President Biden commutes Duluth man’s synthetic drug sentence

Jim Carlson, a convenience store owner found guilty in 2013 of dozens of felony charges after experts said he sold enough synthetic drugs to cause a public health crisis in Duluth, had his sentence commuted Thursday as one of nearly 1,500 convicted felons. granted clemency by President Joe Biden.

Carlson received a 17 1/2-year sentence after a jury found him guilty of 51 of 55 felony charges for selling synthetic drugs from his downtown Duluth store. His two-week federal trial in Minneapolis, considered Minnesota’s most significant trial involving synthetic drugs, included charges of conspiracy, drug misbranding, distribution of controlled substances and making illegal monetary transactions.

His girlfriend, Lava Marie Haugen, was also convicted of four felonies, and his son, Joseph Gellerman, was acquitted of two felonies but convicted of two felonies.

In addition to the commutes announced Thursday, Biden pardoned 39 people, including three from Minnesota. Those with commuted sentences were placed on home confinement during the COVID-19 pandemic, and those on parole were convicted of nonviolent crimes that include drug offenses. The White House called Biden’s act “the largest single-day clemency deal in modern history.”

According to news blog Perfect Duluth Day, Carlson will officially launch on December 22, but will be on trial for the next few years. After serving time in a low-security federal prison in Michigan, he was monitored by authorities at an undisclosed location.

Long lines of addicts were drawn to his store, dubbed the Last Place on Earth, to the dismay of other downtown businesses. A business owner next door said Carlson’s store made it “like a crack neighborhood.”

Prosecutors alleged that Carlson sold synthetic drugs that were mislabeled as incense, potpourri, bath salts and glass cleaners while using employees as guinea pigs to test how the unregulated drugs worked on customers.

At his sentencing in August 2014, he argued at length that the government led him to believe the drugs he sold were legal and that the national war on drugs was a failure. “Is this your ‘Reefer Madness’ moment? asked US District Judge David Doty, referring to the film made to scare people into smoking marijuana.