Pubdate: Wed, 01 Aug 2012
Source: Chronicle Herald (CN NS)
Copyright: 2012 The Halifax Herald Limited
Contact:  http://thechronicleherald.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/180
Author: Beverley Ware

MARIJUANA PROPONENT LOSES WEAPONS BID

A Cumberland County libertarian who supports the use of marijuana to 
fight cancer has lost his bid to have weapons charges against him stayed.

Daren Wayne McCormick adheres to the Phoenix Tears and the 
Freeman-on-the-Land movements.

A jury found McCormick guilty of threatening to kill police officers 
on March 31, 2011, and of weapons offences after an Amherst search 
the next day. He was arrested in town with a loaded revolver in a 
holster on his hip, hidden under his long coat.

McCormick was sentenced in April to three years in prison.

But he applied to have the charges stayed, claiming police and the 
prosecutor unfairly targeted members of his group, that police 
entrapped him and that the prosecutor failed to provide full 
disclosure of its case.

"I emphatically reject the proposition that there was any misconduct 
by the police or the prosecution. I will not order a stay," Justice 
Gerald Moir of Nova Scotia Supreme Court in Amherst ruled in a 
decision released Tuesday.

Moir heard McCormick's application after his jury trial.

Moir said this case begins with McCormick's friend, Dean Simpson, 
swearing a private prosecution against police officers and a 
prosecutor who had been involved in his trial on drug charges.

Simpson alleged "the prosecutor had committed offences against the 
administration of justice" and that two officers had committed 
perjury at his trial.

McCormick was with Simpson when he filed those papers and was 
"vehement and emphatic" as he threatened to kill the police officers.

Another friend who was with them proposed that they, as Freeman, 
should search police officers' homes.

RCMP officers met that evening and decided McCormick presented a 
serious risk to the officers.

"No reasonable person can gainsay that conclusion," the justice said.

Police charged McCormick with making a threat and were granted a 
search warrant.

One officer named in Simpson's private prosecution was involved in 
the evening meeting at which senior officers decided to arrest 
McCormick the next day, and McCormick said that is wrong.

But Moir ruled that "no objective person with the information the 
police had could conclude other than they did, that he posed a danger."

"Indeed, the conclusion was verified by the revolver."

Rick Simpson of Sackville, N.B., testified that adherents to his 
Phoenix Tears movement, which says cannabis oil fights cancer, have 
been subjected to searches and arrests.

"I have been given scholarly works showing that extracts of cannabis 
can be effective against some forms of cancer," Moir wrote. "In light 
of the medical, historic, and spiritual uses of cannabis, members of 
Phoenix Tears are indignant that they have been the subjects of 
searches and prosecutions for the cultivation of marijuana, 
manufacture of the oil, and distribution."

"For the members of the group, this state of affairs constitutes 
nothing short of oppression. Indignation is understandable. The 
charge of oppression is not," Muir wrote, saying the police and 
prosecutor are responsible for enforcing the law.

However, McCormick adheres to the Freeman-on-the-Land movement, which 
maintains individuals can opt out of their "social contract" with government.

"They say that an individual who withdraws from the social contract 
is beyond the jurisdiction of the state, and the courts, to enforce 
statute law. That is patently false," Moir ruled.

"What makes the teaching not just false, but also wrongful, is that 
it encourages adherents to believe that they are above statute law. 
That belief can, and in this case did, undermine the security of the 
adherent and of everyone within firing range of him."

Moir said the police conducted their investigation "well and fairly," 
and he upheld the convictions against McCormick.
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