'WEED KING' GETS JAIL

Pot Activist Returns From Vancouver To Serve 30 Days

Four years after a drug raid on his Albert Road home netted 26
marijuana plants, a pot legalization activist known as DaWeedKing was
sentenced Friday to 30 days in jail.

"Yeah, I did it," Fred Pritchard, 41, told Superior Court Justice
Steven Rogin at his sentencing hearing. While his lawyer had argued
that Pritchard should be sentenced to house arrest, Pritchard seemed
resigned to going to jail. He told the judge if he had to go to jail,
he'd like to postpone his sentence by three months so he could work
to save up some money to provide for his wife and children in British
Columbia while he's in jail.

Instead, Pritchard, who had flown from Vancouver for his court
appearance, was taken into police custody immediately and transported
to Windsor Jail.

Pritchard and his family moved to British Columbia last year where he
found work for a roofing company. Life is better there, he said.

"I hung my head in the gutter for a while," he said, explaining his
prosecution put his life on hold and caused him "mental anguish for
four years."

Defence lawyer Frank Miller tried an unconventional approach in
defending Pritchard. He invoked the Charter of Rights and challenged
the police practice of using unnamed informants to get search
warrants without ever having to prove the informants' reliability.
Pritchard said police had either invented the informants or the
informants had concocted the information they told police. Pritchard
insisted no one else had ever seen the plants growing in his basement.

The charter challenge failed, so Pritchard allowed the evidence
against him to go unchallenged, in effect pleading guilty to the
charges against him.

Pritchard was convicted of producing marijuana. A charge of
possession for the purpose of trafficking was stayed.

Pritchard's wife, Renee, was sentenced in December to six months of
house arrest. She is serving her sentence in Vancouver.

Pritchard was convicted in 1990 for importation of a controlled
substance. His lawyer said he was a drug mule busted at the Toronto
airport carrying hash oil. Pritchard also has a conviction for theft
and another for breaching a court order.

Miller said Pritchard ran the Marijuana Compassion Club of Windsor,
growing pot for personal use and for others who needed it for
medicinal purposes. While Rogin said Pritchard may claim a
"philosophical purpose," there was no evidence of the claim. In fact,
the judge noted, the $1,100 seized in the raid and willingly
forfeited by Pritchard proved there was a commercial element to his enterprise.

As with any form of civil disobedience, "you must be prepared to pay
the penalty," Rogin said.

Richard Pollock, Crown prosecutor, said the courts must uphold the
law as passed by Parliament. "We're dealing with an illegal substance."