Hardest hit: Jonathan Wall will sit in court over cannabis almost two years before his first day

Jonathan Wall is a living reminder that the War on Drugs, with its stringent mandatory minimum sentences, continues to trap new people into the system.

The 26-year-old Maryland native is sentenced to a minimum of 10 years on a federal conspiracy charge in Maryland. If he goes to court and loses, he could face his conspiracy charge of distributing over 1,000 kilograms of cannabis.

Wall, a first-time offender, is believed to be the mastermind behind the operation between Northern California, including Humboldt County, and his home in Maryland. The Fed raided in April 2019, and Wall has been in custody since July 2020. His first trial date is almost a year away in May 2022.

As he waits, the aspiring mainstream cannabis operator tries to keep his cool while interned at the Chesapeake Detention Facility in Baltimore, a facility with a penchant for violence and corruption that involves inmates and guards. The situation was only made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Courtesy Mitzi Wall

For Jonathan Wall, an unconventional path leads to early insights into cannabis

Wall was born in Maryland and raised by his parents. He said they got along well after puberty but had previously been contentious. Wall claimed to have had a little problem with authority and said he “saw through the bullshit of society early on”. Fortunately for Wall, there were no material goods like those in the world around him. By stating that he wanted to push his limits in order to find a sense of wholeness, he went down an unconventional path.

As a teenager, this route included the escape several times. He remembered the first time he was smoking weed on the run from home and joining a group of migrant crab industry workers in the back of their work van. He said everything changed from then on. “The introduction of cannabis into my life has enabled me to sharpen my awareness and see things in a different light.” He claimed to see things differently now and said he had “the veil of the mundane, everyday Seeing reality through and seeing the human experience as it really is from a new and fresh perspective. “

Escape from home eventually resulted in Wall becoming homeless in his teenage years, turning to friends, and the occasional public parks and restrooms. The lack of a stable home resulted in his dropping out of school and instead taking his GED to graduate. Wall said the decision allowed him to take a different path in life.

He spent the next several years working in local restaurants, with cannabis supplementing his income. At 20, he saw an opportunity to enter the burgeoning California cannabis market in Humboldt County. At the time, California was operating as a medical-only market and adhering to the provisions of Proposition 215 and its subsequent reforms. Wall said he wanted to help provide medical patients with inexpensive cannabis. Income would always be welcome, but he stated several times during his interview with High Times that his main intention was to give customers access to medical cannabis.

Wall saw lifestyle as a way to free himself from a society in which he felt disenfranchised. He saw the economic collapse of 2008 and the subsequent lack of prosecution as a sign that society and the system have broken down and that the working class is left to the rich. Speaking of cannabis and Northern California, he said that he “saw this as an opportunity to be completely independent of a system that I saw as broken.”

Courtesy Mitzi Wall

Wall found that autonomy and community that he lacked at home apart from his skateboarding buddies. Wall felt that he was contributing to a sustainable and victimless livelihood that helped others while enabling him to live a humble life.

The Northern California community knew that violating state and federal laws still posed potential threats. However, the Obama years and the Cole Memo gave a slight impression that the Feds are finally aiming to decriminalize and eventually legalize the federal government.

Wall said operators in the region remained “inherently paranoid” during the period, still fearing that only one person would tip the Feds. Still, he said the general consensus was that the persecution of cannabis was “a 20th century invention.

He said the mood began to change when President Donald Trump appointed two anti-cannabis attorneys general during his tenure, first Jeff Sessions and then William Barr.

The federal intervention became a reality in 2019. Wall was made aware that he was the subject of a raid while on vacation with family in Portugal. During this time he became aware of the gravity of the cannabis charge. “Everyone knows that it is nationwide illegal, but certainly not to this extent until they are affected,” he said.

Wall worried that he could not return to America without concern. After these fears were allayed, he initially tried to get his affairs in order, but he found many trying to “pay off” rather than assist him.

In autumn 2019, Wall finally left the USA for Central America. He would remain on the run until July 2020 before throwing himself up to the Feds at LAX Los Angeles Airport. It would be sent across the United States by bus and “Con-Air” flights, stopping at various prisons on the way before reaching its current destination in Maryland. He said the trip was known as “Diesel Therapy”.

Courtesy Mitzi Wall

Wall, a first-time offender, tackles the prison’s impact, COVID-19

While Wall awaits his hearing on the federal cannabis nonviolent charges, he is detained at Chesapeake Detention Center in Baltimore. The facility, known for its high levels of violence, has also been exposed to significant exposure to the COVID-19 virus.

“This is not a place you want to be,” Wall said when he reported that knife fights were regular. He found that one prisoner went so far as to arm milk cartons of body exudates against the guards in an attack.

Experience certainly had an impact on Wall, as almost anyone would. He does not consider himself institutionalized, but did share that “staying in a groove is essential for healthy adaptation”. To do this, he trains regularly, reads often and tries to meditate for at least 20 minutes a day. An in-depth read was Murray Rothbard’s The Ethics of Liberty. The book had a role in developing his enthusiasm for the social and economic structures of libertarianism. He also credited former cannabis inmate-turned-writer Richard Stratton for the help with his adaptation.

Life at the facility worsened when COVID-19 reached the prison, and Wall said he did not know of any inmate who had not contracted the virus. He stated that his symptoms were minimal but remains mildly concerned about possible long-term consequences. He claims the guards brought the virus and says, “It’s the only way it gets here.” He added that instead of separating infected cellmates from other people, the guards would lock the door and not allow them to leave for days. He called the scenario a nightmare.

Prepare to fight the fall

Wall is waiting for his first court appearance in May 2022. “I will be held legally innocent for 23 months before I first appear in court,” said Wall, asking if this schedule was in line with a citizen’s right to speedy trial.

It is often reported that detainees face harsher sentences for not speaking up and fighting their charges – often forcing many to accept pleadings regardless of guilt or innocence. Despite the risk, Wall is ready to spend his day in court. Whether guilty or innocent, Wall loathes the idea of ​​”surrendering by getting out” to a plea. He considers accepting defeat with it. “I’ve known from childhood that these people were wrong,” he said of regulators. He doesn’t believe in fate, but says the case almost feels like he’s been preparing for some time.

He calls the drug war “the historically most blatant violation of personal rights by the state”. When asked who the government is that regulates what a citizen can consume, he added, “especially a natural plant that is widely viewed as a holistic medicine”. Wall later stated that alcohol, medication, and shotguns were far more dangerous, readily available legal options.

Wall’s attorney Jason Flores-Williams is a noted activist and ready to fight the case.

Flores-Williams spares no big words to get his point across. “I don’t understand this country’s commitment to ideological necrophilia, the insistence on continuing to have sex with dead ideas,” he said of the ongoing drug war and its aftermath.

The attorney added, “I do not intend to live with the award of being the last attorney to send his client to jail for cannabis.”

Despite the attention paid to Wall, he hopes readers understand that he is just one of many who continue to be arrested and forced to serve years, decades on non-violent cannabis charges. Like him, many continue to face long prison sentences despite the so-called “green rush” of legalization that is sweeping America.

He believes that others like him will continue to get into the system without change, while those in power continue to escape punishment for the various allegations and crimes. “Are we tired of being lied to, tired of all the lies and the war on drugs?” Asked Wall.