An Open Letter To The Parents Of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., And R. Sargent Shriver Iii

November, 1970

Recently, your sons, both 16, were arrested for possession of a small amount of marijuana. Fortunately, the case was tried before a humane judge who left them at liberty by continuing the case (as he customarily does in first-offense drug crimes). Your sons might have fared much worse: Under Massachusetts law, the boys could each have been sentenced to three and a half years in prison. This is a long time for an adolescent--or for any human being--to spend caged. Yet the law in Massachusetts is...

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