by Bill Braun, World Staff writer, Aug 19, 1998

Saying a 93-year prison term for marijuana convictions "shocks our conscience," an appeals court modified a defendant's punishment in a Tulsa County case to a 20-year sentence. In a case that attracted national attention, the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed on Monday the convictions that William Joseph "Will" Foster, 39, received in 1997 for four felonies and one misdemeanor.

A jury handed Foster a 70-year term and a $50,000 fine for cultivating marijuana. He was also assessed a two-year sentence and a $10,000 fine for possessing marijuana with intent to distribute, 20 years for possessing marijuana in the presence of a child under age 12, a one-year term and a $1,000 fine for having no drug tax stamp, and a $1,000 fine for possessing drug paraphernalia.

Associate District Judge Bill Beasley routinely ordered that all the sentences run consecutively. He noted that before the trial Foster had rejected plea bargains calling for sentences totaling 10 or 12 years.

The appeals court said in a 4-1 decision this week that there was no trial error to justify overturning the guilty verdicts. However, the opinion by Judge Charles Chapel said the sentences were excessive and "disproportionate" under the facts. The appellate judges cut the 70-year sentence for cultivation by 50 years and said that all the sentences should run concurrently, meaning Foster must serve the equivalent of a single 20-year term.

Foster's 93-year sentence was featured in television, newspaper and magazine reports broadcast and circulated nationally.

Assistant District Attorney Paul Wilkening said Tuesday that "it mystifies me how the Court of Criminal Appeals will second-guess our juries and our cases." He said "this wasn't a runaway jury" because the panel imposed 70 years for one offense and two years for another on counts that each allowed the possibility of a life term.

The appellate opinion said Foster was a "first-time offender," which is incorrect, according to Tulsa County court records. Foster was found guilty in February 1993 of a 1990 felony offense of obtaining a controlled drug by fraud. He received a two-year probation in that case, records show. No evidence about that conviction was presented to jurors at the 1997 trial, although it is mentioned in court documents filed in the latter case.

Wilkening and co-prosecutor Brian Crain said police discovered an elaborate cultivation network of growing marijuana plants during a December 1995 search at Foster's Tulsa home. His wife said Foster smoked marijuana to help alleviate the pain of rheumatoid arthritis, but the defense presented no trial testimony from any physician to support a "medical necessity" defense. Oklahoma law does not accept that defense as a basis for acquittal on a marijuana charge, but it can be offered as mitigation for a defendant.

In post-trial proceedings, Foster asserted that he never sold marijuana and raised it only for his own use to "control my own pain." At the trial, defense attorney Stuart Southerland presented expert testimony from a California-based writer-researcher specializing in marijuana and its cultivation, who said the amount recovered by police did not exceed what could be used for personal consumption.

Foster is an inmate at the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre, a Department of Corrections spokesman said.

Beasley previously said that a statute involving drug possession in a child's presence requires Foster to serve at least half of that 20-year term in custody.

Will Foster is currently serving a 93-year sentence for cultivation of medical marijuana in the state of Oklahoma.

Excessive you might ask? Yes. He is serving a longer sentence than murderers, rapists and child molesters.

93 years for choosing his own medicine. A death sentence. Will Foster is a father of 3, has owned his own business for six years. Served in the United States Army. And where is his country now that he needs her?

Hiding behind the skirts of democracy and morality. America has turned her back on her own people.

Will Foster did nothing to deserve this sentence. He paid his taxes, ran his business and never raised a hand in anger to another living creature.

Will suffers from rheumatoid arthritis, in his hands, feet and lower back. Pharmaceutical drugs had negative side effects on Will, and so he read up on and chose marijuana.

Although I cannot be there with you in person, I want so badly to make Will Foster a real person to you.

For just a moment I want you to close your eyes and imagine coming home after a three day trial and looking into the faces of your children and telling them that their father got 93 years for a plant.

Imagine, trying to explain that they may never see him again as a free man. Imagine waking up scared in the night afraid that they were going to come back and kick in the doors. Imagine, running home after a fabulous day and having no one to share your feelings with.

Imagine missed Christmases and birthdays..........imagine lost time that will never be regained.

Every morning I drag myself from the bed, and say "I must go on" I put the armor back on and once again go to battle for not only Will, but also for the rest of the POWS and for America's children.

Being without Will is limbo.......stuck forever, not going forward or backward, only able to clock my life in two increments......what life was like before this happened and what life is like now.

My children miss him, I have lost my best friend.......and for what? For a plant that God has seen fit to place upon this earth, and our "government" has seen fit to declare "illegal". The math doesn't work, the problems with America are not gone simply because Will Foster is behind bars.

I know that he will come home.....the question is when. I know that we will have to learn each other again, and that he will never be the same, none of us will.......time will heal the wounds, but never erase the fear or the anger that myself and my children feel.

Don't forget Will Foster, think of us as you leave here today and go home to your families, think of us as you go about your daily lives. Remember that we are still out here, fighting for our existence.

WE must end the Drug War..........we cannot as a nation let this genocide go any further, its time we took America back. Its time we let our people go.

We will not go quietly into the night, we will not go down without a fight.............WE WILL NOT REST UNTIL THE END OF THIS WAR.

For Will Foster and for all the other prisoners.........we must never admit defeat. Thank you for your time, and your patience.

Peace and hope, always hope.

Meg Foster

Fighting over 60 years of lies and dis-information with 10,000 years of history and fact.