Fifteen Year Sentence for One Ounce of Marijuana

by: Rolf A. Rosendahl

This is the story of a slave of the State of Missouri: forced into homelessness and despair. My entire family is gone and this time of year I usually get this way. I wonder if you know an attorney that does criminal law? I found only one attorney in Missouri who would touch my case, a former Missouri Assistant Attorney General named John William Simon, who was a three-time Ivy League guy who went to Yale Law School and had a masters in political science from Harvard. He tried to do my habeas corpus case and was summarily ignored by the Missouri court in Jefferson City, where he knew all the judges personally, as he had defended them against lawsuits by the Attorney General, Jeremiah“Jay” Nixon, now  Governor of Missouri.
I spent over 8 years in prison on a false marijuana charge in which the court never produced an affidavit or any witness supporting an arrest warrant, in order to obtain a civil forfeiture of a 20-acre property which I owned near Whiteman AFB. The Missouri Civil Forfeiture Laws back then required only that a criminal charge be filed, regardless of probable cause. Forfeiture laws had run amok, so Congress enacted laws in 2000 limiting the power of lower jurisdictions to steal property, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled it was Double-Jeopardy in violation of Sixth Amendment. They balked on that one too.
Before 1991, the concept of the “Stealth” B-2 Bomber and a $300,000,000 dollar government contract was little-known to the public; although the local Walmart sold T-Shirts with a picture from the toys and models saying: “Knobnoster, Home of the B-2 Stealth Bomber,” which was well- known by the local government, and suddenly, my property became very valuable overnight. I only paid $9000 for the 20-acre property and borrowed money from my mom’s retirement account to buy it, because fenced land with water and electricity was a “steal” at $450 an acre and the pak, hickory and walnut trees alone were worth more than that. It had two large stocked spring-fed fish ponds and deer and turkey were abundant back in 1986 when I bought it, and I had built a dam to enlarge one of the fish ponds to 1.5 acres in size. The fresh-water bass were almost two feet long.

Now facing a criminal charge, even though I had no prior record, the idea of defending against a local mafia of crooked judges and prosecutors with no money was pretty bleak, and they were very pleased when I left the state and abandoned the property to them. I had other things to think of besides the bogus charge, and decided what was more important to me than the land or my vehicle was the only family I had left, my mother, who was very ill.
My mother was a “brittle” diabetic, and doctors told me she would not survive another winter in Missouri, and she needed a warm dry climate due to an enlarged heart and pneumonia. I had little money and they seized my truck for forfeiture, so I moved my mom to Escondido, CA, since I was born in California. Two years later, I was arrested and held in the San Diego County Jail on a charge of “felony extradition” and a very perplexed magistrate demanded an affidavit by a witness, who did not exist, and I was told I would be released if proper documents were not produced within 10 days.
Just hours before my actual release from San Diego County Jail, the Governor of Missouri, Mel Carnahan, committed perjury on the face of an extradition warrant and swore on his Oath I had been convicted of the crime charged without ever receiving a preliminary (probable cause) hearing, and my mother died six weeks later. The Missouri Supreme Court at the same time was revising civil forfeiture laws and said only a guilty plea or a conviction would allow for forfeiture of property. I was held in a one-man 6 foot by 8 foot cell for 9 months after extradition and was told if I would just plead guilty, I would go home. I refused to plead guilty and had no less than six public defenders during that time who quit their jobs from pressure by the “local mob” who wanted the property.

After a kangaroo court trial, I fought the case from prison pro se and took it to the U.S. Supreme Court in 1995; and more recently took it to the federal court in Washington, D.C., claiming that Missouri courts are jurisdictionally barred from using perjury to extradite prisoners where no probable cause hearing and no witness to the alleged crime exists. See Whiteley v. Warden, 401 U.S 560, 565 (1971); and see In re Hagan, 245 S.W. 336 (Mo.banc 1922). The Supreme Court says if habeas corpus or some other reversal cannot be obtained first, a lawsuit cannot proceed. Of course, a seven-figure recovery is possible as the county sheriff personally applied for rubber-stamp warrant and they made federal court admissions that no affidavit from any witness existed. Unfortunately, the sheriff died of brain cancer before the hearing. No chance of any Monell defense to the sheriff, being he was a county official.

I became a law clerk in prison and spent 10-hour days six days a week studying law, and the record proving everything has been through state and federal courts; I have transcripts showing that they lied before and during trial. All the legal briefs and arguments have been done several times and only the decision in Heck v. Humphrey, 114S.Ct. 2364 (1994), prevents me from winning my case. There is no statute of limitations on this claim, it is jurisdictional. See State ex rel. Buresh v. Adams, 468 S.W.2d 18, 20-22(Mo. banc 1971). No immunity was claimed as a defense by the Governor in the lawsuit.

Does anyone know a qualified attorney who does civil rights cases? I proved my case but have this “Catch-22″ Supreme Court “mumbo-jumbo” about habeas corpus, which I have filed five times, at both the state and federal level, and once the 15-year sentence (for 28.84 grams of dried marijuana leaves) expired, no more habeas jurisdiction. See Harvard Law Review 121; pgs. 868-889(2008). I have the entire record, although pages are turning yellow these days. Most recent U.S. Supreme Court Certiorari was denied two months ago from U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit case. I also got my skull fractured in prison, (causing seizures now) in retaliation for my lawsuit, which almost came before federal Judge Howard F. Sachs, in 1996. They don’t like pro se cases that get that close to the truth.

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