55 Years for Selling Weed? Ret. Judge Blasts Mandatory Minimum Laws

Weldon Angelos with his children.

Former Utah circuit judge Paul Cassell is speaking out against mandatory minimums and the unjust nature of the court system that required him to impose massively overblown sentences.

The case that most sticks in his mind is that of Weldon Angelos, arrested in 2002 for selling cannabis. The case against Angelos was supported by an informant who three times bought weed from Angelos and later told his handlers that Angelos had a gun on him during his transactions. The court system charged Angelos with three separate counts of selling cannabis and possessing a firearm. Due to this, Cassell was required to sentence Angelos to 55 years in jail without the possibility of parole.

Angelos, who was 24 at the time of his arrest, is the father of two children and was working on founding his own record label. He sold weed on the side. The total profit that Angelos reaped from those three charges was roughly $1000.

Should he have been trying to sell weed in hyper-conservative Utah? No. Should he have had a gun on him while doing so? No. These are not smart choices and that does lead to consequences. But 55 years? That’s just crazy. By the way — that 55 years will cost the taxpayers $1.6 million dollars.

As Cassell put it, “if he had been an aircraft hijacker, he would have gotten 24 years in prison. If he’d been a terrorist, he would have gotten 20 years in prison. If he was a child rapist, he would have gotten 11 years in prison. And now I’m supposed to give him a 55-year sentence? I mean, that’s just not right.”

You didn’t misread that. A terrorist who hijacked a plane while raping a child would get 55 years in prison (somehow that seems too low), but a young man who made a few bad choices while trying to build a better life for his family should get the same? To be clear, Angelos technically did break the law, but he hurt absolutely no one. He was a first-time, non-violent offender. There needs to be a bit of subjective discretionary power on the judge’s bench.

I experienced something kind of similar (though nowhere near as dire) when I was about 20 years old. I was backing out of a fast food parking lot, going about .3 mph, when I bumped into a parked truck. I got out of my car to see if anything happened. I had a small crack in my own tail light where the truck’s steel bumper hit it. The truck had no damage whatsoever and the owner of the truck said it was no big deal, so I left.

A few days later a cop shows up at my door to charge me with a hit and run. Apparently, someone eating at a picnic table witnessed me bumping the truck and decided to call it in. I ended up going through a whole court hearing and accepting 40 hours of community service to keep it from showing up on my record.

The day of my sentencing, I stood by in disbelief as another man charged with breaking and entering and property theft, received a 20 hour community service sentence. I got 40 hours for a bullshit hit and run that never happened and this dude gets half my punishment for legitimate crimes. Like I said, no where near as severe as what’s happening to Mr. Angelos, but the punishment doesn’t always come close to fitting the crime.

Since the onset of mandatory minimum laws borne from our wildly failed war on drugs, the domestic prison population has grown from about 24,000 inmates in the 1980’s to more than 210,000 today. This is a system in dire need of overhaul.

Weldon Angelos, now in his mid 30’s, can only hope for a presidential pardon to right this wrong.