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Anthony Diotaiuto
On August 5, 2005, 23-year-old Anthony Diotaiuto was killed after a SWAT team shot him ten times. Officers barged into his home at 6:15 a.m. with a search warrant, looking for marijuana; Diotaiuto, presumably fearing burglars, grabbed a handgun and was subsequently shot. The officers eventually found a little over an ounce of marijuana.
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Cheryl Noel
In January 2005, 44-year-old Cheryl Noel was shot and killed by police officers raiding her Maryland home for drugs. Noel, who had been asleep when the raid started, came to her bedroom door with a gun — presumably in self-defense — and was shot and killed. Noel's husband, son, and a family friend staying in the house were charged with possession of a small quantity of marijuana and drug paraphernalia.
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Goose Creek, South Carolina, School Raid
In November 2003, police officers with guns drawn swept through Stratford High School in South Carolina. Officers held guns to the backs of 130 students — a majority of whom were black though the school population is only 25% black — who were ordered to lie on the floor or kneel against lockers while police dogs sniffed for drugs. No drugs were found and no arrests were made.
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Gary Silva
Medical marijuana patient Gary Silva, who suffers from degenerative disk disease and nerve damage, was asleep in his Sky Valley, California home, when he heard a knock on the door. When Gary, who cultivated marijuana in his home on behalf of his patients' collective, went to undo the deadbolt, DEA agents kicked in the door. The force sent Gary sprawling to the floor, dislocating his shoulder and causing lacerations to his face.
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Lester Siler
In July 2004, Lester Eugene Siler, 42, was brutalized by five rogue police officers in his Tennessee home. Siler, who is illiterate, was beaten and threatened with shooting and electrocution and had his head held underwater in a toilet after refusing to sign a search consent form that he could not read. Siler's wife caught the incident on an audiotape which was later used to convict all five officers.
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James Burton
Glaucoma patient James Burton served one year in prison and lost his home after being convicted of possession of marijuana. He now lives in the Netherlands, where he can obtain his marijuana by prescription from pharmacies.
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Matthew Ducheneaux
In July 2000, 36-year-old Matthew Ducheneaux was arrested for smoking marijuana in a park in South Dakota. Ducheneaux was a quadriplegic who used marijuana with his doctor's permission to treat violent muscle spasms. Ducheneaux, unable to tell the jury that he used marijuana for medical reasons, was eventually convicted of marijuana possession and forbidden from using his medicine for a year.
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Unnamed Florida college student
On June 6, 2003, a 19-year-old Alachua County, Florida, college student was raped by his cellmate as he served the first of four weekend sentences for delivering marijuana, a felony offense. The student's cellmate was a violent offender in jail awaiting trial on sexual battery charges; the two men shared a cell because of jail overcrowding.
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Weldon Angelos
Twenty-five-year-old Weldon Angelos was sentenced to 55 years in prison for selling several hundred dollars' worth of marijuana to a police informant on three separate occasions ' his first offenses. Because he had a gun during the commission of his crimes, though did not use or brandish it, he received a sentence that even his judge called "unjust, cruel, and even irrational."
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Will Foster
Will Foster, a rheumatoid arthritis sufferer and father of two, was sentenced to 93 years in prison for charges relating to the 25-plant medical marijuana garden he grew in a locked room in his basement.
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