John Knock was 73 and 24 years into two life terms plus 20 years for marijuana when President Trump commuted his sentence on 20 January 2021.[1][2] The White House called him a first-time, non-violent, marijuana-only offender with an exemplary prison record, completed college accounting classes and zero incident reports.[1]
From Haight-Ashbury to a Paris payphone
A minister’s son from Indiana drawn to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s, Knock moved hashish into Canada with European partners in the 1980s and says he retired around 1986 or 1987 to raise a family.[3] Warned in Hawaii that he was a DEA target for 1984-1993 conduct, he evaded arrest from 1993 until a cooperating associate got him on a payphone call in Paris in 1996, where he was arrested at once.[3] He fought extradition for three years; extradited under an agreement he says capped his exposure at 20 years, he faced a superseding indictment once on American soil.[3]
Two life terms in Gainesville
Indicted in March 1994 alongside Claude Duboc and Roger Darmon, Knock was tried in the Gainesville Division of the Northern District of Florida and sentenced in 2000 to life on two marijuana conspiracy counts plus a concurrent 20 years for money laundering, on evidence the court later described as showing more than 1,000 kilograms of marijuana.[3][4] His sister Beth Curtis founded Life for Pot to campaign for non-violent cannabis lifers, an Obama-era clemency bid failed, and by May 2021 Knock was living with family again while still facing what he describes as billions in fines and forfeiture.[3]
