Texas Hash Brownie Baker No Longer Faces a 10-Year Mandatory Minimum

Prosecutors in Williamson County, Texas, have

decided to reduce the charges against Jacob Lavoro, the
19-year-old who faced
10 years to life in prison after police caught him with a pound and
a half of hash brownies and cookies last April. Instead of a
first-degree felony carrying a 10-year mandatory minimum sentence,
Lavoro is now charged with two lesser felonies related to his
possession of hash oil and marijuana. The more serious of those
charges is a second-degree felony punishable
by two to 20 years in prison, but The Austin
American-Statesman
reports that Lavoro could be eligible for probation. “The
family and I are very grateful that common sense has prevailed,”
says Jack Holmes, Lavoro’s lawyer, who until now has harshly
criticized prosecutors for taking a relentlessly hard line in such
a trivial vase.

The original charge against Lavoro was based on two aspects of
Texas law that conspired to produce a penalty shocking enough to
attract nationwide attention. Texas treats offenses involving
cannabis concentrates, regardless of THC content, much more
severely than offenses involving marijuana buds, and it counts
“adulterants and dilutants” as part of a drug’s weight. In Lavoro’s
case, as Williamson County First District Attorney Mark Brunner
explained
in May, that meant treating the baked goods as if they consisted
entirely of hash oil, which put Lavoro well over the 400-gram
cutoff for a first-degree felony.  “As prosecutors,” Brunner
said then, “we are bound by what the law is, not what the law
should be or could be.”

But after hanging the prospect of a decade or more in prison
over Lavoro’s head for a few months, Brunner has decided the law
leaves him some wiggle room after all. According to the
American-Statesman, “Brunner said it was just more
straightforward to charge Lavoro on the [counts] that did not
involve the brownies.” KXAN, Austin’s NBC station,
quotes him as saying, “We don’t want to get bogged down in the
distractions.” Yet it was Brunner who created those “distractions”
to begin with by
threatening Lavoro with an outlandishly long sentence for a
crime that is considered a legitimate business in Colorado and
Washington.