Ton of pot leads to jail time

By Katie Fretland
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER
July 2, 2009

A 29-year-old Utah man caught on Interstate 80 with nearly a ton of marijuana was sentenced Wednesday to six years in federal prison.

A Douglas County sheriff’s sergeant pulled over Stanley L. Suojanen of Pleasant Grove, Utah, about 1 p.m. on Dec. 12, 2007, for having an obstructed license plate on his pickup. Suojanen had been traveling east on the Interstate near 96th Street.

A law enforcement drug dog, Rocky, signaled in the direction of the camper unit at the back of the pickup. Inside were 93 bundles containing a total of 1,940 pounds of marijuana.

The drugs had a street value of about $3 million.

Suojanen pleaded guilty in March to the federal charge of conspiring to distribute and possessing with the intent to distribute less than 1,000 kilograms of a mixture containing a detectable amount of marijuana.

On Wednesday, Suojanen’s attorney, Clarence Mock, asked for leniency, telling the judge that Suojanen’s imprisonment would cause severe hardship to his disabled parents.

He said in a motion that Suojanen’s criminal history includes no convictions for violent crime. Since 1998, Suojanen has been convicted of carrying a concealed knife, driving under the influence, possessing drug paraphernalia, unlawful alcohol consumption and possessing false identification.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Svoboda said that Suojanen possessed five different driver’s licenses with his photograph and that he’d had consistent contact with law enforcement over the years.

The statutory minimum sentence in Suojanen’s federal drug case was five years. In sentencing Suojanen to six years, Chief U.S. District Judge Joseph Batallion said he took into account the quantity of drugs Suojanen conspired to distribute.

Contact the writer:

444-1022, katie.fretland@owh.com

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