How judges explain Wiz Khalifa's prison sentence. “It has a major influence on the young people at that event”

The judges explained that for a suspended sentence, Wiz Khalifa “had previously expressed his agreement to perform unpaid work for the benefit of the community”, and “the case file does not contain” such an agreement from the defendant.

The court of appeal said in the reasoning of the decision taken on Thursday that, contrary to the Constanța Court, it considers “the abstract social danger of the crime, reflected in the punishment limits established by the legislator (reduced by a third, under the conditions of art. 396 paragraph 10 of the CPP), the state of danger created for the protected value and which concerns public and consumer health, the circumstances of committing the act and the consequences”.

“The defendant, a music performer, on the stage of a music festival renowned among young people, possessed and consumed in front of a large and predominantly very young audience, a handmade cigarette containing cannabis and, at the same time, possessed a considerable amount of high-risk drugs (18.53 grams of cannabis)”, note the judges of the Constanța Court of Appeal in the reasoning of the decision.

Wiz Khalifa encouraged 'drug use among young people', judges say

The court considers that “exactly this act of consuming such substances in public, by a person who, through the lens of his quality as an international artist and who is known to have a major influence on the young people present at that event, represents an ostentatious conduct that significantly increases the social danger of the crime”.

“Thus, through his privileged position, the defendant sent to the general public a message of normalization of an illicit conduct, encouraging, tacitly, the tolerance of consumption and, implicitly, the consumption of drugs among young people, without being able to hold in his favor the ignorance of the national legislation on prohibited substances, as requested by the respondent”, the motivation also states.

The judges say that “any person, including the foreign citizen, is presumed to know the legal provisions in force in the state in which he is, such an omission being nothing but a consequence of his own mistake in deepening a factual situation or the lack of sincerity in telling the truth, especially in the context in which, at the moment of his detection, the defendant immediately threw away the cigarette he had lit on the stage and stepped on it with the leg”.

In addition, the appeals court noted that the error of law that the defense had invoked during the prosecution was not proven.

“So, all these circumstances in which the act was committed counterbalance the data that positively characterizes the person of the defendant – aged 37, unmarried, with higher education, artist, involved in numerous acts of charity, with no criminal record on the territory of Romania – his act presenting a high social danger as it affects an important value protected by law, especially in the conditions where it was ostentatious (public consumption, on the stage of the music festival) and, thus, intensely mediatized”, wrote the judges of the Constanța Court of Appeal in the motivation of the decision.