Did John Knock Received the Harshest Sentence In US History for a First Time Non-Violent Marijuana Only Offense No Pot was Found or Produced
Conspiracy to Import Life Conspiracy to distribute Life Conspiracy to Money Launder 20 years Fine 1.4 billion - Forfeiture 430 million
John did not have a plea agreement and went to trial. If you exercise your right to trial your sentence is usually multiplied six fold. Also charges are not dropped, but charges are added. This is the prosecutors power.
If you know of a non-violent first time marijuana only offender who has received a sentence of this magnitude please contact me. john knock 100 Hale Rd. Zanesville, Oh. 43701 e- mail johnknock@johnknock.com
John is a non violent first time marijuana offender.
He was convicted in a dry conspiracy only where no pot was found.
The conspiracy was developed through a reverse sting operation that was instigated by the DEA and prosecutors using an indicted fugitive who John had never known.
John had known one of the individuals indicted in this reverse sting when she lived near him in the 70s
John chose to go to trial instead of taking a plea.
Even though everyone is entitled to a fair trial, those who choose this route are usually given sentences 6 times greater than those who are offered a plea.
This sting was in Florida which is a place where John had never lived and never worked
Florida captured venue in this case and is a place where sentences are disproportionately long.
John's sentence is 2 life terms plus 20 for pot.
Headline
This is just one family's story of how mandatory minimums have changed the world as we knew it. Firmly rooted in the mid-west, our family had a legacy of community, patriotism, love of country, and trust in neighbors and friends. We believed in the rule of law and believed that law enforcement and our justice system protected us from corrupt people and institutions and protected our freedoms. This is no longer true
This Web Site is devoted to the story of my brother John Knock. He is a prisoner in Allenwood USP. In 1994 he was indicted in the Northern District of Florida. Conspiracy laws in the United States made it possible for him to be charged with a crime instigated by the DEA and US Prosecutors aided by a paid informants.
The crime did not take place. It was in a place John had not been, with people he did not know. This tragic event has given John's family a new understanding of what the United States system of justice has become. John is a non-violent first time marijuana offender. He is now 61 years old and Judge Maurice Paul sentenced him to Life in Prison.
John is a 61 year old inmate, who is a first time offender with no history of violence or drug abuse. He is a model prisoner under the harshest of conditions and treatment. John was extradited from France in 1999 to the Northern District of Florida where he was tried in 2000 in the Court of Judge Maurice Paul. He was given a sentence of life plus 20 for conspiracy to import and distribute marijuana, and 20 years for conspiracy to money launder.
Clifton Brown had been a fugitive for twenty years. He wanted to have a plea agreement and have his charges dismissed. Clifton Brown went to the Federal Prosecutors in the Northern District of Florida and said he knew individuals in San Francisco who may be involved with marijuana. The Florida Prosecutors and the DEA set up an elaborate sting operation to lure these individuals to Florida to get them to agree to participate in a marijuana importation.
They did not agree to participate and a crime did not take place. John had known one of the San Francisco targets in the 70s and thus he was charged as a conspirator. Witnesses testified that John did not import into the United States because of mandatory minimums. There was also testimony that John retired in the late 80s, and people were warned not to let him know of any marijuana importations, as he would not approve.
The case built by the prosecutors at his trial sounded like a fairy tale to John's family. One frightened and compromised witness after another tried to testify in a way that would match their plea agreement and or would give them a share of the forfeiture.
Although most of the testimony at the trial concerned importations into other countries, law enforcement from these countries testified that John was not wanted for any unlawful activity.
After John was extradited, the Federal Prosecutors sought and obtained a superseding indictment with the intention of extending the time line of his case through conspiracy laws. He was then tried with a co-defendant. Through this elaborate process, prosecutors extended the time line to 1996. Prosecutorial overreach was evident on every level.
John is a 61 year old inmate who was artfully and egregiously prosecuted in the Northern District of Florida.
In the United States 3 of every 100 citizens is under the control of the US legal system. They are either incarcerated, on probation or parole.
The Criminal Justice System is consuming a virtually incalculable amount of the federal budget and much of it is spent to confine non-violent prisoners who are confined because they violated laws made to criminalize life-style issues. Is this the government we want?
Many of these non-violent life style prisoners are 60 years or older. They are not a threat to society. They are missed by friends and family. Their imprisonment coarsens culture and belittles our faith in justice. They should be released.
The following is a quote from the opinion in US v Brown, Debella, Reizen and Ehrling from the 11th Circuit
"The law is a causeway upon which, so long as he keeps to it, a citizen may walk safely." "To be free of tyranny in a free country, the causeway's edges must be clearly marked"
Thomas More - A Man for all Seasons The exercise of federal government power to criminalize conduct and thereby to coerce and to deprive persons, by government action, of their liberty, reputation and property must be watched carefully in a country that values the liberties of its private citizens. Never can we allow federal prosecutors to make up the law as they go along.
The Rule of Law demands that the law is clear. How can this be true in a country where Federal, State, and Local Judges do not agree about the meaning of the statute? The Rule of Lenity commands that where there are alternative readings of a criminal statute we are to choose the harsher only when Congress has spoken in clear and definite language.
This is the story of a man who must wrestle with the wind that is called the Rule of Law. He was born a free spirit, and remains so.
It is also the story of Grandma and her descent into the mystic proded along the way by the DEA and Federal Prosecutors in the Northern District of Florida
Kurt Vonnnagut spoke in an interview of a man who was born good and stayed that way till he was dead. I have always thought of John that way. It is not difficult to put an elegant yet human face on him. On a crisp September day in 1947, John was born the fourth and youngest child of Bijou and Calvin Knock. His father was the minister of the Presbyterian Church in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. The family lived in the large yellow Victorian house next to the church. It was a time when children played all day with dangerous offensive toys, talked to strangers, had pets that were not fenced, and felt free. There were no warning labels on everyday products and suing was an unknown concept.
There were also no conspiracy laws, mandatory minimum sentences, money laundering, and scant federal law telling us what to grow, eat, think and do. Life had a clarity and cleanness about it.
John grew restless in the late 60s as did his generation and followed the exhortation - Go west. In California, it was a time of turmoil, but still with promise and freedom. There was protest in the air along with a sense of power, hope and change. California was a bubbling caldron of all these promises. The promises were of course false or suspect at the very least. The young hoped that the justice system and Federal law would bring more freedom to the dispossessed. This happened, but it was like the dog that came back to bite.
Those who have the power to keep you safe can also suck freedom from the air you breath. If the government can give you freedom, it also has the power to take it away.
Thirty years later, John Knock, a hopeful, happy, loyal, non-violent man who loves dogs, children and life is sent to prison for life in the 11th circuit Federal Court in Gainesville Florida by Judge Maurice Paul.
He was convicted of a crime that didn't take place, with people he didn't know, in a location he hadn't been. The additional irony is that the crime was conceived and instigated by the DEA and Federal Prosecutors who were aided by paid and compensated informants.
I'm his sister and I've been educated.
John has an admiration for Sir Thomas More. I would also appreciate the existentialist sentiment of the play. The idea of a self directed man could be an ideal. The corruption begins with every duty. I believe that John's admiration has it's genesis from a more primal source. A Man for All Seasons portrays Thomas More as a man of principle risking life and liberty for his belief, a man standing against the King with dignity, but unyielding. John did not suddenly begin this admiration of the Saint through a dramatic or literary experience. I believe he arrived here by way of his time in Ireland 35 years ago when he developed a profound empathy for women in their 7th decade who were still hiding their identity for fear of government reprisal for past rebellion. This John could identify with. In a Man for all Seasons, More is portrayed as a renaissance man. Thomas More is both more practical and more of an ideologue, but, John sees him as a man of principle standing up to a sovereign state that seeks to control ones thought.
I on the other hand see the drug war through other metaphores. Arthur Miller"s Crucible comes to mind. The DEA and Federal Prosecutors peeking through the bushes into the clearing to watch the young girls dance. Could they be Reverand Parris?
MORE TO COME
John's Extended Family - All In His Corner
JOHN'S EXTENDED FAMILY - ALL IN HIS CORNER
Nancy Beth Jim John 1948
NANCY BETH JIM AND JOHN 1949
JOHN'S FAMILY NANCY BETH JOHN AND JIM PARENTS 1985
JIM BETH NANCY JOHN 2006
RULE OF LAW
In 1965, I was an idealistic graduate student. It was an exciting time with Michael Harrington's culture of poverty, the beginning of the Welfare Rights Movement, the civil Rights Movement and the dark cloud of Viet Nam as a back drop. The rights of the individual were magnified by these MOVEMENTS AND CHILDREN OF THE 60S looked to the Federal Government to define, bestow and preserve the same. An activist court was cheered and legislation to regulate human behavior was warmly welcomed. Bobby Kennedy's pursuit of the scoundrels of organized crime would remove a cancer from our country. Rico, conspiracy and mandatory minimums were on their way.
Forty years later I still strive to understand the individual's relationship to the state and how there can be a relationship that maintains freedom through the "Rule of Law". Waves of nausea now overcome me when I hear the phrase.
We now have one in every 50 citizens interfacing with the criminal justice complex. Rural communities hope there will be a need for more prisons and vie for them to be built in their community. Prisons are considered economic development. Many federal, State and Local Government jobs are dependent on the growth of our prison population. As more and more men and women are interfacing with the court system, the rule of law is a labyrinth of conflict and contradiction.
This contract between the governed and the state becomes unfathomable. Just as unfathomable is some consensus about what individual rights are. Case law piles on in volumes, and contradictory and minutely parsed decisions leave defendants without a clear understanding of process. Additionally they are required to use the services of an army of attorneys and advocates of various abilities and ethics. The financial resources of their families are sucked into the black hole of our criminal justice system.
If forfeitable assets are part of the bounty of the state, defense attorneys must defend their clients by walking on eggs, fearful that they may also be prosecuted. This further compromises the rights of the defendant. Many defendants must make plea agreements to things they knew little or nothing about because they have no resources. Even those with ample resources plea to avoid the almost certain conviction, and harsher sentence. Grand Juries are now used to investigate, rather than to decide if there is probable cause to indict.
Split decisions with carefully parsed nuances send hopes and money into this abyss. It must be noted that each individual caught in this web has children, parents, brothers and sisters who love them and are also disillusioned, confounded, and perhaps bitter about resources expended on a system that is so confounding yet has the power to take away the future of so many families.
How did we become so fearful of freedom that we have insisted on laws that criminalize so much human behavior and even thought? We now routinely convict people of crimes that never took place, in places the defendant has never been, with people they do not know and incidentally, the criminal act was instigated by law enforcement. The rest of the world disdains us and developing countries reject our rule of law. We investigate people who have not broken the law to prevent lawlessness. Our law enforcement is becoming lawless. Our rule of law is too voluminous and therefore arbitrary. Even the language, War on Crime, belies the rule of law. Our justice system uses the metaphors of war, and the object is the citizens whose part of the covenant is to give consent.
Brilliant trial and appellate attorneys arguing cases and judges deciding them are thrilling to read and even more so to watch. Their memory and critical thought is as sharp and shining as a mirror shattering. To me it is also as frightening as it would be to walk bare foot across the broken glass.
As I watch Justice Bryer and Justice Scalia have conversations about decisions and interpretations, I long for something more absolute. Something more absolute would be language that is clear, simple and true. How can a man's life and liberty depend on nuances culled from thousands and thousands of pages of case law with the reasonable possibility of a single sentence or concept on one of those pages becoming determinative. Too much law turns "Rule of Law" into rule of men.
What would Aristotle think of our rule of law? What would our founding fathers see? We have constant imposition and enforcement of arbitrary and restrictive values imposed on us by an over active legislative branch. These are interpreted and judged by a judiciary system that seems to be will aware of the fact that the governed can no longer know the rules of the covenant they are part of. I just fear for our freedoms.
I know there is logic and order in the process, but the sheer magnitude and complexity of the possibilities invites subjectivity.
Beth Cutis
INTERESTING POINTS
1. The indictment was secured through an elaborate entrapment that was developed by the Federal Prosecutors and the DEA in collaboration with a fugitive felon of 25 years who was promised a pardon and perhaps received a monetary reward in addition to a pardon.
2. The crime that they proposed never took place.
3. John was never aware of the criminal proposal and did not know the individuals who planned it, nor would he ever have agreed to it.
4. The witnesses at his trial were compromised either by financial reward and or favorable plea agreements, or both.
5. He was given a superseding indictment that extended the time line in defiance of the US Extradition Treaty with France. This was done as soon as John was brought to the Northern District of Florida from France.
6. The Justice Department seized legal and financial documents from John's trial attorney's office two weeks before the scheduled trial date.
7. Throughout john's trial and appeal, John's Legal counsel was the target of a Grand Jury investigation. This would influence his attorney's ability and willingness to ask for and negotiate a plea agreement for John.
8. Only after John's trial and appeal was John's attorney able to negotiate a plea agreement for himself.
9. John's trial attorney needed counsel for his own indictment and plea agreement. One of these attorneys submitted a document for the Garcia Hearing denying attorney conflict.
10. Beginning John's appeal process was delayed for over two years because the court did not furnish his counsel with a copy of the trial transcript.
11. When the trial transcript was furnished parts of it were unreadable and could not be retrieved.
12. The court did not respond to the appeal for an excessive period of time.
13. John currently has a 2255 filed in February of 2005. It has not been responded to.
