ON March 18, 1990, a pair of deputy sheriffs in Johnson County, Indiana. spotted a red Jeep being driven erratically and signaled for its driver to pull off the road. Behind the wheel they found Jerry Montgomery, obviously intoxicated; littering the truck were three empty vodka bottles, a five-gallon bucket full of marijuana, and a gray box containing more than $13,000 in cash. After obtaining a warrant, sheriffs searched Montgomery's house, finding more marijuana and a locked briefcase hidden under his bed. Deputy John Myers pried it open with a screwdriver. In the briefcase were receipts for farm equipment; documents mentioning R.P.Z. investments, Claude Atkinson, and Ernest Montgomery; an option to buy a property owned by Martha Brummett; and a number of books suggesting that this arrest was the beginning, not the end of a trail: Indoor Marijuana Horticulture, The Primo Plant, and How to Grow Marijuana Indoors Under Lights.
The investigation eventually led authorities to a 500-acre farm close to Solsberry, in Greene County, owned by Arno Zepp, of Investment Holdings. Inc. On August 22 federal, state, and local law-enforcement agents arrested Claude Atkinson, raided the farm, and, with the help of volunteers from the Indiana National Guard, destroyed 10,000 marijuana plants. Atkinson soon began to talk. In May of 1991 Ernest Montgomery was arrested at his Gosport cabin, where 7,000 marijuana seedlings sat in little pots, ready for planting. Early that same morning Mark Young was awakened by someone at the front door. Unlike his former business associates, Young was not growing anything. He and his girlfriend, Patricia, were in the process of moving to Florida. When he saw a man with a badge and a gun, Young had no idea what was happening, but assumed that it must have something to do with unpaid taxes.
More than a dozen law-enforcement officers surrounded the house. Their commander, a DEA agent, treated Young politely, allowing him to get dressed and agreeing not to handcuff him in front of the neighbors. At the station Young read his indictment. He was being charged, under federal law, not only for his role in distributing 700 pounds of marijuana but also for conspiring to manufacture all 12,500 marijuana plants grown on Martha Brummett's farm. Young was unaware of the punishment he might face until later that day. John Hollywood, a bail bondsman in Indianapolis, arrived in the afternoon to secure his release. But the government refused to set bail. Under Indiana's strict state law, the same charges would bring a maximum sentence of twenty eight years -- at most, fourteen years served in prison, and probably much less. But under federal law Young's two prior state felony convictions, one of them more than seventeen years old, classified him as a career drug offender. This arrest could prove his third strike. At the U. S. attorney's discretion, he faced a possible mandatory-minimum sentence of life imprisonment without possibility of parole.
This is the first part of a two-part article. Part Two, next month, will describe the disposition of the Young case and the perverse consequences of a legal regime that decrees mandatory-minimum sentences.
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