Author: Bianca Phillips

On May 6, 1993, the cold, rigid bodies of three children, inflicted with multiple stab wounds and bound hand-to-foot in a series of varying knots, were retrieved from a ditch in a wooded area behind the Blue Beacon Truck Wash in West Memphis. One boy had been castrated.

It was a heinous crime, and soon afterward, rumors of a possible link to satanic ritual began to spread. Suspicion quickly turned to Damien Echols and his friend Jason Baldwin, a couple of Marion, Arkansas, teens who had gained a notorious reputation locally for wearing black clothing and listening to heavy-metal music.

After police obtained a confession from an acquaintance of the two, a mentally handicapped teen named Jessie Misskelley Jr., Echols and Baldwin were arrested and charged with the murders. They maintained their innocence but were tried and convicted of first-degree murder, despite what critics of the verdict cited as a lack of hard evidence against them. Baldwin and Misskelley got life in prison. Echols was sentenced to death.

Almost 10 years later, Echols is still alive and all three defendants are appealing their cases. After a documentary on the case, Paradise Lost, aired on HBO, questions regarding the lack of evidence were raised nationwide. Many proclaimed the case was nothing more than a modern-day witch hunt. Arkansas Times reporter Mara Leveritt’s new book Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three (Atria Books) attempts to tell the whole story from the first report of the victims’ disappearances to the legal battles still going on today.

Flyer: Why has the case of the West Memphis Three piqued your interest? When did you get involved in covering it?

Mara Leveritt: I read about the murders as soon as they took place because they were sensational and widely reported. I was intrigued by what sounded like a very interesting motive that the police leaked after the arrests. They thought it had something to do with a satanic cult. I was very interested in what evidence might come out about that because I’d been reporting on crime and the criminal-justice system in Arkansas for some time, and I was aware that the FBI was saying there had been these scattered reports across the country of murders related to occult groups. The FBI issued a report saying they found no evidence in even one such case in all of the records they had checked, so if this was such a case, it was going to be — as far as I knew — the first one that had been confirmed.

After the trial, I read about it keenly, looking for what evidence would be brought to establish that this was such a crime. It seemed from what I was reading that there was not only no evidence of that but no evidence of any kind other than Jessie Misskelley’s confession that was brought against the boys. And so after the trials were concluded and the police file was opened for the first time, I made a trip to West Memphis to look at it.

What’s your opinion on the case?

I think the case was unfair, and I think the three who are in prison are innocent.

What were the biggest issues that signaled to you that the trial was unfair?

The search warrants: the way that they were procured and executed. A nighttime search is a very unusual thing, and I think that’s highly suspect. The method used by police in the questioning of Jessie Misskelley Jr. The fact that the judge allowed a so-called expert witness in the occult, whose credentials have now been completely discredited, to testify when he limited the testimony of two much more credible witnesses.

How would you summarize the book?

The book is about the investigation of the murders and the trials of the three accused and a series of mistakes, errors, and possible corruption along the way that led to the result of a death sentence and two life sentences.

Why did you decide to write the book?

I felt that we had a situation where there was a lot of information that could not be compressed into documentaries. It was such a volume of information that it was hard to handle on the Web site [wm3.org]. I also felt that there was a lot of information I could get that wasn’t available from any source. And through a book, I would be able to put that into one place where the whole story could be easily accessed. I feel that this case is a historic one and will be looked at for a long time to come. The kids have been in prison for almost 10 years now, but in the long term, it’s still pretty current. The case is still being worked on.

What’s the significance of the title, Devil’s Knot?

We have these allusions to satanism and the occult that cropped up in the investigation and the trial. I started thinking about that in connection with the fact that the victims were all tied with several different types of knots. As I began to play around with those words in my mind, I realized that what it seemed to be was a devil’s knot, referring to the legal ties that ended up binding the three defendants in this case.

Do you think your book could possibly open the minds of people who might be able to do something about the situation? What are your hopes?

While this case is going to have to be corrected in court with a legal proceeding, it did not unfold in a vacuum. It unfolded in the community, particularly in Arkansas, and I hope that Arkansans and people of this nation become more aware of things like the fact that we can send people to prison without evidence — and even to execution without evidence. I want them to see the way we treat juveniles in this system and the way these kids’ civil rights were treated — their right to practice religion, their right of association, and, in particular, the right of expression — the way those First Amendment rights were trashed. I hope that, as people become more aware of that, we’ll all become more sensitive, not only to what happened in this case but what’s happening in many others around us every day.

Have you had any complaints from the victims’ families or anyone on the other side of this case?

Not that have come to me.

Did you actually interview Damien, Jason, and Jessie in prison? How are they holding up?

Damien has been placed in a cell on death row that is very isolated. It wasn’t a punishment. It was just a decision in rearranging quarters for the inmates. That’s been hard on him, but he’s an avid reader. He’s very intellectually active, so he’s been able to deal with that, although it certainly has been hard on him. And as I mentioned in the book, he’s married, and I think happily so. Jason is very involved in civic activities in the prison. He’s a good inmate and is respected. He has a lot of leadership positions in the prison, and he has a girlfriend that he’s very much in love with. And Jessie Misskelley is now in the same prison with Jason in Varner, Arkansas. All three had been in different prisons until fairly recently. They are able to have some contact. They run into each other.

How hard was it to gather information for the book? Did you have to use the Freedom of Information Act?

All of the case file was available at the police [station in West Memphis], although it was not well organized. The private investigator [Ron Lax] allowed me to reference his records, and, of course, the trial transcript is public record. Those three sources plus interviews were mainly what I worked with.

There are a few scenes in the book where two or three people are alone in a room talking and are referenced in direct quotes. Where did the quotes in the book come from?

Everything that I used in direct quotes came from police records as a quote from a transcript of a police recording. They came from transcripts of the trials where a clerk was transcribing exactly what was said. They came from recordings that were made by Ron Lax or my own interviews.

Damien claimed to be a Wiccan, a religion that doesn’t believe in Satan, yet he was being accused of murdering the children during a satanic ritual. Why didn’t the defense ever call an authority on Wicca and witchcraft to clear that up?

When you read the part about the trial, you’ll see there was some question as to whether the prosecution was even going to raise the issue of Wicca and the occult. My understanding is that the defense attorneys didn’t believe it was going to happen, so they were not prepared to defend against that.

Damien’s reading choices and poetry were used as evidence against him. Is that common in capital murder cases? Doesn’t that violate First Amendment rights?

I find that to be one of the most distressing parts of this whole story: that the prosecution used Damien’s choices in reading, his own poetry and writing, his style of dress, and his choices of music against him in the trial. It was not to prove that he had done the crime, but since it was entirely a circumstantial case, it was to suggest to the jury, as Fogleman told me, the state of mind of someone who could have committed such a crime. I think that when these kinds of tactics are used in trials, we all have to be very concerned, because if reading Stephen King suggests the state of mind of someone who might commit such a crime, then millions of people in this country have that state of mind. That type of approach in a trial that hung entirely on circumstantial evidence and lacked anything with more substance is one of the big concerns I think we all should have about these trials. It was one of the reasons I wanted to write the book.

In your book, it seems like Judge Burnett granted all the prosecution’s requests and turned down most of the defense’s. Do you think the judge was biased against the defense from the start?

I tried not to go into the minds of anybody dealing with this case, and I’m not going to do that now. I think their actions speak well enough.

Damien’s new defense lawyer, Edward Mallett, is quoted in the book as saying, “Courts don’t look favorably on young people’s groups and Web sites.” Do you think that support groups such as wm3.org can make a difference?

I think that public support indicates the climate in which these trials occur. For instance, at the time of the trials, the prevailing opinion in Northeast Arkansas, according to the defense attorneys, was that the three were guilty. The climate in which these things happen often does not have an official effect, but it does have an effect on what happens in a courtroom. I think that it’s important now for people to make it clear that we don’t live in the Middle Ages in Arkansas. We do like to have rational proof. That kind of public attitude, I think, can have an effect.

What do you think of the speculation that the real killer could have been John Mark Byers, the stepfather of one of the victims?

I think that there are at least other two suspects in this case: Byers and the Bojangles guy. [The police responded to a call involving a bloody African-American man cleaning himself in the restaurant’s bathroom on the night the victims disappeared.] I think both of those suspects are better choices than any of the three kids who were arrested and convicted in this case.

Have any developments been made on the case since you finished writing the book? Is Echols still awaiting a ruling from the Arkansas Supreme Court for his appeal and petition?

His lawyers have asked for an extension on that, and the court has granted it. So what might have happened before the end of this year now looks like it might happen next spring. Jessie had put in a request for the testing of the DNA, and Damien has joined in that request now. There was to have been a hearing on that in November, but the lawyers have also asked for more time to prepare. All of these things look like they’ll be postponed until after the first of the year. Jason also has new lawyers, and they’re all working together.

There was some controversy about whether or not Damien would be allowed to read certain books in prison, such as Elaine Pagels’ The Origin of Satan and The Gnostic Gospels. What happened with that situation?

He was never allowed to read The Origin of Satan. That was a fine book, and anyone who’s familiar with Elaine Pagels knows she’s a respected scholar. But all three of them enjoy getting books. Anybody who sends them books has to order them from an online source where it’s sent directly from the company or from a bookstore where the book is mailed directly from a store. The prison doesn’t want books that might have contraband stuffed inside.

Do you think Echols will be allowed to read your book?

He already has. All three have received the book. At least two of them have finished it.

A Review of Devil’s Knot

The Deposistion of Elizabeth Hubbard agged about 17 years who testifieth and saith that on the 28 February 1691/92 I saw the Apperishtion of Sarah Good who did most greviously afflect me by pinching and pricking me and so she continewed hurting of me tell the first day of March. — from the trial transcript of accused witch Sarah Good, Salem, Massachusetts, 1692

Several women, many of them no older than 17, also accused Good of appearing to them in ghost form and harassing them with pinches and pricks. Others accused her of bewitching their cattle, resulting in premature deaths. Good and several others were found guilty by the county of Essex, Massachusetts, and sentenced “to be hanged by the Neck untill they be dead.”

March 17, 1994, the trial of Damien Echols and Jason Baldwin: “In looking at young people involved in the occult, do you see any particular type of dress or jewelry or body markings, anything like that?” prosecutor John Fogleman asked.

“I have personally observed people wearing black fingernails, having their hair painted black, wearing black T-shirts, black dungarees, that type of thing,” occult-expert witness D.W. Griffis said.

The passages are from Devil’s Knot, a new book on the trials of the West Memphis Three by Arkansas Times reporter Mara Leveritt. The similarity between testimony in the Salem witch trials and in the West Memphis case is striking, as much for its absurdity as anything. West Memphis police confiscated 11 black T-shirts from the home of Jason Baldwin and books by Stephen King and Anne Rice from Echols’ home to be used as evidence against them. And like Good more than 300 years earlier, Echols was sentenced to death.

Leveritt asks her readers to consider the Salem witch trials as they read a tale that closely resembles a modern-day witch hunt.

Any good reporter knows that you tell the whole story and you never attempt to sway readers one way or the other. You are to remain objective — tell the facts. And Leveritt does just that. Although she states her opinion bluntly in the prologue, she never reveals it in the body of the book. She blends the facts from trial transcripts, police files, and personal interviews into an easy-to-follow narrative and allows her readers to draw their own conclusions.

The book reports on the injustices that took place in the courtroom but also reveals new information about the case. For instance, Arkansas state police were actually investigating several members of the West Memphis police force at the time the small-town cops were investigating the West Memphis murders. Why? Missing drugs and guns from the police evidence locker.

But Leveritt also points out the faults of the accused. Although Damien Echols maintained his innocence throughout the trial, he sure didn’t do himself any favors by his behavior. Sneering for press cameras and blowing kisses to the victims’ families outside the courtroom may have partially led to his conviction.

Leveritt manages to paint compelling portraits of all three of the accused boys, not just freak-show poster child Echols. Her profile of Jason Baldwin reveals a quiet, smart kid who just happened to be friends with the town weirdo. Jessie Misskelley Jr. is the classic small-town, mentally handicapped guy whom you can’t help but feel a little sorry for. If you don’t have any compassion for the three, you will after reading Leveritt’s book.

The text on the court proceedings makes for some dry reading, but Leveritt packs the section full of quotes that give the reader a sense of being there. The book is as compelling as a novel. Devil’s Knot is hard to put down. And though it’s a story that remains unfinished, there’s little doubt that the eventual ending won’t involve anyone living happily ever after. — BP

Unanswered Questions

The case of the West Memphis Three may be old news, but almost 10 years later, there are still a number of inconsistencies and questions left unanswered. Mara Leveritt’s book Devil’s Knot: The True Story of the West Memphis Three raises those questions again.

* On the night of the victims’ disappearances, the manager of a Bojangles restaurant called West Memphis police to report that a disoriented African-American man, covered in blood, had entered the women’s restroom to clean himself off. The police showed up and took blood samples, which were mysteriously lost. How did they manage to lose what could have been valuable evidence?

* Why did it take over a month for medical examiner Dr. Frank Peretti to release the autopsy reports?

* Vicki Hutcheson, a West Memphis woman who took it upon herself to play detective, testified in Jessie Misskelley’s trial that she had ridden with Damien Echols to a satanic “esbat” in hopes of finding proof that the boys were involved in satanism. Later, she retracted the comments in an interview with private investigator Glori Shettles. She said she “feels that she went, but she was drunk and is not sure with whom she went,” and she recalled that the meeting was in Turrell, Arkansas, but “cannot recall if Damien and Jessie went with her or not.” Why does this new information not warrant a mistrial?

* Why did blood on a knife that John Mark Byers (stepfather of Christopher, one of the victims) gave the crew of the documentary Paradise Lost match that of his stepson? And why was he trying to get rid of it by pawning it off on the film crew? Did his status as a drug informant for Shelby County police have anything to do with the fact that he wasn’t given more consideration as a suspect?

* Why did police insist that the murders took place where the bodies were found, considering the lack of blood at the scene?

* After refusing to comment during Misskelley’s trial, medical examiner Peretti finally came forward with the victims’ estimated time of death during Echols and Baldwin’s trial. He said the boys were killed somewhere between 1 a.m. and 5 or 7 a.m., which contradicted what Misskelley had said in his confession. Why was the medical examiner’s estimation of the time of death not taken into consideration? — BP

On a warm spring day in May 1989, Dave Adams* had just returned home from his job as a sexton at a local Memphis cemetery. His wife Cheryl* was preparing dinner when they heard a knock on the door. Dave looked out the window and found himself staring into the eyes of a man in uniform. He cautiously opened the door to greet a policeman with a search warrant, accompanied by seven other officers and a dog.

Dave and Cheryl were handcuffed and forced to sit in their living room while the police searched the house. After rummaging through everything, they found 21 marijuana plants, a quarter-pound of processed marijuana, growing equipment, a package of rolling papers, a bong, and six-tenths of a gram of hashish.

Police did not find scales or plastic baggies, a fact that Dave contended meant that he and Cheryl didn’t sell pot, that all the plants were strictly for personal use. The couple was told to tell it to the judge. They were arrested and taken to jail, where they spent the night.

The police may have had a hard time believing that Dave’s plants were not being grown for profit because marijuana has been Tennessee’s number-one cash crop for the past 10 years, surpassing even tobacco.

According to statistics from the Governor’s Task Force on Marijuana Eradication (GTFME), which only deals with outdoor plants, 478,000 plants were eradicated statewide last year. Using the DEA’s valuation of $1,600 a plant, that comes to $764,800,000 worth of eradicated marijuana, which ranks Tennessee fifth nationwide. And that doesn’t include the number of indoor plants eradicated, for which statistics are not available. Pot-legalization advocates note that it’s a large chunk of cash that could yield significant tax revenues for the state if marijuana were legal, especially in the face of Tennessee’s recent budget crisis. But marijuana is illegal, and those in the eradication business are just doing their job.

Indoors Vs. Outdoors

When Dave invited Jack*, a co-worker, to Thanksgiving dinner in 1988, he didn’t have any clue that the encounter would lead to his arrest the following year. Jack was a recovering alcoholic, a Dilaudid (a synthetic form of heroin) addict, and didn’t have much going for him. He and his wife had nowhere to go for the holidays, so Dave and Cheryl came to the rescue with an invite to a traditional turkey dinner.

Dave and Jack had talked at work about growing pot, and Jack had expressed curiosity about Dave’s crop. So Dave proudly showed him his prized “lawyer bud,” a label his friends had come up with for a strain so good that, if he sold it, only lawyers would be able to afford it.

The following May, Jack, who hadn’t been back to the house since Thanksgiving, showed up at Dave’s door and asked if he could buy a bag. Dave and Cheryl had long ago made a decision that they would never become dealers, for fear of stiffer penalties if they were caught. Dave told Jack no, but Jack was drunk and became irate.

To prevent a scene, Dave asked Jack to go back to his truck, and he’d roll up a joint and give it to him, no charge. Jack seemed pleased enough, took his free joint, and disappeared into the night. The police showed up at Dave and Cheryl’s door the following Monday.

“I think that [Jack and his wife] might have gotten in trouble, or they didn’t have enough money to get the fix they needed, so they sold us to the police,” says Dave, now 42. He still isn’t clear on why he was snitched on,

* Names have been changed to protect identities.

and he hasn’t talked to Jack since. All he knows is that the search warrant stated that someone had been inside the house and had seen the plants within five days prior to the arrest.

People such as Dave, who grow pot indoors for personal use, are typically less likely to get caught unless police receive a tip or come into the house for other reasons. But it does happen.

“Through the years, we’ve had substantial grows, mostly indoors, especially as hot as it’s been,” says Dirk Beasley, a detective with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department. “People growing outdoors have to haul a lot of water to their plants and risk being seen.”

In fact, most marijuana around the Memphis area is grown indoors, while the large outdoor crops tend to be more prevalent in East and Middle Tennessee, where the soil and climate are more suitable. It’s also easier to hide crops in hilly terrain.

“I’ve never grown outdoors because one of three things is going to happen: Insects and animals are going to eat it up; somebody’s going to come in and rip it off; or the eye in the sky’s going to spot you and come in and arrest you,” explains Dave.

Police forces across the state have been doing “eye in the sky” surveillance via helicopter for several years now. Shelby County’s aviation unit hovers over suspicious areas, analyzing the shape, texture, and color of plants to discover whether or not marijuana is being grown.

They generally look in areas facing south or southeast (because those areas get more sunlight) and around power lines, where the vegetation is cut down, making it easier to spot plants. Certain geometric patterns that deviate from surrounding vegetation can also be a give-away. Smart growers practice “guerrilla” farming, in which marijuana plants are grown with other native crops. But police have ways of spotting this technique due to marijuana’s distinct green color.

Once crops are spotted, police set up groundhogs — 24-hour surveillance cameras — to record growers as they water the crop. Once the suspect has been caught on tape, an eradication team is sent in to pull up and destroy the plants while others make the arrest.

Eradication teams are made up of members of various police forces and government agencies, depending on the area of the state. Shelby County generally handles its own eradication efforts because the county is large enough to support its own team. Members of city and county police forces destroy crops, and local DEA agents may join in if over 300 pounds are involved.

The local eradication team has diminished in size in recent years, however. “The department has been cut down so much that we haven’t had much eradication lately,” says Beasley. “Right now, we only have five detectives on the force because of jail lawsuits that took our deputies and placed them in other divisions. We were 20-strong at one time.”

Twenty-eight counties in East and Middle Tennessee have been designated High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) by the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy.

The GTFME, which brings together agents from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI), the Tennessee Alcoholic Beverage Commission, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, and the state’s National Guard to work together on eradication efforts, destroys about 75 percent of the state’s crop in the HIDTA counties. The task force was created by then-Governor Lamar Alexander in 1983.

Tim Wilson, DEA agent with the Domestic Cannabis Eradication/Suppression Program (DCE/SP), which provides federal funding for the GTFME, points out that DCE/SP will fund all counties in the state, regardless of HIDTA status, unless county governments say they do not want assistance. Currently, Shelby and Knox counties are the only ones in the state that do not receive federal funding.

Spotted By the Eye In the Sky

Agencies that operate under the GTFME come together to search out, confiscate, and destroy plants they spot from the air, using equipment donated by the various branches of law enforcement involved. They investigate year-round, but more emphasis is placed on June through October, when marijuana is more typically grown and harvested.

Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters are used to spot the plants and lower agents into areas that are especially hard to get to. A ground team equipped with four-wheelers is also used when the areas are especially remote and mountainous.

“We try to make the job as easy as we can. Once the marijuana is spotted, you’ve got to get a team to that location one way or another,” explains Wilson. “We rappel out of the Black Hawk and they pull us back out with special ropes, or we send a ground team in. The ground team may not be able to get to the area in their trucks, so they’ll stop at a certain point and unload four-wheelers. They may even have to walk in, so it’s a very demanding and difficult job.”

Once the team is in an area where plants are located, the marijuana is pulled up by the roots, put in a net, and transported by helicopter to a dump site where it is incinerated. There is some debate over whether seeds in the plants could fall and cause regrowth as they’re being transported.

“One of the great ironies is that they spread seeds as they hack down the plants,” says Allen St. Pierre, executive director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML). “Once the plants are in the netting, they fly them five to 20 miles to the dump site. As they fly, thousands of seeds are beaten out of the plants. So, every year, the police positively ensure the next year’s crop.”

But Wilson says, though it’s possible that some of the seeds may drop, it’s highly unlikely that they will germinate the following year. And Dave, who has 12 years of growing experience, agrees.

“With green marijuana, the seeds don’t readily fall out,” he says. “It’s mainly after the plants have dried that the seeds fall out.”

Burning Money

Dave Adams is not sure what happened to his crop after his arrest. He assumes it was destroyed.

It’s most likely that the crop was taken to a designated dump site where it was later burned, the fate of most marijuana plants confiscated by the police. But even local cops sometimes don’t know exactly what happens between confiscation and incineration.

“They are eventually burned, but first, they’re put in the evidence room,” says Beasley. “They keep them until they have to go to trial with the evidence and the case is cleared. After that, most officers don’t really see what happens to them.”

Dave Liddell of the Memphis DEA office says that small samples are sent to a lab for testing and the rest is photographed and destroyed immediately. But regardless of how much time the plants spend in the evidence room, the state is burning up millions in potential revenue when it eradicates these crops, says St. Pierre. He contends that legalization could bring in 20 billion to 30 billion tax dollars a year nationwide, assuming that legal marijuana would be heavily taxed like cigarettes and alcohol.

“Right now, the federal government spends $10 billion to $12 billion a year to eradicate and interdict, as well as on education and propaganda against marijuana use,” says St. Pierre.

The DCE/SP program, which is solely responsible for funding marijuana eradication, spends approximately $13.5 million a year nationwide.

Tobacco and cotton are the state’s largest legal cash crops, but according to statistics from the University of Tennessee, each grossed less than $200 million in 2000. The estimated 380,000 marijuana plants confiscated that year would have grossed a little over $680 million, based on statistics from the TBI.

Granted, these figures are only estimates based on the DEA’s rather high figure of $1,600 a plant, assuming one plant equals one pound of processed marijuana. One plant could actually yield a little more or quite a bit less, depending on its size.

Dave’s indoor plants were only three inches tall at the time of confiscation, so they wouldn’t have yielded anywhere near a pound apiece. He estimates he would have had only about a quarter-pound of marijuana from the 21 plants, after discarding the males. (Male plants contain very little THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, and are generally considered useless.)

The street value of a pound of marijuana depends on the quality of the drug and can range from $700 to almost $7,000. Legalization advocates contend that if pot were legalized, the government would spend a lot less on the war on drugs and would probably make a profit.

A History Of Prohibition

Marijuana, classified as a Schedule I narcotic today, was legal until the passage of the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, which created a tax structure around cultivation, distribution, sale, and purchase of cannabis products. The act made it almost impossible to have anything to do with the plant without breaking the law.

The act resulted from a media craze in the mid-1920s that portrayed marijuana as a menace to society and purported that it was the cause of most violent crime, despite a lack of any scientific evidence. Government propaganda, such as the 1938 film Reefer Madness, which depicted teenagers committing violent acts after smoking marijuana, helped to spread the stereotype.

By the mid-1940s, several studies had been published countering ill-founded notions of marijuana’s violent side effects. They showed that although the drug did impair cognitive function to some degree, it did not change the user’s personality. By the 1960s, the Marijuana Tax Act was ruled unconstitutional, but the drug remained illegal, and stereotypes of its dangers still linger.

“The courts are prosecuting a lot of people for marijuana, and they actually don’t know anything about it,” says Adams. “I ran into that with the judge in my case. All he could think about was the fact that I was busted with 21 plants. It didn’t matter that they were three inches tall and half of them weren’t going to be smoked.”

Adams actually got off pretty lucky. The fact that he had no scales or baggies helped to convince the judge that he was growing for personal use, but he wasn’t about to let Adams off without a scare.

“He looked down at me and said, ‘You ain’t gettin’ out with no jail time!'” says Adams. “My heart just fell in my ass. I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

He was allowed to plea-bargain his charge down to simple possession and was sentenced to six months. The judge suspended all but 45 days of the sentence, since Adams had no criminal record. He was put on diversion probation, which meant if he stayed out of trouble, his record would be expunged in a year. He was allowed to do his jail time on weekends, so he could continue to work during the week.

Not everyone gets off so easy. In Tennessee, possession of 10 to 19 plants can land a grower behind bars for two to 12 years. Five hundred or more plants can result in a 15- to 60-year sentence.

There are myriad national and local organizations that support ending marijuana’s 65-year prohibition. Organizations such as NORML and the Marijuana Policy Project actively lobby for the drug’s legalization, and in March of this year, a new antiprohibition group was formed. It’s made up solely of current and former members of law enforcement: Law Enforcement Against Prohibition believes the war on drugs is failing and promotes legalization.

With Canada considering decriminalization and the recent loosening of drug laws in England, these organizations hope the U.S. will follow suit. But until then, eradication forces in Tennessee and all over the country will continue to send billions of dollars up in smoke.