When Bill Sherman (this is not his real name—due to the sensitivity of his case, he asked us to use an alias) came home to a dozen narcotics agents in his apartment one night, he knew he would need a pot lawyer. The cops had forced entry without a warrant, having figured out that Sherman was receiving out-of-state cannabis-oil shipments, which he used to treat his chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Living in Mississippi, where legal weed is only the stuff of fairy tales in far-off lands on the West Coast, Sherman had been risking his freedom to self-medicate with cannabis.
“They said they knew I had the oil and they wanted it, so I said, ‘Sure, where’s your warrant?’” Sherman explains. “They said to me, ‘We don’t have a warrant, and if you don’t sign this piece of paper, we’ll take your son away.’” Sherman’s young son is on the autism spectrum and has an immune deficiency; no one else knows how to properly care for him.
“They said, ‘We’re taking your son, putting you in jail, and by the time you get out of jail, you’ll have to fight the courts to get custody of your son back,’” Sherman says. “So I had no choice but to sign the piece of paper saying they could search my property.” Sherman gave the cops all his cannabis oil, thankful to keep his son. “But without my knowledge, they held me in contempt of court for court dates I didn’t know I had,” he says. “I eventually was arrested by a cop who was looking for me.” He was facing four to 16 years behind bars.
Stories like this are far more commonplace than you might think. Sherman needed a lawyer with experience in cannabis law, but he had