MarijuanaNews.com : The Murder of Peter McWilliams — An Indictment, Not an Obituary

Posted June 16, 2000
Analysis By Richard Cowan

Peter McWilliams, 50, best selling author, poet, photographer, publisher, libertarian
crusader, medical marijuana activist, AIDS patient and cancer survivor, was found dead on
the floor of his bathroom, apparently having choked to death after vomiting, for want of
medical marijuana.

There will be an autopsy, but whatever the immediate cause of death may have been, he was
murdered by the United States Government as surely as if they shot him. Indeed, it would
have been much more humane if they had just put a bullet in his head. No one should have
to go through what he suffered at the hands of his country.

When I learned of his death yesterday, I was too angry to write about it. Even
now, this is being written more in anger than in sorrow. Peter is where they can’t
hurt him anymore, but his murderers are still at large, and if there is anything that
Peter would want, it would be for us to continue to speak the truth to power, to tyranny.

Of course, if Peter did choke after vomiting it would be directly the result of his having
been denied the right to use medical marijuana. Peter was a part of the roughly 40% of
those patients for whom the anti-viral drugs being used to treat AIDS can cause violent
nausea. The government knew this from direct observation. During at least one court
appearance he vomited into a wastebasket during the hearing.
See
How the Government
Helps Medical Marijuana Patients:
“McWilliams vomited repeatedly in court Friday, prompting guards to keep a trash can
nearby.”

Dealing with this nausea is one of the best documented uses of medical
marijuana, and he had also used it during cancer chemotherapy, when he actually gained
weight.

None of that mattered to the judge. None of that mattered to the prosecutor. After all,
these are the same people who had held him in federal detention for months on a $250,000
bail, even though he posed no flight risk, the only justification for such a high bail.
See
Peter McWilliams
Still Held on $250,000 Bond; Denied AIDS Medication For Four Days!!! Two Stories

Had he wanted to flee, he had plenty of time to do so before he was charged, but he is a
world famous writer, so he could not hide. His publishing company was there in Los
Angeles, and he was taking expensive anti-virals for AIDS. He really could not flee, but
that did not prevent the government from violating his Constitutional rights.

Consider the lengths to which they went to keep him from raising the bail.

When his elderly mother pledged her house as security for the bail, they
threatened that the government would seize her house if her son simply failed a drug test,
not just if he were to flee. She would not be intimidated, but now her son is dead as the
result of the conditions of the bail. These are the “family values” of
America’s war on the sick and dying.
See
“The federal
prosecutor personally called my mother to tell her that if I was found with even a trace
of medical marijuana, her house would be taken away.” — Peter McWilliams

During his incarceration, his AIDS viral load, which had been
“undetectable” soared to dangerous levels. Peter was also very fragile
psychologically. Aggravated by his health and legal problems, he often suffered from
debilitating bouts of depression. Certainly, he was badly damaged by being in federal
detention, and he knew from that experience that he could not survive very long if he were
sent to prison. Thus, even if the immediate cause of his death were AIDS, or even suicide,
the guilt for his death lies squarely at the door of the Justice Department and the
Federal Courts, and the United States Government as a whole.

If an individual did what the federal government did to Peter McWilliams,
deliberately deprive him of medicine that would save his life, that person would be
indicted for murder. And this was murder. Moreover, it was premeditated, and a part of a
pattern of the criminal abuse of power. Consider the evidence.
See
Federal Judge
Rules Peter McWilliams Cannot Use Medical Marijuana
– Even to Save His Life! – “They’re just going to let me
die.”

First, Peter would want us to remember that he was merely the most famous
victim of a campaign against the most vulnerable members of our society, the sick dying
and disabled for whom marijuana is the only effective – or affordable –
medicine.
See
A Message From
Peter McWilliams, Prisoner Of The War On The Sick And Dying

Many others are suffering anonymously in our vast prisons, underfunded
hospices, and dark little rooms in the slums in our shining cities. Many others use
medical marijuana, but live in fear of their government while doing so. And they have no
choice. Tens of millions of Americans – and countless millions around the world –
have no health insurance to pay for the expensive pharmaceuticals, even if they worked as
they are supposed to.
See
AIDS and Medical
Marijuana:
On World AIDS Day Why Is No One Talking About the Cheapest Way To Help The Most People?
Analysis By Richard Cowan

Peter’s case happened in California, the first state where the people had
passed an initiative, specifically designed to prevent just this sort of cruelty.
Following its passage, the Federal government and its allies among the federally
subsidized state narcotics police have done everything to prevent its effective
implementation. This effort continues even now.
See
Even In The State Capital, California
Narks Violate Prop 215 and the Attorney General Won’t Do His Duty.

However, Peter made the mistake of thinking that the law meant what it said. He
wanted to provide others with the knowledge to be able to grow their own medicine.
Although the government waited for awhile to arrest him, they did so with their usual
pointless show of force. A large number of heavily armed men ransacked his house very
early one morning, after handcuffing Peter. They seized his computers and ultimately
destroyed all of his work in progress. Naturally, it was about medical marijuana.
See
Best Selling Author /
AIDS-Cancer Patient Peter McWilliams
Launches Medical Marijuana Press; Risks Federal Imprisonment in Doing So
and

href=”http://marijuananews.com/statement_of_author_peter_mcwill.htm”>Statement Of Author
Peter McWilliams To Institute Of Medicine Medical Marijuana Hearings

A few days before Peter’s death, there was a fire in his home office that
again destroyed all of his work in progress. I have no doubt that such a loss broke his
heart and hastened his death. Several people have asked me if I suspected the government
of having started the fire. My answer was simply that I have no idea, but given the theft
of his work before, and the general depravity of their behavior, and given the fanaticism
of the opposition to medical marijuana by both the federal government and the California
narks, it is not an unwarranted suspicion.
See
California Narks Lie to Justify Disobeying
Prop 215. And They Lie About Me In The Process.

In order to justify the suppression of medical marijuana it has become
necessary to demonize the medical marijuana users. If medical marijuana has to be a
“crock” to use the Drug Czar’s inelegant phrase, then outspoken medical
marijuana advocates like Peter must be dehumanized.
See

href=”http://marijuananews.com/news.php3?sid=140″>Czar Calls Medical Marijuana “A
Crock.” He Doesn’t Know Anything About Medical Marijuana, But He Does Know
Crocks.
and
Dying AIDS Patient
Peter McWilliams Demands Drug Czar McCaffrey Implement Medical Marijuana Recommendations
of National Academy of Sciences Institutes of Medicine Report

In fact, the “evil” of which he was originally accused was a
COLOR=”#ff0000″>conspiracy to provide medical marijuana. Think about that, a
conspiracy to provide the sick and dying with something to help them in a state where the
people had voted for just that. What a crime!
See
The Feds Drop The
Other Jackboot; Indict Peter McWilliams, Todd McCormick and Others,
Alleging Vast Conspiracy To Supply Medical Marijuana
and

href=”http://marijuananews.com/libertarian_party_says_peter_mcw.htm”>Libertarian Party
Says Peter McWilliams Is Victim of Efforts To Discredit Medical Marijuana

The federal government began by denying the relevance of the state law, despite
the 9th and 10th Amendments. However, when it realized that a
“medical marijuana conspiracy” would raise issues that might make it difficult
to get a jury to convict a person with AIDS, they changed the charges and simply accused
him of conspiracy simply to grow marijuana.

Then they moved to deny him the right even to mention having had cancer and
AIDS or make any reference to medical marijuana. This denied him the
Anglo-Saxon common law right of claiming a “necessity” to break the law, because
doing so prevented a greater harm. Surely growing a plant that saved your life would be
such a necessity.

This might be called the fully uninformed jury strategy. It nullified the
jury’s right to know the facts of the case. Peter would not be the only victim of
such an action. The jurors would have been unwittingly used to justify an evil that would
be committed in its name. There is something especially terrible about involving innocent
people in the commission of a crime to pass the moral responsibility on to society as a
whole.

Thus, to prosecute a dying man for plotting to grow a plant, the federal
government trampled on the laws of California, the Bill of Rights, and Common Law. What is
the end that would justify such means?
See
Buckley Denounces
Prosecution of McCormick and McWilliams In Strongest Terms Yet.
“On the eve of the trial Judge King decided, so to speak, to eliminate the Bill of
Rights.”

Confronted with the inability to defend himself, Peter had no choice but to
take a “plea bargain,” such as it was, and so he confessed to the crime of
having hoped to make money in America.
See
McCormick and
McWilliams Plead Guilty to Avoid Ten Year Minimums.
and
Judge Rules
Against Medical Necessity Defense For McCormick and McWilliams
There Cannot Be Even a Mention of Medical Marijuana! Defies 9th Circuit Ruling.
Press Release From McCormick and McWilliams

None of the norms of the various traditions that make up America seem to apply
when the subject is marijuana, so Peter’s confessing to a profit motive, the most
American of motives, was seen by the government as vindicating the persecution of a dying
man.

Righteously triumphant, the prosecution would offer nothing better than letting
him throw himself on the mercy of the court in hopes of not having to serve five years.
Given his fragile health, the prosecution could have agreed to probation or even house
arrest, but they were opposed to the judge showing more “mercy” than they had.
Through all of this the judge has been craven in protection of the most basic rights and
denied all of the defense’s key motions. But he was Peter’s only hope. Now we
will never know if there was any shred of decency or mercy behind the black robes of his
executioner.

But never mind these little players who personify Arendt’s phrase, the
banality of evil. Before there can be any justice from them or for them,
COLOR=”#ff0000″>we must take back America from the prohibitionist police state that has
highjacked it in what has rightly been called a “slow motion coup d’etat.”

See
The Theory and Practice of Treason. — 2
Items

It still seems bizarre to me, even after all these years, that marijuana
prohibition – the suppression of a plant, and especially the suppression of the
medical use of a plant — could be the motive and justification for the total betrayal of
all that Peter McWilliams believed, the freedom of American. It seems even more bizarre
that the people of America have let this happen.

However, thanks to the bravery of people like Peter and other medical marijuana
users, the American people are finally waking up to what is happening. Marijuana
prohibition is going to end. How fast it ends will determine not only how many more
tragedies like the murder of Peter McWilliams there will be, but also how much more damage
is going to be done to the system and elites that perpetrated this massive fraud — or
just allowed it to happen. There could be nothing more “conservative” than
ending marijuana prohibition tomorrow.

However, for each of us, the moral case is very simple. To witness a crime in
silence is to commit it. If we are silent on the murder of Peter McWilliams, and all of
the others whose suffering and death pass without notice, then we are as guilty as the
judge, prosecutors, and politicians, and police who signed the papers that ultimately
became a warrant for judicial murder. Silence would also make us complicit in the betrayal
of the traditions and values that should have protected Peter and all the others.

The persecution of the sick and dying must end. And the system that perpetrates
it - — marijuana prohibition — must end.

This is a time of profound moral crisis. Peter McWilliams is dead. Are you?
See
Peter McWilliams On
Non-Violence: “Socrates, Jesus, and Martin Luther King
did more for their causes by dying for them than by killing for them.”
and
“It
is the love of freedom, not the hatred of tyranny,
that will turn this warring parent into an adored embrace.” — Peter McWilliams

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