Ed Forchion, otherwise known in New Jersey as the “Weedman”, wrote a letter to the editor of the Burlington County Times calling the New Jersey Bail Reform Act a violation of the Constitution and is challenging the Act in court.
The Bail Reform Act violates the Constitution
(posted by Burlington County Times – May 25 2017)
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Dred Scott v. Sandford that the Constitution didn’t apply to Africans even if born here. A couple of years later, the Civil War was fought, largely about African slaves. The North won, abolishing private slavery. Soon thereafter, the 13th and 14th amendments were passed and African-Americans became citizens with the full protections of the Constitution — until now.
For the more than 230 years of the Constitution’s existence, the right to bail has been protected by the Eighth Amendment. All 50 states had bail in their constitutions, until this year, when New Jersey became the exception by enacting the Bail Reform Act, which actually attempts to eliminate bail as a right in New Jersey.
Thus, I call the Bail Reform Act the Dred Scott Act of New Jersey, because just like the Dred Scott ruling, it has stripped African-Americans of their fundamental rights, specifically, to bail.
Since 2014, Gov. Chris Christie and state Senate President Stephen Sweeney have touted the act as a way of allowing poor, nonviolent offenders to be released to await their trials at home, preserving the doctrine of “innocent until proven guilty,” which serves as the backbone of our right to a fair trial.
Simultaneously, Christie “blackfaced” the act in classic dog-whistle style. He used black criminals in campaign-style ads directed at white citizens to get them to vote for the Bail Reform Act. In 2015, Christie got what he wanted, a way to eviscerate the right to bail and make meaningless the Eighth Amendment. New Jersey citizens did in fact vote for the bail reform measure, and it was enacted in January.
I say, so what? No state can pass a law that supercedes the U.S. Constitution.
In 2014, I predicted I would fall victim to the unconstitutional “no bail” provision of the Bail Reform Act. I publicly stated that it would be used overwhelmingly against black men. Maybe I should rename myself Weedsterdamus, for, as I predicted, I’m writing this from Mercer County Jail, and denied bail. I am now a political prisoner in New Jersey’s war on marijuana on a trumped-up claim of witness tampering. Also, as I predicted, most of the “no bailees,” jailed with me. are African-Americans, as was the intention of Christie’s Bail Reform Act.
The “no bail provision” is clearly unconstitutional and deliberately contravenes the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Stack v. Boyle, which said: “This traditional right to freedom before conviction permits the unhampered preparation of a defense and serves to prevent the infliction of punishment prior to conviction. Unless this right to bail before trial is preserved, the presumption of innocence secured only after centuries of struggle would lose its meaning.”
I am challenging the constitutionality of the Bail Reform Act in court. While I am an African-American, I am not Dred Scott. The Constitution applies to me. I have honorably served in three branches of the military, and I swore to uphold the Constitution and fight enemies both foreign and domestic. I now regard the Mercer County Prosecutor’s Office (the state) for its open violation of our Constitution. This fight is about the Constitution, not cannabis.
The citizens of 2017 have more to revolt about than the Colonists of 1776. The Bail Reform Act is a clear example of the abuse of government against “we the people.”
Ed Forchion