Motorist with marijuana gets 10 years in prison

MOBILE, Ala. - A Texas woman caught in Baldwin County with $700,000 worth of marijuana in her car last summer had a way out of a decade-long prison sentence. All she had to do was come clean with investigators.

Elizabeth Pickard Armstrong, 44, qualified for a "safety valve" that lets nonviolent offenders with mostly crime-free records avoid otherwise mandatory-minimum sentences.

"It's just really a shame you've chosen not to avail yourself of that," the judge said.

Armstrong, who could have gotten as little as three years and a month if she had satisfied law enforcement authorities, tearfully insisted she had no information to offer.

"I've told everything I know," she said. "I don't know anything else to tell you. I really don't."

Saraland Police Officer Nicholas Gorum, who was working on a multi-agency drug task force, pulled Armstrong over in the northbound lane of Interstate 65 near Bay Minette on June 23 after he saw the driver make an illegal lane change.

Gorum called in a drug-sniffing dog, which alerted officers to the presence of narcotics. Officers then found 570 pounds of marijuana in the trunk of the 2008 Chevrolet Impala. Authorities later estimated the value of the drugs at $700,000

They Never Included The Color Of Her Hair, How Dam Dumb Can You Be.

Could be telling the truth People do stupid stuff for the dumbest reasons or get set up I wish I knew the whole story

I think that possession of marijuana should not be a crime. I never touched the stuff but it seems to me that our goverment spends too much time and money chasing down marijuana crimes; way too much. All that effort should be spent on other crimes. We are paying for all that and I do not like it. If someone eats, smokes or whatever they do with that stuff and gets under the influence and drives then they can be arrested just like alcohol offences. If they mess around it in their own home and do not go out then just leave them alone and treat it just like alcohol.

Doug wrote:

Could be telling the truth People do stupid stuff for the dumbest reasons or get set up I wish I knew the whole story

Yeah, there's more to it then what the press knows, and as far as weed is concerned, they should just decriminalise it and call it done, to much tax payers money being wasted on the drug war, that could be used for better things"

Yep, I agree. There are MUCH more serious crimes etc. out there that they need to be worried about instead of weed. I'm not a user myself; however, I feel the same as Bernie, if they are going to do it in their own home that is their business, no one elses. But, if you are going to be smoking and driving, it should be against the law, just the same as alcohol.