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EXCLUSIVE: War Veteran with PTSD Faces Life in Prison for Pot, His Wife Calls for Help
US Marine Corps combat veteran Kristoffer Lewandowski, who served in three tours of duty overseas including tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, reportedly faces up to life in prison for pot charges connected to a June 2014 raid on his Geronimo, OK home that occurred after his wife and neighbors called police to get him help for a post-traumatic stress disorder flare-up. However, rather than providing mental health resources, police responding on the scene searched Lewandowski’s home for contraband and found six marijuana plants, weighing in at less than an ounce of plant matter in total, and charged him with, among other offenses, felony marijuana cultivation, which, under Oklahoma’s unusually-harsh marijuana laws, carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Truth in Media obtained an exclusive interview with Kristoffer Lewandowski’s wife Whitney Lewandowski in an effort to get their family’s story on the record.
Whitney Lewandowski said that her husband, a loving father to three children who was honorably medically discharged from the Marines and is 100% disabled due to severe post-traumatic stress disorder, was growing the marijuana for personal use, “He was just using it… He couldn’t get any, and, of course, we’re a military family, we’re very poor, we couldn’t afford to buy it anyway. So he was just growing it for himself. He was on his way out of the military and just wanted to see if it would help with [his mental health issues]. He was taking 13 pills a day, and it was just killing his liver. He was having all these issues with his body and he just wanted to try something more natural to just see if he could do without that many pills a day.” She called his medical marijuana treatments “absolutely effective.”
On that day in June of 2014, Kristoffer Lewandowski had a PTSD episode and Whitney Lewandowski left and took their three children to the neighbors to “diffuse the situation.” When their neighbors called police in an effort to get mental health help for the struggling war veteran, officers responded, searched their home, and began a drug investigation instead. Whitney Lewandowski said that she was initially handcuffed under investigation for the same charges, placed in a police car, and told that her children were going to be taken by Child Protective Services. However, authorities offered her the opportunity to remain free and keep their kids if she pressed charges against her husband for domestic violence. In an effort to keep the children, she agreed to do so and later discovered that she could not rescind those charges without re-activating the felony marijuana cultivation charges against herself. Police arrested Kristoffer Lewandowski and charged him with felony marijuana cultivation, possession of drug paraphernalia, and a domestic violence offense. Whitney Lewandowski noted that, though police were originally called to help Kristoffer, “the kind of help he got was being tossed in jail.”
Whitney Lewandowski said that the domestic violence charge does not reflect the reality of her husband’s behavior, “They’re trying to use me as a victim and to make it look worse on his case. My husband has absolutely never laid his hands on me ever. He is not an abusive man, ever… quite the opposite. He is extremely doting.”
She noted that, at the time of the raid, police included tomato plants that were also growing in Kristoffer Lewandowski’s home while weighing his personal-use cannabis which she said “made it look like he had this huge grow [operation] going” in media reports on his arrest.
After the arrest, Whitney Lewandowski pulled together funds to pay a bail bondsman to cover his $20,000 bail and their family moved and continued their life in California, where Whitney has family ties. While in California, Kristoffer Lewandowski was prescribed medical marijuana to deal with his crippling post-traumatic stress disorder and began treatment legally.
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Meanwhile, the Lewandowskis’ attorney quit the case over a dispute over money, and, as a part of the bail agreement, Kristoffer no longer qualifies for a public defender, leaving him without legal representation.
Whitney Lewandowski said, “We tried to work with the DA’s office to see if he could do, like, a drug court or a mental health court, but he was denied both of those.” She said that Kristoffer does qualify for an alternative sentence through a drug court, but that the district attorney chose not to allow it.
Earlier this month in Laguna Beach, CA, despite the fact that the Lewandowski family remained in contact with authorities connected to his Oklahoma criminal case, undercover police apprehended Kristoffer by surprise in a dramatic, guns-drawn raid while the Lewandowskis were picking up their children from pre-school, as he had unknowingly missed a prior court date while in the care of a Veterans Administration psychiatric hospital. Whitney Lewandowski, who noted that the undercover officers who picked him up had been following them since earlier that day and could have chosen a different time to make the arrest, said, “To be picked up like that, we’re all blown away. Especially in a pre-school parking lot where all my kids’ friends are, their parents are. Everyone’s witnessing this, and it was horrifying.”
Kristoffer Lewandowski currently remains in police custody in California awaiting extradition to Oklahoma where he will face his charges. Whitney Lewandowski is looking for an attorney for her husband and raising funds to support his legal defense. The medical marijuana groups Weed 4 Warriors Project and Patients Out of Time have stepped in and are attempting to generate publicity for Kristopher. A Change.org petition urging leniency for him has, as of press time, generated over 112,000 signatures from supporters. Also, his supporters have launched a Facebook page to raise awareness to his plight.
Though his felony cultivation charge carries a maximum sentence of life in prison, Whitney Lewandowski said that her husband told her that other inmates familiar with Oklahoma sentencing policies said that “most people were doing at least 2 to 4 years per plant in their house. So Kris having six plants doesn’t look good for him.” She urged his supporters to spread the word and is preparing a GoFundMe page, which currently awaits approval, in an effort to raise funds for his legal defense.
The post EXCLUSIVE: War Veteran with PTSD Faces Life in Prison for Pot, His Wife Calls for Help appeared first on Ben Swann's Truth In Media.
Source: http://truthinmedia.com/exclusive-war-veteran-with-ptsd-faces-life-in-prison-for-pot-his-wife-calls-for-help/
