ABRAM'S PLEA

After Abram Baxter signed a deal with prosecutors, he thought his
legal troubles were behind him--then he was told it didn't count

On March 20, after almost a year of legal battles, Abram Baxter is
due to head back to the San Luis Obispo County Superior Courthouse to
face a felony marijuana charge.

Yet, as the former doorman for Morro Bay's Central Coast
Compassionate Caregivers medical marijuana dispensary, Baxter isn't
any run-of-the-mill defendant.

Baxter allegedly sold 12 ounces of marijuana to an undercover police
officer on July 12, 2006, but he wasn't arrested until local
sheriff's deputies and federal agents raided the dispensary on March
29, 2007, nine months later. The dispensary later closed for good.

As the only person arrested on the day of the raid, Abram
Baxter--amateur mixed martial arts fighter, musician, and father of a
toddler--made headlines and served as the very public face of a very
public clash between state and local laws and between differing views
about whether medicine can be grown in a garden.

If Baxter isn't any run-of-the-mill suspect, maybe that's why his
story doesn't follow the high school civics book model of the way the
criminal justice system is supposed to work.

The charge that Baxter is set to face on March 20 is one that, just a
few months prior, he was told was over and done with. He'd signed a
plea agreement with the District Attorney's office and said he walked
out the courthouse door that day relieved to have everything behind
him, particularly since he'd exhausted all of his savings on
attorney's fees to end the matter.

Then he received the notice that the plea bargain he signed along
with his attorney Greg Jacobson and local judge Ginger Garret was
being withdrawn, nearly three months after it was offered.

"I couldn't believe it," said Baxter, who at the time was training
and promoting for Combat USA--a minor-league mixed martial arts
organization based out of Green Bay, Wisc.

"It knocked me off my feet," he said.

After signing the deal, he said, he felt "very relieved to finally
move on with my life."

Now he faces a very different prospect.

"Now, I might have to do some jail time," he said. "It would be awful
to be away from my family and job. All I really care about is my daughter."

'A Mistake'

During a Nov. 13, 2007, pre-preliminary hearing, Baxter accepted a
plea bargain that reduced his felony marijuana charge to a misdemeanor.

No one disputes those facts. The deal was offered, and he accepted
it. He signed on the dotted line, as did his attorney, and the entire
matter was handed over to the judge, who also signed the deal.

Yet the day after the 27-year-old Los Osos resident signed the
paperwork that would have sentenced him to 30 days informal
probation, the deputy district attorney handling the case, David
Pomeroy, filed a written motion to retract the deal. After months of
delays, the judge agreed with prosecutors and set aside the plea
agreement last month, on Feb. 19.

"I made a mistake," Pomeroy said in an interview, explaining why
Baxter was offered the misdemeanor plea bargain. "I realized the
mistake about one minute after he accepted the plea. I then
immediately brought it to the court's attention and filed a motion to
set aside the plea based upon the mistake."

In his telling, Pomeroy tried to get the judge to set aside the plea
immediately, while Baxter's attorney was still in court, although
that was after Baxter said he walked out the doors considering his
legal troubles to be behind him. The judge declined, however, and
required a written motion.

According to Pomeroy, who has been working in the judicial system for
the past 30 years, he confused Abram Baxter's case with another one
involving a 20-year-old named Donald Mark Baxter, Jr. He also said it
marked the first such mistake of his long career.

Although the two cases were similar on the surface (both were felony
marijuana charges involving men named Baxter), they were
substantially different when it came down to it. Abram was being
charged with allegedly selling marijuana. Donald was allegedly
involved in a small medical marijuana grow operation.

Pomeroy said that he never would have offered the deal to Abram,
whose alleged crime he considers more serious than Donald's.

Abram, for his part, doesn't buy the idea that Pomeroy had him
confused with someone else.

"I've been going to court for a year and there's always television
stations and reporters waiting for me. It's such a prolific case. How
did they mix me up with someone else?" Abram asked.

Instead, he believes: "Justice is not being served."

Donald Mark Baxter, Jr., basically declined comment, but did say that
he was offered the same plea Pomeroy offered Abram. He said he turned
it down because he feels he didn't do anything illegal.

But for Abram, the case started anew. And that change has come at a
financial cost.

Abram said he used up his savings to pay his initial attorney, but at
some time after the plea mix-up, the SLO attorney stopped representing him.

Now Abram is being represented by public defender Matthew Guerrero
who, coincidentally, is also representing Donald.

The public defender said that Abram did not misrepresent himself to
get the initial plea.

"I think it's disappointing for [Abram] not to get the best of his
bargain," Guerrero said. "He relied upon the plea to start another
life in another state. But medical marijuana is viewed unfavorably by
the courts."

Abram's initial attorney did not respond to repeated calls and
requests for comment.

Donald is also scheduled to be in a courtroom for a hearing on his
case on March 20.

Double Jeopardy?

The Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution puts it like this: "nor
shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in
jeopardy of life or limb." More commonly, this particular legal
protection is known as double jeopardy.

Black's law dictionary puts the protections offered by the concept of
double jeopardy in simple terms: A person "shall not be twice tried
for the same crime."

On the face of it, the act of offering a plea agreement to someone,
then retracting it, may seem like a violation. Pomeroy, however, said
that the constitutional protection exists only after a person has
been sentenced.

Local criminal defense attorney Chris Casciola said that's
technically true, but also noted that in his nearly three decades of
experience, he's never seen a situation like this one.

"It's an extremely unusual situation in the criminal justice arena,"
he said. "I would suspect [Abram] would have [the] right to appeal the ruling.