by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
A quick use of modern technology brought this police action to the attention of hundreds of thousands of people within a matter of minutes. Social media is truly developing as a tool that increases the power and visibility of the individual when dealing with the state.
Citizen Journalist
Citizens Memorial Healthcare, a small hospital in Bolivar, Missouri, underwent a spate of bad publicity last week after a hospital employee, or the hospital itself, apparently notified the local police department that a patient was using marijuana in his room. A search of the room of Nolan Sousley, a stage 4 pancreatic cancer patient, failed to produce any marijuana or cannabis-related products, but it did spawn the creation of a video of the police search – a video that promptly went viral on Facebook.
As the search was proceeding a person off-camera, believed to be a hospital security guard, can be heard saying: “I smelled marijuana whenever I walked into the room.”
(Police said they had received a 911 call from the hospital that was based on security personnel saying that he had smelled marijuana in the room.)
One person who was present during the search later commented that the Bolivar policemen who made the search did not make any claims about marijuana odor while they were in the room.
Mr. Sousley readily admitted the use of a cannabis oil that he takes in a pill form and which he stated was odorless, and he denied ever having smoked marijuana in the hospital. Sousley said that he takes the cannabis oil pill to relieve the pain caused by his cancer.
Mr. Sousley also explained to the two police officers who were searching his room that Missouri voters had overwhelmingly approved a Constitutional amendment (by 65%) last November to approve the use of marijuana for medical purposes – such as to combat the pain from cancer. Unfortunately for him, the applications for that process will not be available until July 4th of this year – and physicians may not write certifications for the treatment until June 4th.
One of the officers responded to Sousley’s entreaty regarding the Missouri vote and noted that it was “still illegal.” Sousley responded that he did not have time to wait and asked the officer “What would you do?” The officer responded that he would not engage in “what if” games.
There was also a bit of contention when officers attempted to search one particular bag and Nolan Sousley informed them that it was his “final day” and "final hour" bag and that he did not want to dig through it in front of a room full of people. Finally everyone left the room except for one police officer whom the family described as “very respectful,” and he was allowed to search the “final day” bag.
No marijuana or cannabis-related products were discovered during the police search of the patient’s hospital room. The Bolivar Police Department reportedly took down its Facebook page the day after the search due to a deluge of unfriendly on-line comments that it was receiving.
(Note: Bolivar, Missouri, is a farming community approximately 30 miles north of Springfield, MO. It is home to a large Bible college that was once headed by Roy Blunt who is now Missouri’s senior US Senator. Mike Parson, the state’s current governor, once served as the county sheriff for Polk County which encompasses Bolivar. Blunt and Parson are both Republicans, and Bolivar is a decidedly conservative community.)
1 comment:
Fundamental to the notions of fairness implicit to the American scheme of Ordered Liberty is the idea that arrest and prosecution is discretionary. Just because possession of marijuana is technically illegal does not justify the added stress placed on this man in the last days of his life. He has sufficient stress with which to deal without this trauma.
Everyone who speeds is not ticketed. Everyone who trespasses is not prosecuted. Everyone who steals is not investigated. Everyone who commits any one of a thousand offenses to Missouri's criminal code does not face the invasive presence of a police state.
Why not? The reason is simple, jailing everyone is simply not feasible. Mass incarceration is not economically viable. Court dockets already cannot sustain the high tide of charges before them. Hence, plea deals are made. Charges are dropped. The courts are not the place for a reenactment of the Spanish Inquisition or a platform for the allegedly morally righteous to enact God's vengeance on sinners.
When laws change making legal that which once was illegal the judicial system tries to take a breath and let the new convergence of law and reality mesh. In Jackson County, Missouri, for instance, the Prosecuting Attorney no longer prosecutes marijuana possession cases. That is as it should be. Instead of marking up additional notches on her rifle she focuses on crimes that matter.
In Missouri marijuana possession by a terminally ill person no longer matters. Just because possession is technically illegal doesn't give law enforcement a right to intrude into this man's dying days. In other words Police don't have a right to be right for the sake of being right. They do have a duty to engage in critical thinking.
We need more common sense policing in America and fewer robotic cops doing everything by the book. That's because the book was designed to extract convictions and not pursue justice. The book is biased in favor of justifying the police and not pursuing justice. The book is a bad book. We need to throw that damn book away and write another one; a book that incorporates more of the Golden Rule and less of the shoot first and ask questions later mentality.
Man, we could use a sheriff like Andy Taylor again. He understood the "Merchant of Venice, Act IV, Scene I," to wit:
"That, in the course of justice, none of us
Should see salvation: we do pray for mercy;
And that same prayer doth teach us all to render
The deeds of mercy."
Indeed, the quality of Mercy is not strained, except in Polk County, Missouri; and places of similar rigid ilk.
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