Senior U.S. District Judge William C. O’Kelley sentenced Andrew N. Cox, 45, formerly of Blairsville, to life in federal prison in Gainesville, Georgia, on 12 March 2009.[1][2] A jury had convicted him on 18 November 2008 of conspiring to manufacture and attempting to manufacture marijuana in and around the Chattahoochee National Forest in the spring of 2004.[1] The life term was a mandatory third strike: the charge ordinarily carried ten years, but Cox had prior drug-trafficking convictions from 1991 in Florida and 2000 in federal court in Georgia.[1]
From early 2004 through July 2004 Cox hired three men to plant and cultivate marijuana on private and Forest Service land, using a landscaping company as a front and his father’s property as a staging area for seedlings in hundreds of starter cups.[1] Forest Service agents found 724 seedlings in his father’s yard and 594 more plants at three grow sites in the adjacent forest, 1,318 plants in all.[1] Indicted on 11 January 2005, Cox fled and stayed a fugitive until his capture in Casa Grande, Arizona, on 13 February 2008.[1][2] His three co-conspirators pleaded guilty in 2004 and 2006 and received prison terms of three years, two years, and five years six months.[1]
