Willie Nelson may still sing jailhouse blues in Hudspeth County pot bust

The New York Times this morning reports ("Case of Willie Nelson pot bust isn't extinguished yet"that the judge in Willie Nelson's pot possession case in Hudspeth County has refused to accept plea deals reached between the prosecution and Nelson's attorneys. The story opens:

The seemingly routine occurrence of Willie Nelson’s being found in possession of marijuana has stoked a small conflagration in a Texas county where a judge says she will not permit what she sees as the lenient punishment of this singer by an overly deferential prosecutor.

Judge Becky Dean-Walker of Hudspeth County said on Tuesday morning that she would not accept a mailed-in plea agreement for Mr. Nelson that stemmed from a 2010 drug arrest there and that she believed that the county attorney, Kit Bramblett, was giving the singer preferential treatment because he is famous.

“He’s supposed to file the charge he feels is appropriate,” Judge Dean-Walker said of Mr. Bramblett in a telephone interview. “Not what he feels he should do for his favorite singer. It is up to the judge to agree or not.”

Judge Dean-Walker added, “If you’re not going to do it for the guy in the corner, why do it for a celebrity?”

After detailing two plea deals reached by attorneys but rejected by the judge, the story concluded, “'At no point do I have to let him off,' the judge said. 'If Willie Nelson gets off with nothing, I’m not going to be part of it.'”

It's not so clear, though, that the judge herself wouldn't normally do exactly this for "the guy in the corner." She went on to say she'd actually, physically signed off on the deal before realizing Nelson was the defendant. "The judge said she had accidentally signed off on paperwork approving the latest deal for Mr. Nelson," reported the Times, "then crossed out her signature. 'I did sign it before I realized,' she said. 'I flipped it over and I said, ‘Oh, no.’”

It's not surprising she signed off on the deal before realizing she had a celebrity defendant. Very few Texas defendants convicted of low-level pot possession end up sentenced to jail time, so one wonders if, at this point, Nelson's case isn't being treated less favorably by the judge than normal because of his celebrity, in sort of a mirror image of the lenient stance she accuses the prosecutor of taking. Who knows? Certainly the Red Headed Stranger can afford the lawyers to flesh it all out. But I surely wonder what other sentences for comparable charges have issued from the same judge's court? I doubt many included jail stints.

See related Grits posts:

• We are all safer now: Willie Nelson busted for pot (in other news, sun still rises in east)
• DeGuerin: Willie Nelson pot bust an improper use of Border Patrol checkpoint
• Prosecutor wanted Willie to sing as part of pot plea

Prosecutor wanted Willie to sing as part of pot plea

I almost felt bad about cracking jokes after Willie Nelson's marijuana bust in Hudspeth County last year, but it turns out the prosecutor in the case is the biggest joke of all. Sentencing Law & Policy points to a story from Fox News declaring:

The prosecutor in Willie Nelson's marijuana possession case said the country music legend could get off with just a fine if he agrees to sing one of his songs in court, TMZ reported Monday.

Nelson, 77, was busted at a border patrol checkpoint in Sierra Blanca, Texas, en route to Austin on November 25 last year.  He was arrested but released when he posted $2,500 bond at Hudspeth County Jail.

The prosecutor in the case said he was willing to let Nelson off with a $100 fine if Nelson performed his song "Blue Eyes Smiling in the Rain" in the courtroom, TMZ said.  The prosecutor reportedly said the song would count as Nelson's community service.

If Nelson chooses not to accept the prosecutor's offer, he could face a maximum of 180 days in jail and a $2,000 fine if convicted when he appears in court, at a date yet to be decided.

The judge said that's not happening and later characterized the offer as a "joke," but Nelson deserves a mistrial and dismissal of charges over that sort of garbage. I don't often agree with SL&P commenter Bill Otis, but he was spot on when he declared, "I have no idea if the prosecution is frivolous, but I'm sure the prosecutor is." Community service, indeed!

If the prosecutor wants to haul Nelson into court more for his celebrity than his offense, indeed, apparently simply for his own enjoyment, it wouldn't surprise me if the same was true of officers who busted him in the first place. Thanks in part to wasteful border security grants, the Sheriff's department in Hudspeth County has 17 deputies who handled just 24 index crimes in 2009, the Texas Tribune reported in December, so I'm sure this was the most interesting thing to happen on their beat in many a year.

The funniest thing to me about all this is that the prosecutor got the song wrong! Willie's famous tune isn't "Blue Eyes Smiling in the Rain," but "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain," thus completing the picture of an ignorant, star-eyed hick who was just happy to be in the same courtroom as the Red-Headed Stranger. What an embarrassment: Thanks, Mr. Prosecutor, for reinforcing every jerkwad stereotype about Texans and Texas Justice held by the rest of the country. (The story has Doug Berman at SL&P soliciting Texan jokes.)

It could have been worse, I suppose. He could have asked for "Georgia on My Behind."

DeGuerin: Willie Nelson pot bust an improper use of Border Patrol checkpoint

The other day I mentioned Willie Nelson was arrested for marijuana possession at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Hudspeth County. Now Jordan Smith at the Austin Chronicle reports that:

famed Texas defense attorney Dick DeGuerin – who just lost a bid to have former U.S. Rep. Tom DeLay acquitted of money laundering – told Rolling Stone that he believes Nelson should challenge the propriety of the stop: The Sierra Blanca stop is meant to check for illegal immigrants, not just as a random check of everyone: "It's supposed to be a checkpoint only for aliens, and [agents] overstep their authority all the time," he told the magazine. "I've had several cases from that checkpoint and they just use the opportunity to check out anybody they want to. If you have long hair, if you're driving a van or it looks like you're from California or you look like a hippie, they do profiling." And that, as we all know, isn't exactly legal.

DeGuerin's got a great point. In City of Indianapolis v. Edmond, SCOTUS held that checkpoints near the border for immigration enforcement are allowable but not if their "primary purpose was to detect evidence of ordinary criminal wrongdoing." Nelson's bus was driving east from California, not north from Mexico. And it's pretty certain nobody confused the Red Headed Stranger or his entourage for Mexican immigrants. Perhaps DeGuerin's right the propriety of the search deserves to be challenged. Notes Smith: "The question, of course, is why did they search the bus in the first place – because Nelson had done something wrong? At this point that isn't entirely clear."

RELATED: The Texas Tribune has a telling story on the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Office, which employs 17 deputies in a county that reported just 24 total crimes in 2009.

We Are All Safer Now: Willie Nelson busted for pot (in other news, sun rises in east)

From KVIA-TV: "According to Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West, Nelson was traveling in his tour bus from California to Austin when Nelson was detained by Border Patrol agents at about 9 a.m. Friday. Hudspeth County Sheriff's deputies arrived at the checkpoint and then booked Nelson into the Hudspeth County Jail on a $2,500 bond."

Don't you feel safer knowing that Border Patrol checkpoints are catching septuagenarian music stars with pot? I'd like to meet the genius investigator who figured out there might be marijuana in Willie Nelson's tour bus. Perhaps he thinks this will teach Shotgun Willie a lesson and henceforth he'll abstain?

Drug cartels are all but running parts of Mexico, while large quantities of drugs continue to successfully make their way north, with guns flowing south. None of these checkpoints, unmanned drones or other over-hyped tactics seem to make a dent in that problem, but at least they caught Willie, making him wait a few hours, perhaps crooning "In the Jailhouse Now," before posting bond and heading on his way.

So which of his songs do you think Willie was singing after he left the Hudspeth County Jail? A few offhand guesses: "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke! (That Cigarette)"? "I'm a Worried Man"? "No Alibi"? "Nobody's Fault But Mine"? "Last Thing I Needed First Thing This Morning"? "Nothing I Can Do About It Now"? Or maybe just, "On the Road Again"?

Willie seems like a laid back guy and I'm sure he doesn't hold a grudge. When he got back to Austin, I've little doubt he took his own advice from his funny (if mildly heretical) marijuana themed Christmas tune on a 2008 Stephen Colbert special:

And the Wise Men started tokin'
And Yea, the bud was kind
It was salvation they were smokin'
And His forgiveness blew their minds ...

Sleep well tonight, Texans. The Red-Headed Stranger has been apprehended and will be sternly dealt with. We are all safer now.