Hemp News No. 32 Compiled by Paul Stanford (treefreeeco@igc.org) The following news wire stories are provided as a public service by Tree Free EcoPaper, makers of hemp (cannabis) paper and other nonwood papers, pulps and fibers. We are happy to announce the introduction of our new USA manufactured paper products, made with European hemp fiber, Tradition Bond. This new paper is the highest quality and most environmentally-sound paper in the world today. Contact us today for a catalog and samples of the USA paper. Tree Free EcoPaper is the oldest and largest supplier of wholesale quantities of hemp paper, in business since 1990. We offer an electronic retail catalog which you can receive by dropping us an e-mail request. We'll send you samples and our hemp paper wholesale price list if you give us a postal address. You can call us toll-free at 1-800-775-0225 from the U.S. and Canada. Our phone number for calls outside the U.S. is 503-295-6705. Our headquarters is in Portland, Oregon and our various papers are produced in the USA, Europe and Asia. We offer nonwood office and printing paper, note pads, card stock, cover stock, hemp pulp for paper makers, whole hempstalks and 100% hemp bast fiber. Without further ado, please enjoy the news: UPn 05/22/95 Court: 'Knock and announce' basic right By MICHAEL KIRKLAND WASHINGTON, May 22 (UPI) -- The Supreme Court ruled for the first time Monday that in most cases police are required to knock and announce themselves before entering a home to serve a warrant. However, the unanimous decision written by Justice Clarence Thomas leaves plenty of "reasonableness" loopholes that police may use to skirt the requirement. The decision said a "knock and announce" rule must be used within reason, and that danger to police, hot pursuit of an escapee or feared destruction of evidence could be valid reasons to ignore the requirement. Monday's ruling marks the first time that "knock and announce" has been judged by the high court to be inherent in the Constitution, the country's primal written law. The earliest ruling about police knockdowns based on British common law occurs in a case in England in 1603. In that seminal ruling, "Semayne's Case," court judges held that before an officer could forcibly enter a home to make an arrest, "he ought to signify the cause of his coming, and to make request to open the doors." "At the time of the framing" of the Constitution in 1789, Thomas said in Monday's unanimous decision, "the common (unwritten) law of search and seizure recognized a law enforcement officer's authority to break open the doors of a dwelling, but generally indicated that he first ought to announce his presence and authority," Thomas said. "In this case, we hold that this common-law 'knock and announce' principle forms a part of the reasonableness inquiry under the Fourth Amendment," he said. The Fourth Amendment protects the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures..." The case comes out of Hot Springs County, Ark., where a woman was convicted of drug charges in 1993. Four officers executed a search warrant at Sharlene Wilson's home on New Year's Eve 1992. One of the officers testified that there was no announcement, that the raiding party simply walked in, according to Wilson's petition to the Supreme Court. Another testified that police announced their intention to search the house as they walked in, not before, the petition said. The petition filed by Walker said those inside the house "were given no opportunity to surrender their privacy to the officers." Wilson was convicted of delivery of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia, both felonies, and possession of marijuana, a misdemeanor. She was acquitted of an methamphetamine charge, which was based solely on the testimony of an informant. Nevertheless, she was sentenced by a jury to a total of 31 years in prison and fined $11,000 on the felonies, and one year in jail for the misdemeanor. Her appeal to the Supreme Court, however, concerned only the search of her house "without prior announcement." The felony convictions were based on informant testimony, rather than on evidence found in the house. Arkansas courts upheld her convictions, and the woman asked the Supreme Court for help. Monday's decision reverses the Arkansas Supreme Court, but sends the case back down for a rehearing. Thomas said in his opinion that the lower courts may feel free to decide that the circumstances in the Wilson case provide a loophole to "knock and announce." (No. 94-5707, Wilson vs. Arkansas) APn 06/16/95 Loaded Loaves WARWICK, N.Y. (AP) -- The bread that came in a care package could have given anybody a high -- and the yeast had nothing to do with it. Guards at Mid-Orange Correctional Facility found 40 small bags of marijuana, a plastic bag with 10 rocks of crack cocaine and 37 bags of heroin inside the gutted loaves sent to an inmate, said John Van Der Molen, a state police investigator. He said the guards had scanned the bread in a machine similar to an airport X-ray unit during a routine check of inmates' packages. Lamont Barnes, the intended recipient, was charged with drug possession. He is serving time for a 1973 murder conviction. PR 06/16/95 Hempstead Hemp Field Plowed COSTA MESA, Calif., June 16 /PRNewsire/ -- The following release was issued by Christopher Boucher, CEO of Hempstead: The hemp industry was dealt a major setback last year when the Hempstead Company hemp field was plowed under. Its destruction cost over 200 jobs and $50,000,000 in potential revenue, according to Christopher Boucher, CEO of Hempstead, a Costa Mesa, California based company. They made history last year by growing America's first industrial hemp field in over 38 years, with legally registered European imported seeds that have no drug effect at all; only to have it seized and plowed under by the California Narcotic Task Force which entered the USDA sponsored Desert Research Center on July 29, 1994. Boucher, founder of Hempstead says, "Enough is enough. We must protect our good name and the industries reputation. We are forced by bad laws to spend millions of dollars abroad to buy fabrics and seed from China and Hungary. This drives the price up for our products." The hemp plant produces 1-2 tons of fiber per acre in less than 100 days, pesticide free. Industrial hemp has already created jobs and industry virtually overnight. Projected world industrial hemp sales will total $35 to $40 million in 1995. Modifying current harvesting and processing equipment, hemp could be the agro-economical breakthrough of the 21st century. Hempstead sells to over 1,200 retail stores nationwide and 5 foreign countries. "Why don't we invest right here in American farming communities? California needs the help right now," says Christopher Boucher. The economic practicality is enormous. Manufacturers are already in high gear, from Calvin Klein's new hemp linen upholstery, Converse, Adidas, Robert Redford's Sundancer catalog, to Disney's Indiana Jones stores, all sell hemp. "Can all this industry really be illegal?" asks Boucher. What's next for the Hempstead and the hemp industry? This week the Kentucky Governor's Hemp Task Force was forced to approve an unseen report suggesting hemp could not add an extra dollar to the agricultural market since federal subsidized forest wood chips go for $20 per ton vs hemp at $100 per ton. What is the true cost of forest wood to the environment? -0- 6/16/95 /CONTACT: Milano Boucher of Media Hemp Alert, 714-650-8325, 714- 650-8325 fax; or Christopher Boucher, CEO of Hempstead, 714-650-0285/ CO: Hempstead ST: California IN: AGR SU: AAP 06/16/95 NSW: NATS APPROVE TRIAL OF HEMP PRODUCTION AS A RESOURCE The Australian Associated Press MUDGEE, NSW, June 16 AAP - A hemp plantation trial was approved today by the New South Wales National Party to see if the fibre product could become a valuable natural resource. Successive speakers spoke of the qualities of hemp - which has three times more fibre than cotton, was second only in nutrition to soya beans, produces a fabric 26 times stronger than cotton and is mankind's oldest cultivated fibre crop. They also reassured delegates the fibre hemp crop was not a replacement for cotton but if blended with it would strengthen garments. Those in favour of the motion also made sure delegates distinguished between the fibre hemp plant and the Indian hemp variety, also known as cannabis. One speaker said anyone who tried to smoke some of the fibre hemp would feel they were "smoking someone's dirty underpants". The Orange branch of the Young Nationals' secretary Ray Dally proposed the original motion calling for the introduction of an Indian hemp industry. But the words "Indian" and "introduction" were deleted from the final motion carried meaning the Nationals support a trial of the crop. Mr Dally admitted there was a certain stigma attached to hemp as a cultivated crop. But he said the type used for fibre production contained 0.3 per cent of the psychoactive chemical, tetrahydrocannabinol (TCH), which delivered "the buzz" in smoking marijuana. Regular cannabis plants, or marijuana, had 3.0 per cent of TCH. "Using fibre hemp as a drug would have absolutely no effect unless of course you smoked the quantity derived from a 100 hectare paddock in one sitting," Mr Dally told delegates. He said hemp strengthened recycled paper as well as cotton products. "Hemp could be the answer to the job losses on the north coast with the timber mills being closed," he said. "It will generate quality employment in the rural and manufacturing sectors." AAP mm/ch/mk/de AAP 06/18/95 SA: INDUSTRIAL HEMP NEWSLETTER RELEASED The Australian Associated Press ADELAIDE, June 18 AAP - A three-page newsletter explaining the diference between marijuana and the growing of industrial hemp on selected South Australian farms has been released as part of a public awareness campaign. The free information sheet, published by the Primary Industries South Australia (PISA), explains that industrial hemp, unlike marijunana, has negligible amounts of the "psychoactive" substance THC. The sheet also details the progress of the state's first trial plantings of industrial hemp and explains the purpose of the project and the legal status of the product. Jim Hanney, PISA program manager for pulse and new crops, said the brochure was the forerunner to the official Industrial Hemp Newsletter which will provide a half-yearly update on the progress of the project. The first issue will be available later this year. Trial planting of industrial hemp began in SA's south-east, lower north and Yorke Peninsula in May, with additional seedings planned for each month until September. Mr Hanney said the trials would determine the best conditions to grow the hemp and said ideal weather had given the early crops a healthy start. Up until 1870, hemp was the most cultivated non-food crop in the world and is now rated as one of the world's most diverse crops which can produce fabric, plastics, paper, fuel and construction materials. AAP ptk/sld 06/18/95 Lawyer targeted by raid asserts his innocence The Boston Globe June 18, 1995, Sunday, City Edition Correction Appended SECTION: METRO/REGION; Pg. 23 LENGTH: 1383 words HEADLINE: Lawyer targeted by raid asserts his innocence BYLINE: By Geeta Anand, Globe Staff DATELINE: CAVENDISH, Vt. BODY: William A. Hunter was awakened at 3 a.m. June 9 by loud knocking on the door of the four-bedroom Cape on a dirt road where he lives with his wife and three young children. He stumbled downstairs to find seven agents from the US Drug Enforcement Agency at his door. They handed Hunter, a lawyer, a search warrant that said several of his clients had been arrested that night on drug charges and the government was looking for records of their illegal business activities. A judge approved the search of his home and basement office. Hunter, 41, a Harvard Law School graduate and former state legislator who runs a law practice in Vermont that more closely resembles a legal aid service, would learn later that day that he was a suspect in a money laundering scheme. Newspaper headlines said so the next day, quoting an affidavit filed in US District Court. The reports have stunned residents and lawyers in Vermont, where Hunter is a widely known, controversial figure - revered by some for his representation of so many poor people, reviled by others for the zealousness of his defense of many of the same people. Hunter's shabby tweed jackets and his junk cars are a frequent source of ridicule, as is his lateness for court hearings. After reviewing the case of a former client that Hunter represented in a divorce, the professional conduct board for lawyers in Vermont ruled last year that Hunter was overextended by all of the work he does for disadvantaged clients. While the board expressed some sympathy for him, it put him on probation for nine months for mishandling the divorce case. But until the raid on June 9, few people, if any, had considered the notion of Hunter being corrupt. At his home that early morning, agents rushed upstairs carrying flashlights they used to scan the bedroom where his baby and 7-year-old son still slept. They shone a light around his 9-year-old daughter's bedroom. They converged in the two-room basement where Hunter runs his law practice, searching through four 5-foot tall metal filing cabinets where his clients' records are kept. Four hours later, the federal agents left with four computers, 200 floppy discs and two crates of files. In an affidavit, filed in US District Court in Burlington, the government outlined its reasons for searching Hunter's property and carting off his records. According to the government, Hunter had set up a real estate company for Frank M. Sargent Jr., a 26-year-old man with a previous conviction for drug dealing, whom the government alleged was selling cocaine out of his home in nearby Windsor, Vt. The drug profits allegedly were being siphoned into Sargent's fledgling company, Connecticut Realty Trust, to buy run-down properties and refurbish them, according to the affidavit. "It is clear. . . that Sargent and Hunter had worked together to launder Sargent's money and that they used CRT for that purpose," James Bradley, special agent for the US Drug Enforcement Administration, said in the affidavit. As evidence, the government cited a paper trail: the CRT corporation paperwork at the Vermont secretary of state's office lists Hunter and "a longtime Hunter associate," his paralegal, Kathy Davis, as officers of CRT. There is a letter Hunter wrote on behalf of CRT to a woman named Gloria Radcliff who was going to invest $ 60,000 from a personal injury settlement into CRT. That investment, according to the affidavit, was a ploy by the Hunter-Sargent team to turn a drug debt owed by Radcliff into legal money. "Thus it appears that Hunter was serving as a drug debt collector for Sargent," according to the affidavit. As evidence that Hunter knew the source of the money was drug sales, federal agents cite a confidential informant's report of a meeting between Hunter, Sargent and Radcliff in which Sargent allegedly said Hunter "washed his money," according to the affidavit. Hunter has appeared on television and talked on radio over the past week, declaring his innocence. He says he did not know Sargent's money came from drug profits. Hunter says he has "never laid eyes on Gloria Radcliff." The meeting referred to in the affidavit never occurred, he says. Radcliff's criminal record includes four convictions for providing false information to police officers, according to court records. Meanwhile, defense lawyers in Vermont have expressed outrage at the timing of the raid and the confiscation of Hunter's electronic files. "This is not Miami or a drug cartel in Colombia," said Peter Welch, a former president of the Vermont Senate, who is now a full-time defense lawyer. "To raid a lawyer with no history of violence at 3 a.m. is just astonishing and totally abhorrent." Since many of Hunter's clients are drug defendants in government cases, defense lawyer Sigismund Wysolmerski - a former city councilor in Rutland - says he fears federal officials reviewing Hunter's computer records for evidence in the Sargent case will be unable to resist a peek into other cases. "The attorney-client privilege is just out the window," Wysolmerski said. In letters of support for Hunter, several lawyers have said they routinely establish real estate companies for clients without investigating from where the money comes. Routinely, these lawyers say, their names are listed as officers of the corporation. US Attorney Charles Tetzlaff, a former defense lawyer known nationally for representing former vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro's son, John Zaccaro, on a drug charge, said last week that he stood by the actions of law enforcement officials under his command. Tetzlaff defended the timing of the raid at Hunter's house, saying it was a "destruction of evidence issue." He noted that, according to the court affidavit, Sargent's house was searched just hours earlier by federal agents. The US attorney's office has yet to present Hunter's case to a grand jury for an indictment, according to a witness who has been asked to testify. But Hunter said Tetzlaff has agreed to meet him on June 27 to discuss the allegations. To those who know Hunter well, the charges seem preposterous. A Rhodes scholar with an undergraduate degree from Yale and a Harvard law degree, he turned down job offers from big city firms to go into private practice in Vermont, where his clients are largely indigent. He believes in the barter system, having clients mow his lawn, refinish his furniture or rebuild his fence to pay for legal services. "Someone who launders money must be interested in money," says his wife, April Hensel. "Will doesn't play golf, he doesn't eat at fancy restaurants. His hobbies are going to yard sales and visiting junk yards." The yellow paint is chipped on the house the couple share. He drives a 1984 Mazda, an upgrade from the 20-year-old pickup he drove for years, a loan from a client-friend who owned a junkyard. Yet one aspect of Hunter's professional life is troubling even to his friends: His blending of his legal practice and his personal life. Hunter's clients become his associates and his friends. They formed the biggest contingent at his wedding three years ago. Four years ago, Hunter bought a $ 50,000 house to prevent a penniless client-friend and his family from being evicted. Always, Hunter has ardently defended his approach to lawyering. He says that the lives of many he represents "are totally broken down." "I can't just segment out one section and say I'm going to just give them legal help," Hunter said. But Welch, the defense lawyer, says an attorney who becomes personally involved in cases puts himself at risk because he suspends judgment at some level. Welch says he believes Hunter was so involved in helping Sargent rebuild his life that he was oblivious to Sargent's alleged drug activities. In Windsor, where Sargent was raised and continues to live in a run-down neighborhood along the Connecticut River, residents are far less sympathetic to Hunter. Paula Silvester, the owner of a local sporting goods store, says she is tired of watching drugs proliferating in her town. "Anyone who hangs out with those criminals and defends them the way he does is sick," Silvester says. "I hope Will Hunter is put away for good. Maybe then we'll see this area cleaned up." [End] This URL: http://www.pdxnorml.org/HN_32.txt