And folks using medical marijuana are going to jail...I thought this was the 21st but it's looking more like Grand Inquisitor Torquemada's 15th century....Publication date: 02/03/2003
examiner.com
Medical pot jury may speak out
BY J.K. DINEEN
Of The Examiner Staff
Ed Rosenthal did some things over the weekend that he may not be able to do for a long time: He went to see a matinee with his family and played some ferocious games of Scrabble with his son, Nick.
"We just got back from seeing 'Rabbit Proof Fence,'" his wife, Jane Klein, said from the family's Oakland home. "It's an Australian movie about blindness to human circumstance. The scenery of Australia was beautiful."
Rosenthal's lawyers also had a busy weekend. They spent it writing an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a conviction that could land Rosenthal in federal prison for a minimum of 10 years.
Rosenthal, a 58-year-old medical marijuana advocate who had been deputized to grow cannabis by Oakland city officials, was convicted Friday in federal court for cultivating more than 100 marijuana plants and for maintaining an Oakland building for the purpose of growing pot.
The case has attracted national attention, in part because it pitted the federal government against state and local laws that allow the sick and dying to use marijuana as medicine. Federal law prohibits any use or production of marijuana and Charles Breyer, the judge in the case, repeatedly threw out any testimony or questions dealing with state medical marijuana laws.
Rosenthal faces five years for each charge. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.
After the verdict, several members of the jury expressed regret and anger that they were explicitly forbidden from considering testimony about medical pot and that Oakland city officials who worked with Rosenthal were not allowed to testify.
Juror Marney Craig, 58, a property manager from Novato, said, "it seems like we made a horrible mistake."
"We were made to feel like we had no choice, even though we were residents of a state that has legalized medical marijuana," jury foreman Charles Sackett, a construction contractor from Sebastopol, told reporters.
Sources told The Examiner that several members of the jury are planning to hold a press conference in support of Rosenthal before the sentencing hearing on Tuesday.
"The only way the federal government can get a conviction on a medical marijuana case is to stack the deck to keep the actual issue out," said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. "Can you think of another criminal case where the accused isn't allowed to say why he did it? Ed Rosenthal grew some plants and wasn't allowed to say why."
Mirken predicted that the case may be the "turning point that heads us to the end of the federal ban on medical marijuana."
"His spirits are excellent," said Klein. "He feels his case has opened a national debate and conversation looking not only at medical marijuana but the whole hypocrisy and corruption in the judicial system under Attorney General John Ashcroft." |
