Tough Pot Law Doesn't Support Deportation
Tough Pot Law Doesn't Support Deportation
WASHINGTON (CN) - A Jamaican caught with a small amount of marijuana cannot be deported for an aggravated felony, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled Tuesday.
Adrian Moncrieffe was about 26 when Georgia police found him with just over a gram of marijuana, enough for a couple of joints, in a 2007 traffic stop.
Though the state gave Moncrieffe a break for pleading guilty - offering to expunge the charge altogether after a five-year probation term - an immigration judge ruled that Moncrieffe was removable as an aggravated felon. The Jamaican citizen had been in the United States since he was 3.
Federal law classifies a small amount of marijuana for no remuneration as a misdemeanor, but the government said Moncrieffe's plea in Georgia, to possession with intent to distribute, was analogous to a federal felony.
The Board of Immigration Appeals and the 5th Circuit shut Moncrieffe down, but he saw a glimmer of hope when the Supreme Court took up his case last year.
The justices ruled, 7-2, on Tuesday that Moncrieffe's conviction does not amount to a drug-trafficking offense that meets the aggravated felony classification for removability under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/04/23/56939.htm
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