Emery pleads guilty to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana
By Andrea
Woo
As part of a plea bargain,
Emery, 52, must serve five years in prison for selling marijuana seeds to
He will remain in
custody at the
Emery's wife, Jodie,
said the deal is the best of his limited options.
"It's
unfortunate that a five-year sentence is what we want for Marc, but the
alternative was at least 30 years and up to life if it went to trial," she
told The Vancouver Sun Monday. "But while he's gone, he'll be there to
demonstrate the insanity of this war on drugs."
"Today, Marc
Emery acknowledged he broke the law," Durkan said in a news release issued
Monday. "Seeds from Marc Emery's business were found at grow sites across
the
Emery claimed to have
made about $3 million a year selling seeds, with much of it going to activist
groups and political parties.
About 75 per cent of
the four million seeds sold over the years went to American residents.
On multiple occasions
in 2004 and 2005, Emery sold seeds to an undercover U.S. Drug Enforcement
Administration agent at the shop and elsewhere, the department of justice
claimed.
Jodie Emery, and many
of Emery's supporters, have called his extradition an "outsourcing of
justice."
"As a Canadian
who has never left Canada ... he should have been charged and punished here in
Canada, where most of his activities took place, where it's against the law and
where we're fully capable of going after him," she said.
Co-defendants
Michelle Rainey and Gregory Keith Williams pleaded guilty last year and were
sentenced to two years of probation.
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