Out of the Maze

This is the fourth of a series dealing with the War on Cannabis, of which I am a veteran. I fought the Law back in the mid-eighties and I won a battle, but it was to take more than thirty years before the war finally ended-for me.

Q: What’s the difference between a lawyer and a liar?

A: The pronunciation

Q: How are an apple and a lawyer alike?

A: They both look good hanging from a tree.

Q: How does an attorney sleep?

A: First he lies on one side, and then he lies on the other.

Q: What’s brown and looks really good on a lawyer?

A: A doberman

How can you tell when lawyer is lying?

A: His lips are moving.

There are so many lawyer jokes readily available, it’s enough to make you wonder if there isn’t some basis in fact, for the bad reputation that lawyers have. That being said, I have minimal experience with lawyers, so I have formed a different opinion: Lawyers come in all shapes and sizes, and have just as broad of a band when it comes to integrity.

When Gluten-Free Mama and I were ushered into the office of Ron Sinnoway, located up in Miranda, we had no idea what to expect. What kind of sleight of hand was our lawyer going to pull, to get us off the proverbial hook?

With the number of plants being more than reasonable, compared to most busts, we went into the meeting thinking that there must be some way we could jostle some facts around, to find the best way to take care of business. For instance, what if we just said it was for personal consumption?

So sue me; I smoke a lot of dope.

Or what if we went in and said that the plants were being grown on my land, but that they were not just mine? Say some other family members stepped up and took responsibility for some of the plants so that it did not all fall on me and GF Mama? How would that impact our case?

What if we said something completely different? Like we were growing for someone else, blah, blah, woof, woof? 

What if? What if? What if? Obviously in the couple of days that had crawled by between the raid and our meeting, we had had enough time to get our brains churned up to a royal froth. And hey, what did we know about marijuana and the law? We figured that’s why we were paying the Pro from Dover.

“Pro, do your thing!” Gosh, it sounded so simple! What happened instead, when I started off like an outboard motor without a muffler, was that Mr. Sinnoway put up his hand as if he were directing traffic, and I was about to crash head-on into a GreyHound bus.

He was smiling, so I wasn’t alarmed. “Hold on. Despite what you have seen in the movies, I must make one thing perfectly clear: Whatever you tell me came down, is what we have to work with. You can’t come in and tell me one thing, and then change your story.”

Oh. 

The air suddenly removed from my hot air balloon, I felt I were on the verge of dropping out of the sky. My face must have given me away because he went on to clarify the direction we were going. “Here’s the way it works. You can say anything you like if you preface it with ‘supposing that…’” 

He went on, “For instance, supposing that you and x number of family members got together and decided as a unit to do this thing, but the gig just happened to be on your land. We might discuss an approach, IF this were the direction we wanted to go.”

My jaws were already flapping before he once again put his hand up in the “Stop!” sign.

Mr. Sinnoway continued, “Or, if you were growing for an independent party, one who was not involved, then you would give me all the pertinent facts, et al. You see where I’m going with this? Now, if you are prepared to go into detail at this point in time, I will start taking notes. If, on the other hand, you need to get all of the facts in order, then we can have this discussion at our next consultation.”

There was plenty to get straightened out as it was, so our time was not wasted. We just needed to get our act together. The reality was that until such time as there was a trial, we did not have to sweat the story. And the more time that went by, without any sort of complaint being filed against me (the land being in my name), the more we began to realize that the government was not interested in putting me in jail.

No, it just wanted my twenty acres and my home.

For 273 days we existed. In November SmallBoy was born, and for a minute or two we forgot about what was swirling around us. We celebrated the Holidays, and life was almost normal. That spring I worked with my partner, Rob, on some kitchen cabinets and a counter, a job that was pretty innovative, but that left us financially destitute.

Somewhere in there, Mr. Sinnoway informed us that his paralegal would be out on-site, and that we should be prepared to show him around the “crime scene,” my phrase, not his. Exactly what he was looking for was not evident, but in an effort to get as clear of a picture as possible, the paralegal snapped lots of photos, took copious pages of notes, and eventually discovered the path that led us out of the maze.

Speaking of [black Arkansas] apples hanging from the tree.

The facts: We grew in several small plots in the middle of a thick manzanita grove. Since there were only 33 plants in all, there was only one spot with more than a half-dozen. In that little area were two big redwood boxes, each about three feet deep. One was triangular in shape, simply because it conformed to the lay of the land. 

Besides, if three built-up sides of redwood would hold a vast amount of dirt, why would you need four? There may have been a dozen or so plants in this area, so the boxes were substantial in size. The paralegal duly noted all that he saw.

Another fact that contributed to the background is that the lay of the land is anything but flat. Hilly, with winter waterways running always downhill, it is impossible to determine where the boundary line(s) might be.

The paralegal wanted to see it all, so after visiting the grow-site itself, located perilously close to the boundary lines, we sauntered a short distance over to my absentee neighbor's spot, to the south. Imagine the paralegal’s surprise when he was in the garden of this neighbor, and found another redwood box in the form of a triangle.

Lest you think this is some sort of bizarre coincidence, let me hasten to inform you that the same person built both boxes. I know because I was there; the absentee neighbor happened to be one of my brothers. All of this was duly noted-without comment-by the paralegal, in his yellow legal notebook.

The triangular-shaped boxes were the key to our escape from the net. Because of the close proximity of the grow-site to the boundary line, and because of the presence of the second uniquely triangular-shaped grow-box on a neighbor’s land, the lawyer requested that the land-forfeiture action be dropped.

Lemon ogre

In order to have continued the case, Attorney-General Peter Robinson would have had to send his own surveyor up to the property, in order to establish either the invalid nature of the lawyer’s claim, or the reverse. Mr. Robinson was unwilling to do so and that was the end of it.

We never had to actually have our story together; I never had to turn myself in or have my fingerprints taken and the closest anyone could come to associating me with any crime, was the article in The Ledger, the one which misspelled my name.

You can make lawyer jokes from now until forever, for all I care. I paid more than double the original value of my land to Mr. Sinnoway, and allow me to assure you, I did it with a smile.

Tomorrow: Drop a pebble in a pond…