Last week, Bert Johnson of Williston was convicted by a federal jury of possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and with distribution. The drug in question was methamphetamine. Two key points illustrate a depressing picture.
The first is that Johnson is 50 years old. This isn’t some kid who got caught up in something that got out of hand. This is an adult who ought to be thinking about retiring in a decade or so. Instead, he’s just finished a year’s wait for a trial that lasted three days. The three days says the case was cut and dried, it takes about that long just to present the forensic reports and police testimony.
The conviction stems from an arrest last February near Williston. Mr. Johnson was there when federal agents serves a warrant. They’d been tipped off and already had evidence that Mr. Johnson was dealing methamphetamine. They discovered him in a pickup truck along with a box containing three pounds of the drug. And that’s the second key point.
Three pounds of methamphetamine is more than 13 thousand doses. And that’s conservative, figured on the high-side of what an addict might use. That’s more than the adult population of Williston. Enough methamphetamine for everyone in the city to get high. The estimated street value of the drug was $100,000 – putting the price of methamphetamine in North Dakota at about $7.35 for a large dose. New users or infrequent users could get a few highs from that same amount.
The maximum sentence for the conviction is life in prison. At 50, Mr. Johnson may not survive even a 20 year sentence. There is no parole offered for federal convictions.
So here we have an adult, qualified for AARP, handling enough methamphetamine for a whole city and risking life in prison to do it. That’s just nuts. It wasn’t mentioned by the feds, but in these cases, property is also likely to be seized – whether or not you have a wife and children living there. The whole thing is pretty stunning. At least with addicts, we can explain it by a compulsion to use. We can say it’s a disease. It’s awfully hard to do that when the addiction is to money.
