University of Virginia Library

LaVarre Goes Free

One of Mills Godwin's last official acts was
also one of his most enlightened. Because of
it, Frank LaVarre left a Danville jail
yesterday, a jail to which he had been
sentenced for twenty years for possession of
marijuana. He will now have to return to
Tennessee on probation.

The national publicity surrounding the
LaVarre case made him one of Virginia's most
famous students. But the publicity was a
fluke; it saved Frank LaVarre, but it hasn't
helped the people presently in jail for the
same crime in Virginia and other states. Life
magazine has done its thing, and it will only
do it once; future busts will nail a lot of
people to fill Frank LaVarre's cell and they
probably won't get a pardon from the
governor.

If, as Mr. Godwin would like us to believe,
it was a sense of justice rather than a response
to pressure that led him to pardon Frank
LaVarre, we can think of no more influential
endorsement for a revamping of the marijuana
laws in the state and in the nation. For if Mills
Godwin thinks they are unjust, their inequities
have become painfully obvious.