XPost: dc.romance, wa.politics, alt.women.attitudes
XPost: talk.politics.guns

Ed Buck, a longtime fixture of West Hollywood politics, was
convicted Tuesday of charges that he supplied the methamphetamine
that killed two men during “party and play” encounters at his
apartment.

In a gruesome case of an older white man using his power and money
to exploit the poverty and drug addiction of younger Black men, the
jury found Buck guilty of every charge in a nine-count indictment.
Among them were maintaining a drug den, distribution of
methamphetamine and enticement to cross state lines to engage in
prostitution.

Buck, 66, could spend the rest of his life in prison. His two
convictions for supplying the meth that resulted in death each carry
a minimum sentence of 20 years.

The verdict concluded a two-week trial that featured harrowing
testimony by men hired by Buck to show off their bodies in underwear
and get high on crystal meth and the party drug GHB. Excerpts from
Buck’s hundreds of graphic videos and photos of the drugs-and-sex
sessions left spectators wincing at the trial.


It was only in September 2019, after a third Black man nearly died
of an overdose, that Buck was arrested — a delay that fueled angry
protests by activists who accused law enforcement officials of
failing to aggressively investigate a politically influential white
man. Buck, a onetime candidate for West Hollywood’s City Council,
made more than $500,000 in campaign donations over the last couple
of decades, nearly all of it to Democrats.

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