Wesley Shelton

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Photo by Valerie Downes.

Story by SPLC and Alabama Appleseed for Alabama's War on Marijuana

After falling asleep on a city bench, Wesley Shelton was arrested after police searched him and found a small $10 bag of marijuana. Unable to post $250 for bail, he spent 15 months in jail due to a backlog in Alabama drug testing lab.

Full Story:

Wesley Shelton was caught in late 2016 with a small bag of marijuana he bought for $10.

What followed was a Kafkaesque episode that illustrates the absurdity and wastefulness of marijuana enforcement in Alabama.

Shelton would spend the next 15 months in the county jail awaiting adjudication.

And while he may have gotten a rotten deal, so did the taxpayers of Montgomery County. The county likely spent at least $21,000 to keep him locked up.

It began when Shelton, 56, dozed off on a bench. A police officer came along and asked to search him. The officer found the marijuana and hauled him off to jail. Even though the amount was small, the state charged him with a felony because of a prior possession conviction.

Weeks later, he had a preliminary hearing before a local district judge, who determined that there was probable cause for the arrest and bound the case over to the grand jury.

That’s when several failings of the criminal justice system began to conspire against Shelton. First, the court refused to release him without bail because he didn’t have a stable home address. Then, his bail was set at $2,500. Shelton couldn’t come up with the $250 he needed to post bond.

Finally, the prosecutors faced a hurdle of their own making before they could proceed.

The district attorney in Montgomery County does not seek to indict people until he gets a report from the drug lab, according to Brock Boone, an ACLU attorney and former Montgomery County public defender.

Thanks to a huge backlog of cases, it can take the underfunded Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences (DFS) months to complete a test.

So, Shelton stayed in jail.

“This is very common in Montgomery,” Boone said. “There are other Wesley Sheltons in the Montgomery County Jail right now.”

Shelton languished in jail as his relationships frayed and sense of purpose diminished.

He estimates he wrote more than a dozen letters – to his attorney, to the court clerk and to the district judge, each time begging to plead guilty and go home.

In a Sept. 27, 2017, letter, he wrote, “I’m [sic] admit my guilt. I was in possession of marijuana. I’ve written 5 time [sic] asking for a bond reduction. I’ve received not one answer, from the court. … I’ve never in my life feel [sic] so totally helpless, with no end. Help me please.” Several weeks later, he wrote again: “I admit my guilt. I’ve been in jail for 13 months and counting. I have very few options. I need some help!”

No one seemed to notice. Shelton was caught in a kind of purgatory between the district court, which had finished with his case, and the circuit court, which wouldn’t pick it up until there was an indictment.

In December 2017, Shelton’s pleas finally got through to someone. He pleaded guilty to first-degree possession – a felony. The state never got around to testing his marijuana.

After his plea, Shelton was freed. But he had lost more than a year of his life for $10 worth of marijuana.

“Right now, in my life, because of that 15 months, I feel as though I’m 10 years behind where I’m supposed to be,” he said.