financial cyber space crimes that not only threaten Corporate America, but also pose a risk to the rest of us. Their white collar schemes range from mortgage fraud to counterfeiting to identity theft to credit card fraud. These crimes offer less risk than "traditional" crimes like murder and drug trafficking -- and the reward is potentially much greater.

The FBI warns that besides the Bloods and Crips, other gangs like the Latin Kings and Aryan Brotherhood are getting involved in online white collar crimes. More importantly, these gangs are growing in size, as they purposely go out and recruit people with high-tech computer skills. The gangs have even been recruiting through social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. (One would think that people with high-tech backgrounds would know better than to tangle with the Bloods and Crips, but in this economy, maybe any job is better than none.) FBI agents claim that some of these criminal gangs are as large and sophisticated as any corporation. That sounds a bit rich, but it is an indication that gang activity has gone beyond the smash and grab punch -in -the -mouth tactics of pre -cyberspace days.

These reports serve as a reminder to never let your guard down when you are online. If a complete stranger claims that you will win a big prize if only you provide personal information like your birth date, Social Security number, or mother's maiden name, you will probably just hit the delete button. On the other hand, not every white collar crime is a big and sophisticated scheme run by a conspiracy of gang related thugs. A criminal defense attorney may defend many small white collar suspects who simply misunderstood their situations. For instance, there have been several cases where a suspect in a cyber chat thought that he was talking to someone of legal age; or cases where the suspect was just a mid-level manager doing work that his superiors wanted him to do, not realizing that the work was fraud. Then there are cases where the suspect was not even involved with the crime. On more than one occasion, people who use shared computers have been accused of crimes they knew nothing about. That is because the computer's ISP just records that the computer was being used at a given time -- not who was using it. Therefore, your nice but secretive uncle who came to visit for two weeks and used your computer late at night might never be charged, but you might not be so lucky.

And then there are white collar suspects who -- it turns out -- masterminded big schemes and were completely aware of their illegal activity, like members of the Bloods and Crips. Believe it or not, even those suspects have the right to be represented by a defense attorney in a criminal trial.

Judges are supposed to make decisions on federal crimes, not commit them. Yet Judge William Adams, a county court judge in Aransas County, Texas, very nearly did. The judge got into some serious trouble when his 23-year old daughter, Hillary, posted a video on YouTube of some family bonding from 2004. Only instead of bonding, the video footage showed Judge Adams lashing his then 16-year old daughter with a belt as she begged him to stop. Within a few days, the video got more than four million views.

Judge Adams responded with the maturity that one would expect of someone in his position. When confronted with the video evidence, he claimed that his daughter was trying to get back at him for reducing her financial support and threatening to take away her Mercedes. The Aransas County District Attorney investigated the matter and concluded that the Texas statute of limitations had already expired. He claims that he would have pressed charges if that hadn't been the case. That meant that the only way Judge Adams could be prosecuted for a crime was if a U.S. attorney pressed charges. After viewing the video footage, the U.S. attorney's office found that no federal crime had been committed.

Ironically, the judge oversaw a lot of juvenile abuse cases. The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, which is conducting its own investigation, has asked that he be removed from hearing these cases until the investigation is concluded. Judge Adams is already taking a two-week leave, while an interim judge has come in to hear all of his cases.

It's never pleasant to read stories about judges behaving badly. At least this judge seems to have kept his darker side private -- unlike a certain judge in Pennsylvania who abused his position at the expense of dozens of young people who appeared before his court. Still, it does raise the question of whether a judge who commits violence in private is an unfit judge -- even if his violence is not illegal (under federal law, at least). Judges in general are held to a higher standard because they hold our lives in their hands, so to speak. While many of them began their careers as prosecutors or criminal defense attorneys, when they become judges, they "cross over." Texas judges must abide by a code of conduct, as do federal judges. While the letter of the Texas code of conduct does not prohibit violence against family members, it is hard to imagine that anyone would be able to overlook it. Especially when it could color the judge's view of cases that come before his court every day. So the answer to the earlier question -- is a judge unfit even if his violence does not break laws? -- is likely yes.

At least there is one consolation to the Judge Adams situation. Unlike a federal judge, who can stay in office forever unless he is impeached, Judge Adams must periodically run for office, as Texas judges are selected at the ballot box. If he is not removed or does not resign, his term will be up in three years. And then the voters can choose whether to keep him or kick him out.