Brittney Griner pleaded guilty to drug charges in a court outside of Moscow on Thursday, her counsel said, in hopes of receiving a lesser sentence.

Brittney Griner, a two-time gold medalist in basketball at the Olympics for the United States, pleaded guilty to drug charges in a court outside of Moscow. According to reports, this is a request for mercy over a prospective prisoner swap between Russia and the United States.

Griner was stopped in February at the Moscow airport when cannabis oil was found in her luggage. At the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, Griner was apprehended for carrying two vape cartridges containing 0.702 grams of cannabis oil. Since then, the WNBA player who regularly plays in the Russia basketball leagues over the summer has been imprisoned on suspicion of drug smuggling.

Are you wondering why a two-time olympian & WNBA star would need to play overseas during the offseason? This is because the average NBA base pay is over $5.4 million, compared to approximately $120,600 in the WNBA.

The US Department of State has declared Griner’s detention to be unfair, and she faces up to 10 years in jail in Russia. Despite the fact that the United States Department of State considers Brittney Griner’s incarceration to be illegitimate and unjust, private prisons in the United States are overloaded with individuals doing time for cannabis-related charges. Allen Russell’s life sentence for 43.7 grams of the therapeutic plant in Mississippi is an example of one of these unjust imprisonments.

Yes, it is unjust how Brittney Griner’s case is being handled, and some may even say it is being used by Russia as leverage against US. However, there is much unjust treatment in the US that lead Griner to be forced to head overseas to keep up a celebrity lifestyle in the United States of America with a salary of just $221,515 per year. In Russia, it is reported Griner’s salary is over $1 million per season.