Commerce, Conduct, and the High Cost of Bad Decisions

A man in Reno has been handed a 25-year lesson in cause and effect, delivered in two parts and served consecutively, which is the court’s way of saying they intend for him to have ample time to reflect.

The Washoe County District Attorney’s Office reports that Joel Constantino-Smith received 10 years for battery with a deadly weapon, parole possible after four years, for a shooting inside a Midtown smoke shop. He also received 15 years, parole after six, for trafficking a rather industrious quantity of psilocybin mushrooms, amounting to more than 2,000 doses. The law, being a patient bookkeeper, added the columns and declined to offer a discount.

The affair began, as many regrettable stories do, with a quarrel. The fight broke out in the shop, where a display case suffered the outcome. And what was an example of poor manners graduated into felony arithmetic.

Prosecutors say that after the fists had said their piece, Constantino-Smith introduced a handgun into the conversation and shot the other man twice, once he was already leaving, which is a detail juries tend to remember with clarity. The victim later appeared at a hospital with a gunshot wound and a reluctance to explain it, a habit that seldom improves matters.

Police, however, are known for their curiosity. By the following month, they found Constantino-Smith departing his residence. A search of his car revealed a Glock magazine and eight packages of mushrooms, sufficient to supply a small philosophical movement.

Thus concluded a tidy demonstration of two enduring principles: that violence rarely improves a disagreement, and that conducting an illegal enterprise while being sought for a shooting is what scholars might call “overextending one’s portfolio.”

The sentence ensures the public will not see further contributions of this kind for a long while. It also serves as a reminder that while a free society permits a wide range of pursuits, it draws a firm line at shooting a man and then going into bulk distribution of hallucinations.

The line, once crossed, is not easily uncrossed.