Prominent Cowley County Democrat Mike Morton, and his wife, have authored letters to the media seeking to further explain the circumstances surrounding the bust of a marijuana grow operation at the Morton property in October 2010.
Morton was recently sentenced to a 10-month prison sentence for cultivating marijuana at his residence near Udall. He is currently in El Dorado after being taken into the custody of the Kansas Dept. of Corrections, recently.
Morton had reached a plea agreement with prosecutors that Morton expected would result in probation on the cultivation charge.
While prosecutors agreed not to contest Morton’s request for probation, the final decision on sentencing was left to district court Judge Nick St. Peter. The judge felt prison time was warranted.
Morton and Michael Campbell both were found guilty of cultivation charges as the result of a bust that turned up 200 pounds of pot in various stages of processing.
Here are the letters:
TO THE EDITOR:
Because my husband, Mike Morton, has written many well regarded letters to the editor, and his arrest was featured on the front page, I want to pass along a letter Mike wrote and present the back story to readers.
The facts are important. His attorney seemed to think that Mike’s community activities and civic involvement over the last 20 years, made presenting Mike’s version of the facts to the judge unnecessary.
Perhaps he was relying on the judge to only consider the facts agreed in the plea deal that Mike made, which were that Mike was not responsible for the marijuana found in the building he had rented to another man. In either case, Mike is filing an appeal of the sentence, but it will not likely be in time to make much difference in what Mike must serve.
On the night of the arrest, Mike was on his way to neighboring property on his ATV. As he was passing the metal barn (1/4 mile from his house), he saw his sister & brother-in-law walking their dog and stopped to talk. (Co-defendant Michael) Campbell, to whom Mike had rented the use of the barn, arrived, and Mike went to talk to him about his promise to leave, which Campbell had made earlier when Mike discovered what Campbell and his friends were doing in the barn and Mike had asked him to leave.
Campbell had told Mike that he wanted to stay at the barn while his house in El Dorado was having some construction work done and he wanted to hunt for arrowheads in the area, as he had done in the past.
Bringing Campbell’s MJ (sic) operation into the barn was never discussed at the outset and Mike never gave permission for that activity. When the police arrived, Mike, his sister and brother-in-law were still there.
The police thought Mike looked nervous, as well he might, when realizing how Campbell’s operation would look to the cops. Campbell took responsibility for the MJ in the barn and told the police that Mike was not involved. However, that statement apparently did not make it into the synopsis that the judge saw.
So when the police later searched Mike’s home and nursery grounds, they were unable to find any location where the volume of plants in the barn could have been grown and harvested. Instead they found 100s of trees, 2 greenhouses with roses and other unusual species of plants for this area. They also found a small room used for seed starts, but although it was holding a group of seedlings that Campbell had left without permission in an effort to try to get Mike to let his operations stay in the barn, the lights were disconnected and the seedlings uncared for. Also found were about 20 plants in the pasture, which was the total of what Mike was growing to supply medicine for his wife while she was undergoing cancer chemotherapy treatments and recovering from its side effects.
Taken all together, these facts looked to the cops as a unified operation. But break down the roles of each of the players, and you realize that the greed of one person has brought down another who was acting for the benefit of his family – doing something that is legal in 17 other states in the US.
So, because the judge was not made aware of these additional facts, Mike’s plea bargain was not honored. Instead of the probation recommended, Mike is now in jail on a 10-month sentence.
Mike always tried to take bad fortune and turn it to something positive, and the following letter, which he wrote when he expected a sentence of probation, demonstrates his character.
It appears too late to offer these facts to the judge, but Mike felt it important to explain to his friends and supporters. Perhaps in another letter Mike will explain the vindictive and destructive acts committed by the police during the searches. There is much that should be discussed about how bad laws, similar to the Prohibition of alcohol, encourage the disregard of the public, fear of police and official corruption.
But that discussion is for another time.
Sharon Gordon
PUBLIC FORUM,
Over the course of the last year, I have seen my name appear several times with regard to a certain Marijuana raid conducted on my property in Udall. Because the justice system moves slowly, only one side of the story has been told repeatedly.
I do not blame the press as they can only report what they have before them. Any good defense lawyer will keep their client silent until the final ruling by the court. I am fortunate to have one of the best defense teams in Kansas, but now that I have been sentenced I can finally speak up and tell my side of the story.
I will be happy to discuss the details of the case anytime, but in the limited space I have here I would like to focus on the WHY.
Why the other defendant Mr. Campbell had 200 pounds of Marijuana in a building he rented from me, and left fifty 3”- plants near my house, sometime before the raid without my permission, is something only he can answer. I will answer only to the handful of plants I plead guilty to cultivating on my property, for that is my responsibility.
My wife was diagnosed with stage three bladder cancer nearly two and a half years ago now. At that time the odds were fifty-fifty that the cancer would return again within five years, and if so, would be fatal.
As with many cancer patients, radical surgery and an aggressive chemotherapy plan would increase her chances of survival. The side effects of the treatment would be severe and include pain, insomnia, appetite suppression and depression to name a few. Several prescription pain killer drugs are available to treat these side effects but they too have side effects, some severe.
We were already familiar with them from past surgeries needed to diagnose the cancer in the first place, and my wife was unable to take those without debilitating effects. Addiction to pain killers is a serious problem in this country. In fact, more people die each year from overdose of prescription pain killers than heroin, cocaine and methamphetamines combined.
Marijuana, however, has been scientifically proven, as reported by peer reviewed studies by such prestigious institutions as the UCLA Medical Center, (Google UCLA medical marijuana study to see for yourself) to be a safe non addictive drug that addresses most all of the side effects of Chemo treatments.
No one has ever overdosed in 5,000 years of marijuana use. This would explain why 70 percent of the population wants the law to change, making marijuana available for cancer and other diseases. 17 States and D.C. have done just that.
This is why I chose to do the one thing I had in my power to do to help the person I love most in this world, growing some plants, without contributing to the criminal empire our laws have created.
Why then do we pursue such a schizophrenic drug policy in this country? I stopped using alcohol in my twenties because it is a dangerous and addictive drug which I saw ruining the lives of many friends. I would never ask those that use alcohol responsibly to stop just because it kills thousands every year who do not. In fact we glorify the use of alcohol in advertising, movies and television, much to my dismay.
Yet we make criminals out of honest citizens because they chose the safer alternative, marijuana.
The great American Henry Thoreau, in his lecture on Civil Disobedience delivered in 1848 stated this concept well when he addressed the suffering of slaves, who themselves had but one life, while the nation gave lip service to abolition. “Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men generally under a government such as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. But it is the fault of the government itself that the remedy is worse than the evil. It makes it worse.”
The only shame I feel is living in a society that chooses myth over science and so callously disregards the suffering of thousands of its citizens for no good reason.
I pledge to do everything in my power to change this law. I owe it to the supporters of mine and to my community to do so. I will never cease to speak truth to power. It is who I am.
Mike Morton