Not to dispute any of your observations about this guy, I have no reason to doubt he's an academic dork, but out of curiosity I looked up the drug episode at that Wikepedia link.
ARS
Drug charges
In 1967, after an involved police surveillance operation, Fiedler was arrested on the charge of maintaining premises where banned substances were being used. After having put his house under surveillance for six weeks, the narcotics squad obtained a search warrant. With only one day left in the warrant, the police raided the house and "found" small quantities of marijana and hashish. Marsha Van der Voort later testified under oath that she had planted the illegal substances just prior to the entrance of the police. Even though they had no direct evidence that Fiedler himself had used them, the evidence was sufficient for an arrest. The scandal was disastrous for Fiedler; his home insurance was canceled by two different providers, and the University of Amsterdam reversed their decision to have him as a Fulbright lecturer. While the legal case was ongoing, Fiedler managed to secure a position as visiting professor in the University of Sussex.
Fiedler wrote Being Busted (released in 1969 and dedicated to his first grandson, Seth) about this experience (and his life as a whole); sales of the book helped him to pay his increasing legal expenses. In a trial on April 9, 1970, Fiedler was found guilty. After multiple appeals, the drug conviction was finally reversed in 1972.
In the same year, Fiedler also divorced his wife to whom he had been married for 33 years. A year later, he married Sally Smith Anderson. |
