From the Archives: 9 Tons of Pot (1974)

By Rod de Remer

Regular newspaper readers probably remember the spectacular failure of a barge with nine tons of weed on board last year. It was the first in a series of setbacks for major traders.

So what happened to the poor bastards whose boats were loaded to the brim with Jamaica and whose heads were laden with luscious green visions of profit?

A few weeks ago, they were tried in the same courtroom where the Gainesville Eight had been acquitted a few weeks earlier.

The Gainesville Eight were anti-war Vietnam veterans who were charged by the federal government with conspiring to commit violence at the Miami Republican Convention.

But there was a marked contrast in this process to that of the Gainesville Eight. There was little publicity and even less sympathy for the accused.

The Steinhatchee Seven were just pot smugglers.

Maybe four or five years ago, people could rally around Pot as a political unifying force. Certainly the nine tons the Steinatchee Seven was accused of being imported would make an impressive rallying point. “Okay, everyone,” shouts the movement leader, “we’re going to dance around this pot pile and nobody, not the pigs, not our parents, nobody’s going to take it!” However, the ideal has always been the freedom to smoke weed (unfortunately from our short-sighted ancestor not included in the Bill of Rights) and not the actual physical substance itself that was being defended. If a bunch of guys are messing around with nine tons of that stuff, they’re after the big cabbage – man, they’re in business. A high-risk, lucrative business, to be sure. No, there weren’t many who stood up for the cause and shouted, “Free the Steinhatchee Seven.”

The Steinhatchee Seven are: Barry Korn, 23, David Strongosky, 23, Michael J. Knight, 23, Richard Ericus, 22, and Steven Lab, 20, all from the St. Petersburg area; Floyd Capo, 40, of Cross City, and James Maslanka, 24, of Gainesville.

What they were convicted of is attempting to take nine and a half tons of Jamaican bush on a barge from Capo up the small West Florida waterway called Rocky Creek and then cashing them out at Florida wholesale prices in effect during the spring of the year. Of course, nobody is ever convicted for selling nefarious drugs at wholesale prices. No siree, the commonly quoted figure in the press, so often supplied by prosecutors, was that four and a half million hard-earned American dollars would get that bargeload to the back door of your garage or warehouse or wherever else you could that much bush stuffing. The breakdown is roughly around $245 per pound. Must be some sort of government-subsidized farm program. (The Independent Florida Alligator, the University of Florida’s student newspaper, was not happy with this exaggerated figure and used a $9 million figure reportedly obtained from a drug officer in Steinhatchee.)

But the lack of a justifiable cause wasn’t the only difference between the Gainesville Eight and the Steinhatchee Seven. In the government’s political accomplice against its war veterans, it was the defendants, at least some of them, who, to many Americans, were celebrities and even heroes. The best the seven could muster was a well-known attorney, Percy Foreman, who has defended the likes of Candy Mossier and James Earl Ray.

Foreman provided a commanding figure for the courtroom observers and, to some extent, the participants. However, one key participant didn’t seem particularly impressed. Although U.S. District Judge David L. Middlebrooks has never been called a hanging judge, he is not a man anyone would choose to try the eternal soul if there were a ban on drug use to ascend to heaven with a key to the golden gates. No, Judge Middlebrooks does not look favorably on those who sell, use or even contemplate drugs.

The clash between Foreman and Middlebrooks came early in the trial when Foreman was trying to explain to the judge how things are handled in most of the federal courts where he has practiced. Middlebrooks shifted his gaze to Foreman and shot back, “You will follow the rules of this Court, Mr. Foreman, and if you don’t like it, you can appeal to New Orleans!” (New Orleans is the seat of the 5. Court of Appeals.)

Percy Foreman wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough, although none of the defendants were caught with that pile of weeds on Capo’s barge, which ran aground on a sandbar that appeared in the middle of the creek. Not only that, the mild-mannered young Robert Crogeyer, Assistant US Attorney from Pensacola, admitted from the start that the evidence was circumstantial.

That circumstantial evidence, he promised the jury in his opening statement, would “weave a web of circumstances that must fall upon all of these defendants.”

This “web” of testimonies from more than 40 witnesses flashed on such strong points as the statement that the defendants “looked like they’d been rolling in the hay.” There’s not that much hay in the Steinhatchee-Cross City area, about 135 miles north of St. Petersburg and about 70 from here. No, they mainly fish and sell mobile homes up there. Six young guys with long hair, headbands and other oddities just stuck out like a sore thumb as they rode around with Floyd Capo on March 4th. Seems like everyone they passed was paying them special attention.

Floyd Capo sat in the courtroom in a row behind the defense table facing the jury. He sat there with the others but didn’t really fit in. Capo is 40 years old, somewhat corpulent and graying on top of his head. Unlike his co-defendants, he did not wear a tie at the trial, and once, acting on an instinct most people neglect in such a formal setting, he took off his shoe and gave his big toe a good scratch.

Other parts of that “web” that eventually closed around the heads of the seven were the Jamaican plane ticket in Maslanka’s pocket when the blue Eldorado he was driving near Cross City was stopped. There was further evidence of the distinctive sound of Capo’s boat, which apparently everyone in the area could identify. Two fishermen out on the gulf on the night of March 4 heard the boat going up the creek from 1 a.m. until dawn. But the topper found this barge. And not far away, on the south bank of Rocky Creek Landing, was a campground that had more Croker sacks with that grassy substance in the sheds, like Southern moss hanging from the trees.

What a time these little county sheriffs posed in front of all that marijuana. The following week every small weekly paper in the area carried bad Polaroids of the local heroes under very big headlines. All the defense could charge the jury with was that the seven were wrongly arrested, they are still awaiting an appeal, and the testimony of character witness John Carroll. However, Carroll proved less effective in court here than he had been earlier in the Southwest, surprising evil men and women wearing masks and carving Zs with his sword.

Carroll is the actor who portrayed Zorro on TV and said he is ready to make two of the accused movie stars.

He may have to wait. Because the strongest contrast that could be drawn between the Gainesville Eight case and the Steinhatchee Seven trial was drawn by the jury, which found all seven guilty of the four counts against them.

The maximum sentence in each case is five years, but Middlebrooks, in a magnanimous show of forbearance, announced that he would not sentence any of the seven to more than 15 years. They each got 20 years.

So if things seemed to be getting a little tight and dry this past summer, you might have been watching your own plants and wondering why it took so long to grow the stuff. If that’s the case, think a little about the Steinhatchee Seven ahead of a very long, dry stretch.

High Times Magazine, Summer 1974

Read the whole issue here.