The Strange and Tragic Case of Jimmy Montgomery
BY PETER GORMAN
High Times No. 242 Oct 1995

JIMMY MONTGOMERY USED MARIJUANA AS THE BEST MEDICINE HE COULD FIND FOR THE MUSCLE SPASMS AND STAPH INFECTIONS HE HAS SUFFERED SINCE HE BROKE HIS BACK IN AN ACCIDENT ON THE JOB OVER TWENTY YEARS AGO. SNARED IN A POLICE SET-UP, HE IS NOW SERVING A TEN YEAR SENTENCE AND HIS HEALTH IS RAPIDLY DETERIORATING AS HE LANGUISHES BEHIND BARS.

	Sayre, Oklahoma. Population 3,000. Flat grasslands, cattle country, big sky and not much else. The town is built along Route 66 on the north fork of the Red River, just east of the Texas Panhandle. An old-boy network of fundamentalist Christians rules this part of the country.
	The locals say you're either in the right church, the First Baptist, or you may as well move. Jimmy Montgomery wasn't and didn't. And Jimmy Montgomery, a paraplegic who's dying from antibiotic-resistant staph infections, is paying a price. He's serving 10 years of a life-plus-16 year sentence in Oklahoma's Lexington Correctional Facility for a first offense of possession with intent to distribute less than two ounces of marijuana.
	How Montgomery ended up with that sentence is a horror story of small town politics, gossip, police overreach and possible corruption. Why he remains inside involves the story of a zero-tolerance-except-when
-it-suits-him District Attorney named Richard Dugger, a politically driven man who holds a grudge and has a long memory.
	The story begins in 1972, when Montgomery, the son of a retired Federal Marshall and Sayre city cop, was 18. Just out of high school, he took a job doing road work for the state. Shortly after he began, a scaffold he was working on gave way. Montgomery's back was broken in the fall, leaving him paralyzed from the lower back down.
	During his initial hospital stay doctors provided him with morphine, and Montgomery returned home an addict. But according to his lifelong friend Ralph Hannah, "Jimmy just didn't like being addicted, so he told them to stop giving it to him and he quit cold turkey." But when it became apparent that he was unable to control the pain and violent muscle spasms that accompanied his paralysis without medication, he was put on a Valium regimen. The regimen quickly reached 100 milligrams a day, and according to his mother, Thelma Farris (formerly Montgomery, she remarried after Jimmy Montgomery's father died in 1986), "It just left him like a zombie. He didn't do anything. He couldn't."
	In the first two years following his accident, Montgomery's left femur from his hip to his knee calcified, and in I974 he began a series of surgeries-paid for by Workman's Compensation-to remove the calcified bone. Following each session, he'd recuperate in a rehab hospital for several weeks.
	During one rehab stay, a fellow patient recommended that Montgomery substitute cannabis for Valium. And when a doctor seconded the idea, he gave it a try-and found that cannabis controlled his spasms better than Valium. He began to get his energy back as well. He went to work selling oil leases during the late '70s Texas Panhandle oil boom and put quite a bit of money away in treasury bills. He also entered Sayre Junior College, working toward a degree in medical technology.
	Unfortunately and unknown to his doctors-during one of his early surgeries Montgomery had contracted a staph infection known as Methacylin Resistant Staph Aureus that tunnels through bone marrow and flesh. It went undetected until it broke through the skin of his left leg in 1980. By 1981 the infection had spread, requiring the removal of two vertebra and additional bone from his leg. Surgery in 1983 left a large open ulcer on his thigh that needs to be cleaned and dressed several times daily. 	Montgomery's prognosis at that time was that he had six months to live. Aware that even if he lived his contagious infection would prevent him from working in the medical field, he quit school-a semester- and-a-half shy of his degree-and began to rebuild car engines in a building behind his mother's house that his father had used to detail classic Corvettes. Word spread that he was good and despite his continuing physical deterioration and regular surgeries, he'd soon converted the building into a shop designed for a wheel-chair bound mechanic who specialized in high performance engines.
	
THE BUST
	By all accounts, Montgomery was successful, well-liked, and a good worker. He was also independent-he lived alone for several years and only returned to live in his mother's home after his father died. If there was anything out of the ordinary about him it was simply that he made no secret of his use of medicinal marijuana.
But the story took an ugly turn on December 1, 1990 when a multicounty sheriffs narcotics task force made a series of small-time arrests while looking for numbers. Montgomery was one of them.
	The bust began the afternoon of November 30, when two local girls, Wendy T. and Cassie S., traded some marijuana for cocaine with Brian Lawless, one of the task force members. Lawless and, his primary partner, Rick Gheer, an undersheriff from a nearby county, told the girls they could get off, but only if they turned the narcs onto someone else. The girls jumped at the chance and took the marijuana to the home of a neighbor, Allan Sands, and asked if they could stash it there. Sands, who allegedly preferred drinking to smoking, said they could. A few minutes later Gheer, Lawless and the rest of the task force entered Sands' home and arrested him for possession of the pot.
	Thinking they could get more out of the girls, Gheer and Lawless asked who else they might finger. Terrified, the girls went to the home of Keith Easter, someone they knew from around Sayre. With Keith was Billy Guy Cornelius, a small time dealer and friend of Montgomery's. According to Cornelius, the bust went this way:
	"I was at Keith Easter's house that night and them girls came down and said if we'd buy some coke they'd come back and spend the night and party with us. Well, that sounded OK to me. They wanted us to buy a gram but I told them I didn't have that kind of money. I only had thirty dollars and Keith didn't have anything, so we said we'd get a quarter of a gram.
	"But they said they'd go get that set up and we were to come over to their place and bring our scales. So I went over with Keith, and there was another guy I didn't know sitting in the room. That turned out to be Lawless. He took out the coke, took the money, then asked if we wanted to play a game. He said 'Simon Says get on the floor, I have a gun.' And then Gheer and the rest of them came in and busted us for attempted possession of cocaine."
	Montgomery's name came up during the questioning of Cornelius. Just how depends on who is doing the talking. According to a deposition made by Cornelius, Gheer brought it up along with several others and was told he'd be "cut some slack" if he would "wear a wire and would go in undercover on Jim. "
	Though Cornelius refused to wear a wire, he does admit that when asked if he was "getting marijuana from Montgomery, I said I have gotten some from him, but I have gotten him some too. I said it was like friends, nobody never made no money off it."
	Gheer, who later that night wrote the affadavit used to get a search warrant on Montgomery's mother's home, tells the story of his conversation with Cornelius differently. According to a deposition given by Gheer after the arrest, it was Cornelius-a multiple felon looking at 40 years on his next conviction- who brought Montgomerys name up in an attempt to cut a deal. "Billy [Guy Cornelius] told me that he had been getting his dope from Jim, that he got some off of him relatively recently, seemed like it was the last couple days, something like that. He had been to his house, had seen some-some more dope besides what he bought."
	Asked how much marijuana Cornelius said he'd recently bought from Montgomery, Gheer said "For some reason I want to say a quarter ounce."
	Using Cornelius' statements, Gheer and the narcotics task force secured their warrant, and the following morning entered Thelma Farris' house, where they discovered just over an ounce-and-a-half of marijuana in a pouch hanging from Montgomery's wheelchair. They also found about a dozen pipes and bongs, scales, some cannabis seeds in marked containers and two handguns-both inherited from his father, one of them his late father's police issue. Additionally, Gheer and the task force confiscated and later classified as paraphernalia much of Montgomery's college chemistry equipment.
	Montgomery was charged with four felony counts: Possession of Marijuana with Intent to Distribute; Possession of Paraphernalia; Possession of a Weapon During Commission of a Felony; and Maintaining a Place Resorted to by Users of Controlled Drugs.
	Two months later, on February 2I, 1991, a separate civil forfeiture proceeding was initiated by Richard Dugger, the district attorney for Southwestern Oklamoma, against Montgomery's mother's home on the grounds that it was being used to facilitate drug trafficking.
	But as Montgomery was scheduled for major surgery and rehab shortly after his arrest, his trial was postponed until March 3, 1992. During that year-and-a-half he was out on his own recognizance.
	During that same time between Montgomery's arrest and trial, four of the five other cases made the same day as his by Gheer and Lawless were adjudicated-all with deals approved by DA Dugger. One of the girls, Wendy T., received a sentence of five years, all of which was suspended except for six months; the second, Cassie S. had charges dropped and reportedly is currently working as a narc. Keith Easter, initially charged as a co-defendant with Billy Guy Cornelius, had his charges dismissed; and Billy Guy Cornelius, in a deal that allowed him to plead guilty as a first timer, got five years for attempted possession of cocaine. He served just over four months before he was released due to a back condition though one not severe enough to keep him from riding a motorcycle. The fifth case, against Allen Sands, the fall guy who let the girls hide their pot in his home, went to jury trial for simple possession of marijuana. He was convicted and given a one year sentence, all of which was suspended. (Rick Gheer is a story of his own: In April, 1993 he was arrested and charged with eight counts of embezzlement of Narcotics Task Force funds. On December, 14, I993, in a plea bargain agreement made with Richard Dugger, he plead guilty to three of the counts and was sentenced to concurrent terms of seven years on each. He served six months, was released, and has since left the state.)
	Montgomery was approached about deals as well, but turned them down. According to his court-appointed attorney at that time, Tom Pixton, Montgomery was more than willing to plead guilty to simple possession and serve up to the one year that could bring on a first offense. But he was unwilling to plead to possession with intent to distribute-and all offers included that.
	Why Dugger was so insistent about the "with intent" portion of the plea when he'd treated the other five people caught that same night-as well as the corrupt Gheer-with kid gloves probably has to do with the forfeiture: While none of the others had any property to speak of, Montgomery's mom had a valuable house in a prime location on Routie 66, Sayre's main street. But Dugger's office couldn't forfeit the house if Montgomery was allowed to plead guilty to simple possession. The forfeit was dependent on the "with intent" portion of the plea.
	Dugger denies that the house had anything to do with his refusal to authorize a simple possession plea. "I've always maintained a stance that the time one would serve in a controlled dangerous substance case is completely separate in consideration from that of any forfeiture that we do. The forfeiture case is a civil case, the other is a criminal case, and I've instructed my assistants not to discuss one as concerning the other, period."
	The assistant district attorney under Dugger who was handling the deal at that time, David Brooks, disagrees with his former boss, insisting that any and all deals he offered to Montgomery included the house. "The only conversations we had on that as far as pleading went," Brooks says, “were that any plea included the house. I thought we had it and it would have been sold long before now."
	Dugger responded to Brooks's allegation by noting that Brooks was his opponent in a recent election, "and I don't know what he's saying."
	Others agree with the assessment that the case revolved around the house. One employee of a state representative even commented, "Everybody in Sayre knew that's what jimmy's arrest was about. The police wanted a new headquarters and they thought his mom would just get the hint and give up the house in exchange for Jimmy. "
	"Nobody ever asked if we wanted to sell it," says Thelma Farris. "They just hinted that since the police department, the fire department and the library were all in one building they sure could use a new space. And then with my house being brick with large rooms and a big double corner lot, and with jimmy's big mechanic's shop out there on the side, well, people just began telling me it could easily be turned into a police station. But Jimmy wouldn't take the plea bargain. He said he couldn't live knowing I'd had to give up everything his dad and I worked for. He wouldn't hear of it."
	Several calls to local officials-all of whom have requested anonymity-have confirmed what Farris said.
	But instead of getting the hint, Farris hired local attorney Leon Wilisie to fight the forfeiture, and the case against the house was still undecided when Montgomery's trial date arrived. "It was only the night before the trial that my lawyer, Mr. Wilsie, called me and said that Assistant District Attorney David Brooks had just called him and said that if we signed my property over they would drop all charges on Jimmy. And that offer came straight from the District Attorney, Richard Dugger."
	Attorney Willsie remembered the conversation differently. "There was an attempt to resolve both cases that were pending at that time, the forfeiture case and the drug case. But I don't remember it being anything that would have been insulting to me or that shouldn't have been offered, like 'You give up your interest in the house and we drop all charges."'
	Former assistant DA David Brooks denied that the call came from him. "That wasn't me. It wasn't my case after pre-trial. That sounds like something Dugger might have said, but I don't know that he did."
	Dugger says emphatically that Jimmy was a dealer who finally got caught and the house seizure was typical at the time. He also remembers the house as "worth maybe 50 thousand, tops," and scoffs at the idea that it would make a good police station.

THE TRIAL
	On March 3. 1992, Jimmy Montgomery went to trial. To prosecute the case, Dugger brought in prosecutor David Cummins, described by Joe Hay, the sheriff of nearby Roger Mills County, as "the DA's gun .... Real good in the courtroom. He can argue a jury out of their pants. That's his thing. He's used throughout the district injury trials."
Defending Montgomery was court-appointed attorney Tom Pixton, whom one court clerk-who asked that her name not be used-assessed as: "Not nearly as effective as Cummins."
	Before the start of the trial Cummins placed all of Montgomery's pipes, bongs, seeds, scales and some of his college chemistry equipment, as well as the two pistols on a large evidence table. They made quite a pile. According to the court clerk, "The jury was quite impressed with that. It really did make him look like a dealer, even before the trial began."
	As Cummins didn't have a single witness claiming that they'd ever bought marijuana from or sold marijuana to Montgomery - Cornelius had already served his 4 months and refused to testify-his only ammunition was the paraphernalia and the testimony of Brian Lawless. At the heart of Lawless' testimony was this exchange:
Q. In what units .. does marijuana change hands?
A: The most common is approximately a quarter ounce bag that sells from
$10.00. to $15. 00.
Q:  Would the quantity you found in States Exhibit No. 18 [42.5 grams] be equivalent to the quantity you find in an ordinary street buy?
A: No, it would not.
Q. Why not? What is different about it?
A: That’s approximately $200.00 worth of marijuana and a user is not going to buy $200. 00 worth generally.

	For his part, Montgomery was open with the court about his use of marijuana as medicine for pain relief and spasm control. "Jimmy admitted he used marijuana," recalls Pixton. "But he vehemently denied that he was a dealer or that the marijuana he was found with was intended for distribution. And the pipe collection ... well, my God, people collect all sorts of things. I was sure, and I remain sure, that the jury simply didn't have the facts to find him guilty."
	The jury, strongly admonished by Cummins to disregard both Montgomery's physical condition and his use of marijuana as a medicine for that condition, disagreed with Pixton's assessment of the case. At the end of the one-day trial, they brought in a verdict of guilty on all four counts. Their sentencing recommendation: Life in prison (45 years in Oklahoma) and a $20,000 fine for possession with intent to distribute; one year and a $1,000 fine for his paraphernalia; five years for each of the two guns; and five years and a $10,000 fine for maintaining a house resorted to by users of controlled drugs. In total, it was life-plus-16 years. On each count the recommendations were the absolute maximum allowed by law and overall it was the single stiffest sentence in Oklahoma's history for possession of less than two ounces of pot for a first offender who'd never even been previously arrested.
	"I don't think the convictions surprised anyone," says Pixton, "though I still can't figure out what evidence they saw. But I think what surprised everyone was the sentence. It was unbelievably harsh. It almost destroys one's belief in the jury system."
	The recommendations were so severe that at the sentencing hearing Cummins himself urged the judge, Beckham County Associate District judge Charles L. Schwabe, to ignore them and impose a sentence of "five or 10 or 15 years," because, as he admitted at the time, “There is very little evidence that Jimmy Montgomery is a drug dealer."
	Judge Schwabe agreed, and though he imposed the jury sentences, he suspended everything over 10 years and all but $10,500 of the fines.
	Asked how a jury could come up with such harsh penalties for so minor an infraction, former assistant DA Brooks says, "The sentence he received tells you what the jury thought of him. He had a reputation, let's put it that way. Everybody in town thought you could buy dope there. But it's a small town and you run into gossip. I don't know if it was true."
	Asked why no one had ever arrested him before if Montgomery had had such a reputation, Brooks didn't have an answer.
	A survey of several current and former sheriffs in and around Sayre indicates that there was gossip about Montgomery selling marijuana. But with the exception of Gheer, only one, Sheriff Hay, had ever actually gotten Montgomery's name from someone he'd busted. "I picked up a fellow once in the early 1980’s or late 70's who included Montgomery on a list of 16 people he'd done drugs with.
	"I asked him where he'd go for crank and once he got to talking he said you'd get this here or marijuana there, and Montgomery's name was on that list. So I do have Jim Montgomery's name down. But when you're dealing with an informant like that, he's just a guy giving you names, so you don't know.
	"But remember, in this part of the world, everybody knows everybody's business, or thinks they do. So if rumors start that you might sell dope, and people see you in the parking lot of the hospital, they say that can't be he's waiting on somebody, he's got to be there making dope connections.
	"And Jimmy was sitting in the parking lot a lot".


PRISON
	Despite his contagious staph infections, Montgomery began serving his time on April 9, I992 in the general population at the Lexington (OK) state penitentiary. After a transfer to the Jess Dunn Correctional Facility-where his health began to deteriorate badly from a lack of medical treatment-he was finally transferred to the Griffith Correctional Facility Medical Center in Norman, OK. In all, he spent nearly ? months in prison before he was released pending appeal in mid February, I993.
	Upon his release, he was taken to the Sayre Memorial Hospital where he was put on intravenous antibiotics and given several pints of blood. "He was so sick he couldn't even sit up by himself," his mother remembers. "His infections were just going wild."
	Following three weeks in the hospital, he was sent to specialists in Oklahoma City, where his health improved dramatically.
	Montgomery remained free from February, 1993 until April 4, 1995, when his appeal was heard. His new lawyer, Rayburn Martin, succeeded in having both the Weapons and Maintaining A House For Drug Trafficking convictions reversed. But in a summary decision by the Court of Appeals, both the Paraphernalia and the Possession with Intent to Distribute convictions - as well as the 10 year sentence - were upheld.
	Montgomery was returned to the general population at Lexington Correctional Institute on April 4, where his condition immediately began to deteriorate again. Protests and a phone campaign mounted by both OK NORML and the national NORML office brought the matter to the attention of OK Governor Frank Keating. Keating looked into the case and recommended-with even prosecutor Cummins's blessing-that Montgomery be released to house arrest. But according to Keating's Press Liason Jason Nelson, shortly before the release date, "We received a very strenuous objection to that from District Attorney Richard Dugger," after which the governor changed his mind.
	Dugger says: "I received a docket and noticed that Jimmy Montgomery was going to be paroled to electronic monitoring. Mr. Montgomery had only been in the penitentiary for a very short time because he had appealed the conviction.... I then did write a letter stating that I felt he should not be granted electronic monitoring, that he'd just begun his sentence. I later received a call from the governor's office and they explained to me that they had recommended electronic monitoring persuant to some phone calls from relatives and being advised that the man . was a paraplegic and did require some hospital care. And I did discuss that with them, with the aide to the governor, and he understood my position."
	There may be more to it than that. District Attorney Dugger may have a personal gripe with Montgomery. He had contact over the years with Montgomery's father, and according to Thelma Farris, "My husband used to say Dugger was a crazed man. And as for me, Dugger and I never liked one another from way back."
	Their disagreement with Dugger's way of doing business goes back several years to Dugger's first term as DA in the early 1980’s, when several local murders went unsolved and there were rumors that some of the local law enforcement agencies had blood on their hands. Dugger was never under suspicion, but Jimmy Montgomery's father didn't like the way the investigations were handled, and so when Dugger came up for reelection, big Jim Montgomery allowed Dugger's opponent to put billboards and signs up in his front lawn. Dugger lost the election and it was several years before he was reelected.
	But Dugger denies ever having known Jimmy Montgomery's father or mother, and says he had no idea that the pistols found with Montgomery when he was arrested were police issue. He also denies that there is anything personal in his wanting Montgomery to serve time, and insists he is simply doing the will of the people. Even the attempted forfeiture, which was resolved in 1993 in the Montgomery's favor and caused Dugger a certain amount of political embarrassment, played no part in his insistence that Montgomery remain in prison. "Marijuana and other controlled dangerous substances," he says, are simply "vigorously prosecuted in my district."
	In late May, Montgomery was moved from the general population of the Lexington Correctional Facility into an isolated ward in the prison's infirmary. He is not permitted visitors, so his mother has not seen him in nearly two months.
	A second parole board hearing was scheduled for July I4, with Jimmy Montgomery's name again on the docket.

POSTSCRIPT
	At the Oklahoma DOC's July I4 Parole Board hearing, from which DA Richard Dugger was conspicuously absent, it was recommended that Jimmy Montgomery be discharged on a medical parole. As HIGH TIMES goes to press, the recommendation goes to Governor Keating, who has 90 days to either permit or deny the parole. It is expected he will permit it. Dugger will not reveal whether he plans to sandbag Montgomery's release again. "I will get some input from the Department of Corrections case worker and others before I make a recommendation as to whether or not he should remain in incarceration," he says.
	The parole stipulates that Montgomery must participate in a drug rehabilitation program, that he will be subject to weekly meetings with his parole officer and will take regular urine tests for the remainder of his life sentence. Asked whether Dugger, if he chose, could reincarcerate Montgomery for his medical marijuana use, Montgomery's caseworker, Sherry Vinson, says that if a doctor orders Montgomery to use cannabis it would be highly unlikely he would be tested for THC. "But Jimmy knows where he stands with this DA. He'll have to mind his Ps and Qs when he gets home."
	His mother Thelma was ecstatic about the news. "I can't wait to get him home," she said. "And as soon as I do, I'm going to sue the DA and the State of Oklahoma for violating jimmy's civil rights. There was just so much wrong with this case, right from the beginning." Asked how Jimmy reacted, she says, "He broke down when I told him. And then he said 'Mom, I've heard so much and had so many promises broken that I won't believe it until it happens. And even if it does, I know I'll have to be real careful when I get home. I don't want to have to come back here."'