Marijuana and Murder

In 1988, Ronald Reagan signed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act, a law stipulating that drug dealers who ordered killings could face the death penalty. The first person to be convicted and sentenced to death under this law was not an inner-city crack dealer or a mafia don, it was David Ronald Chandler, a marijuana dealer from the small town of Piedmont, Alabama. In September 1990, Marlin Shuler's remains were dug up from a whiskey still in Alabama. Authorities arrested David Chandler for ordering his murder. Shuler's brother-in-law, Charles Jarrell, claimed that Chandler had offered him $500 to kill Shuler. One year after the trial, Jarrell recanted his testimony and offered a different motive for killing Shuler -- he had gotten fed up with Shuler beating his sister. However, the court affirmed Chandler's conviction. In his last day of office, President Clinton commuted his sentence to life without parole.