Marc Emery speaks from behind the prison walls

Steve Kubby has been circulating a rather nasty memo on Marc's guilty plea that resulted in his current insane 90 day incarceration on trafficking charges in the Saskatoon jail for passing one joint in a crowd. That Marc's attorney screwed up the plea has been well documented and I thought Kubby's memo was meanspirited and intended to simply ignore it, but it turns out Marc is blogging from the inside and has responded himself, so I will simply give Marc the podium here.

Leanne Johnson was totally derelict in her duties as my lawyer in not consulting me before court and explaining what she was to do. She compromised my instructions completely. She was ineffective in arguing the sentencing as well. So then I hired Saskatchewan's best and most expensive lawyer, Mark Brayford, who said, "Alas, an appeal would be futile."

He said, and I quote, "The Saskatchewan Court of Appeal will uphold that shitty decision. You're screwed. You'll have to sit tight until October 18th. If it's any consolation, you're doing your movement and people a lot more good there than if they let you out on bail for an appeal, because it would deflate all the activity going on now because of that outrageous sentence. I'd like to take your $5,000, which would be the cost of filing and pressing the appeal, but you'd get nothing for your money, and the shit storm that's going on because you're in jail would end if you got released on bail. And the Court of Appeal would uphold the bad decision and then you'd just be back in a Saskatoon jail for the full sentence anyway. You don't want to come back to Saskatchewan to go to jail, do you? And it would be more difficult to rally your people a second time." That's what the best lawyer in this province said. So here I am, until October 18th.

It hurts to hear Steve Kubby say I've done a disservice to everyone, because of a guilty plea I didn't make. If it weren't for me and Michelle Rainey, Steve Kubby would most certainly be dead or in prison in the USA and Canada — I paid his lawyers over $15,000, I paid his bail of $5,000, I got him lots of pot when he had none, I found him a house, and I gave him a job. He has some nerve criticising me. Steve Kubby should be worshipping the very dust I leave behind for all I've done for him. In fact, if he's so confident about his courtroom knowledge and ability, what's he doing in a foreign country, dodging his own country's legal system? At least I have no intention of ever leaving my country and my people, no matter what my government does to me. Jesus said to his brethren, "One who eats bread with me has lifted up his heel against me", from John 13:19. It's bad enough there was a Judas in the crowd of activists the night I was arrested in Saskatoon, who betrayed me to the police. And it's very bad that my Saskatoon laywer, Leanne Johnson, betrayed my clear instructions and behaved negligently. But to have a man who owes his very life and current freedom to me insult me in public forums with words is sickening.