Calling the law “poorly drafted” and “an overreaction” by the state legislature, a Franklin County senior judge has said applying the Drug-Free School Zones Act that requires a mandatory minimum sentence of two years in prison for selling drugs within 1,000 feet of a school would have been “unjust, unfair and unconstitutional” in a case in which neither the dealer nor the buyer knew they were near a school.
Franklin County Senior Judge John R. Walker refused to apply the mandatory minimum sentence in a case where the defendant sold marijuana to an undercover informant in the parking lot of a church that, unbeknownst to either of them, also housed a nursery school.
