Marijuana arrests in California are increasing faster than the nationwide rate, and African Americans are being booked for pot-related crimes much more often than whites, a new report says. But despite the rise in arrests and in the seizure of marijuana plants, use of pot in California has increased slightly, said the report, part of a nationwide study released Thursday by a Virginia researcher. In both California and the United States as a whole, "we keep arresting more and more people, but it's not having a deterrent effect," said Jon Gettman, an adjunct assistant professor of criminal justice at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Va. [continues 349 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- Medical marijuana advocates in California said the Obama administration's announcement of new guidelines for pot prosecutions Monday contained some hopeful signs, but lacked the specifics needed to keep patients and their suppliers out of court. "It's an extremely welcome rhetorical de-escalation of the federal government's long-standing war on medical marijuana patients," said Stephen Gutwillig, state director of the Drug Policy Alliance. Dale Gieringer, California coordinator of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, said the administration's advice to U.S. attorneys that they respect state law - such as California's Proposition 215, the 1996 measure legalizing medicinal use of the drug - was encouraging. [continues 544 words]
The federal court panel that ordered California last month to reduce the population of its overcrowded prisons by 40,000 denied Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's request Thursday to put the planning process on hold while the state appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court. A spokeswoman for Schwarzenegger said the governor would ask the high court today to suspend the panel's orders during the appeal. At stake is whether the three-judge panel, based in San Francisco, has the authority to require the state to lower the inmate population - - by sending fewer people to prison and releasing some to local custody or monitoring - as a remedy for shoddy medical care. [continues 240 words]
Legalizing marijuana in California could generate $1.4 billion a year for the cash-starved state treasury, according to the state Board of Equalization. It's supported by 56 percent of the public, according to a Field Poll in April. But it's not a proposal that any of the five leading candidates for governor is willing to embrace. "If the whole society starts getting stoned, we're going to be even less competitive," Democratic Attorney General Jerry Brown - who as governor signed a 1975 law reducing possession of small amounts of pot to a $100 misdemeanor - said on a recent radio show. [continues 948 words]
Medical marijuana patients and growers can sue police for illegally raiding their property and destroying their plants, a state appeals court ruled Wednesday. The 2-1 decision by the Third District Court of Appeal in Sacramento was the first in the state to allow a patient or grower to sue claiming that their rights to cultivate and use medical marijuana have been violated. Those rights are protected by state law but banned by federal law. Officials in Butte County, where the case arose, argued that patients and suppliers can invoke the medical marijuana law only as a defense to criminal charges, not to sue for damages. The court's dissenting justice said no one is entitled to compensation for the destruction of a drug banned under federal law. [continues 247 words]
Solano County joined the rest of the Bay Area in authorizing identification cards for medical marijuana users Tuesday when supervisors voted to let patients apply for documents that protect them from arrest for carrying small amounts of the drug with their doctor's approval. The 3-2 vote followed the U.S. Supreme Court's refusal last month to hear a lawsuit by San Diego and San Bernardino counties that challenged both the law that required identification cards and the 1996 ballot measure, Proposition 215, that made California the first state to approve marijuana for medical use. [continues 176 words]
A federal judge sentenced the owner of a Central California medical marijuana dispensary to a year and a day in prison Thursday, spurning the Obama administration's push to give the defendant five years imprisonment in a test case of new federal policies toward state pot laws. Charles Lynch's case was the first to reach court after Attorney General Eric Holder announced in March that the administration would target only traffickers who violated both state and federal drug laws in California and 12 other states that allow the medical use of marijuana. The Justice Department said Lynch was properly convicted and shouldn't get leniency, despite his insistence that he complied with state law. [continues 542 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- California's medical marijuana law survived its most serious legal challenge Monday as the U.S. Supreme Court denied appeals by two counties that argued they were being forced to condone violations of federal drug laws. The justices, without comment, denied a hearing to officials from San Diego and San Bernardino counties who challenged Proposition 215, an initiative approved by state voters in 1996 that became a model for laws in 12 other states. It allows patients to use marijuana for medical conditions with their doctor's recommendation. [continues 382 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- A medical-marijuana advocate who grew 32,000 plants on his land in Lake County was sentenced to 10 years in prison Monday by a federal judge who criticized the law she was applying. "I think that amount of time is excessive, but it's not up to me," U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel said in sentencing Charles "Eddy" Lepp in a San Francisco courtroom crowded with his supporters. Patel gave Lepp until July 6 to report to prison and said she would reconsider the sentence if Congress changed the law, which requires a 10-year term for growing at least 1,000 marijuana plants. [continues 218 words]
President Obama has called for repealing the ban on federal funding for anti-AIDS programs that supply clean needles to drug users. His drug policy director supported such a program when he was Seattle's police chief. And last week, Obama's nominee to head the Food and Drug Administration won praise in a Senate committee for her leadership on needle exchange. So advocates of the programs in the Bay Area and elsewhere were surprised and dismayed when Obama's budget for 2009-10 proposed to continue the funding prohibition that dates from the 1980s. [continues 644 words]
When California became the first state to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, the federal government responded by closing down pot clubs, prosecuting suppliers, threatening doctors who recommended the drug, and successfully battling co-ops and patients in cases that reached the U.S. Supreme Court. So Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, author of a bill that would make California the first state to legalize personal use of marijuana, is going out of his way to avoid a fight with the feds. [continues 977 words]
REDDING -- A Northern California high school district's drug testing of students taking part in competitive, nonathletic activities - such as the chess club, math team or school band - is an unjustified invasion of privacy, a judge ruled Wednesday in the first case of its kind in the state. The Shasta Union High School District presented no evidence that drug use was more likely or more dangerous for those students than for others, said Judge Monica Marlow of Shasta County Superior Court. [continues 446 words]
The former owner of a San Francisco medical marijuana dispensary that was raided by federal agents in 2002 has agreed to plead guilty to drug and tax charges and hopes to avoid a prison sentence, his lawyer said Thursday. Kenneth Hayes, 41, of Petaluma will admit at a hearing Wednesday that he maintained a building where marijuana was distributed and filed a false tax return, said attorney William Panzer. The plea agreement came after Panzer tried to contact Attorney General Eric Holder and seek dismissal of the case under the Obama administration's new policy. [continues 446 words]
The Obama administration says it wants the owner of a Central California medical marijuana dispensary to be sentenced to at least five years in prison, despite his assertion that he was following state law. Responding to federal judge's query about the case of Charles Lynch, former operator of Central Coast Compassionate Caregivers in Morro Bay (San Luis Obispo County), a Justice Department official said Lynch's prosecution and conviction were "entirely consistent with the policies of (the department) and with public statements made by the attorney general," Eric Holder. [continues 527 words]
A medical marijuana advocacy group and the Obama administration argued Tuesday before a federal appeals court in San Francisco over a private citizen's right to force the government to correct alleged misstatements - in this case, about the therapeutic properties of pot. Americans for Safe Access filed suit in San Francisco two years ago under the Information Quality Act, a federal law that allows members of the public to "seek and obtain correction" of false or misleading government information that affects them. [continues 367 words]
The owners of a medical marijuana dispensary near Hayward are looking at 15 years in federal prison on charges that might not get them arrested today. The owner of a former Hayward pot co-op faces similar charges that carry at least a five-year term. They're among as many as two dozen defendants in California who - according to advocacy groups and defense lawyers - are guilty of nothing more than bad timing. They were charged with growing or distributing marijuana during the administration of President George W. Bush, when federal agents regularly raided pot clubs and suppliers. The administration argued, and federal courts agreed, that California law allowing medical marijuana was no defense to charges of violating the federal ban on the drug. [continues 874 words]
U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is sending strong signals that President Obama - who as a candidate said states should be allowed to make their own rules on medical marijuana - will end raids on pot dispensaries in California. Asked at a Washington news conference Wednesday about Drug Enforcement Administration raids in California since Obama took office last month, Holder said the administration has changed its policy. "What the president said during the campaign, you'll be surprised to know, will be consistent with what we'll be doing here in law enforcement," he said. "What he said during the campaign is now American policy." [continues 396 words]
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal Monday by a California city that asked the justices to overturn a lower court ruling requiring police to return medical marijuana that they seize from a patient. In the November 2007 ruling, a state appeals court said California's medical marijuana law entitles patients to recover pot wrongfully seized by police. The city of Garden Grove (Orange County), joined by the California Narcotics Officers Association, argued that returning marijuana to a user would violate federal law, which strictly bans marijuana possession and distribution. The state Supreme Court refused to review the case earlier this year, and the nation's high court denied review Monday without comment. [continues 383 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- Someone who supplies marijuana to a patient who has a doctor's approval for it can be prosecuted for dealing drugs, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday in a narrow interpretation of California's medical marijuana law. Advocates on both sides of the case agreed that the unanimous ruling will encourage Californians to obtain medical marijuana from patient cooperatives, which are authorized by a 2003 state law, rather than from an individual supplier. "Ideally, it (the ruling) won't have a tremendous effect," said Joseph Elford, a lawyer for Americans for Safe Access, a pro-medical marijuana group. "Patients will now increasingly get their medication through collectives and cooperatives." [continues 551 words]
MERCED -- A Merced County woman with back and neck pain and a clean 37-year driving record is the latest California medical marijuana patient to have her driver's license yanked by the Department of Motor Vehicles, says an advocacy group that has sued on her behalf. The voters who passed Proposition 215 in 1996, allowing Californians to use marijuana for medical purposes with their doctor's approval, "did not intend for the DMV to have authority to strip medical marijuana patients of their licenses," Joe Elford, a lawyer for Americans for Safe Access, said Thursday. [continues 376 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- The state Supreme Court turned back a challenge to California's medical marijuana law Thursday from two counties that said they were being forced to condone federal drug-law violations by state-approved pot users. San Diego and San Bernardino county officials had sued to overturn Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that legalized medical marijuana, and a more recent law that required them to issue identification cards to users who had a doctor's recommendation. The justices unanimously denied review of an appellate decision in July that concluded California was free to decide whether to punish drug users under its own laws, despite the federal ban on marijuana. [continues 313 words]
SACRAMENTO -- Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has vetoed a bill sponsored by medical marijuana advocates that would have protected most employees from being fired for testing positive for pot that they used outside the workplace with their doctor's approval. The measure, AB2279 by Assemblyman Mark Leno, D-San Francisco, would have overturned a state Supreme Court ruling in January that allowed employers to punish workers for using medical marijuana that was legalized by a state ballot measure in 1996. Under Leno's measure, the only workers who could have been fired for using medical marijuana would have been those in safety-related or law-enforcement jobs. [continues 325 words]
A federal judge breathed new life Wednesday into medical marijuana advocates' effort to ward off the federal crackdown on medical pot in California, saying enforcement of U.S. drug laws can go too far if it seeks to interfere with state authority. U.S. District Judge Jeremy Fogel of San Jose denied a Bush administration request to dismiss a lawsuit by Santa Cruz city and county officials and members of a medical marijuana collective whose drugs were seized by federal agents in a 2002 raid. [continues 442 words]
The state Supreme Court returned to the medical marijuana wars Wednesday, agreeing to decide the validity of a law that shields doctor-approved pot users from arrest for possessing up to eight ounces of dried marijuana or growing six plants. The justices voted unanimously to review the issue after a prosecution appeal of a lower-court ruling in May. In that ruling, an appellate court found the 2003 law conflicted with California's 1996 medical marijuana initiative, which allows possession of an amount of marijuana "reasonably related to the patient's current medical needs," but did not set specific limits. [continues 475 words]
A state appeals court upheld California's 12-year-old medical marijuana law Thursday, rejecting two counties' arguments that allowing patients to use the drug with their doctor's approval condones violations of federal narcotics laws. The Fourth District Court of Appeal in San Diego dismissed challenges by San Diego and San Bernardino counties, which objected both to the 1996 marijuana initiative and to recent legislation requiring counties to issue identification cards to users of medical pot. The cards protect their holders from arrest by state or local police for possessing small amounts of marijuana. [continues 579 words]
San Francisco -- Two Bay Area congresswomen joined a half-dozen fellow House members Wednesday in proposing to end federal prosecution for marijuana possession. The proposal, unveiled at a Washington, D.C., news conference, would eliminate federal criminal penalties for adults who possess up to 100 grams of marijuana - about 3.5 ounces - or give an ounce of pot to someone else without charge. While the government shouldn't encourage marijuana use, it should allow people to "make their own choices as long as they are not impinging on the rights, freedom or property of others," said Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass., lead author of the bill, HR 5843. [continues 220 words]
Ever since California voters became the first in the nation to legalize medical marijuana in 1996, the state has faced unyielding opposition from the federal government, which insists it has the power to prohibit a drug it considers useless and dangerous. That could all change with the next presidential election. As the candidates prepare for a May 20 primary in Oregon, one of 12 states with a California-style law, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has become an increasingly firm advocate of ending federal intervention and letting states make their own rules when it comes to medical marijuana. [continues 1130 words]
WASHINGTON -- A congressional leader, citing complaints from Bay Area mayors and lawmakers, wants the Drug Enforcement Administration to explain its increased use of "paramilitary-style enforcement raids" and property forfeiture orders against medical marijuana patients and suppliers in California. With drug trafficking and violence from international cartels on the rise, "do you think the DEA's limited resources are best utilized conducting enforcement raids on individuals and their caregivers who are conducting themselves legally under California law?" House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., said in a letter to the agency. [continues 272 words]
SAN FRANCISCO - A city can't require all job applicants to be tested for narcotics and must instead show why drug use in a particular job would be dangerous, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday. The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled against the city of Woodburn, Ore., which argued it was entitled to maintain a drug-free workplace by requiring job candidates to be screened for drugs and alcohol. The city was sued by Janet Lanier, whose job offer as a part-time page at the city library was withdrawn in 2004 when she refused a drug and alcohol test. A federal judge ruled the policy unconstitutional and awarded Lanier $12,400 in damages and $44,000 in legal fees, her lawyer said. [continues 236 words]
When Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her campaign for the Senate in 2000, she declared - emphatically, according to an interviewer - that she supported the death penalty. When Barack Obama first ran for the Illinois state Senate in 1996, he said in a campaign questionnaire that he opposed capital punishment. Their positions seemed to reflect their political roots - Clinton, the moderate "New Democrat," a term she has used to describe herself; Obama, the insurgent who got his start as a community organizer. But times change, and so do candidates, particularly on issues that loom as potential minefields for Democrats with presidential ambitions. It's a less delicate topic for Republicans, whose leading candidates - with the exception of maverick Rep. Ron Paul - espouse time-tested, nearly identical law-and-order platforms. [continues 1376 words]
SAN FRANCISCO -- The state Supreme Court poked another hole in California's medical marijuana law Thursday, ruling that the voter-approved measure doesn't protect users from being fired for testing positive for the drug at work. In a 5-2 decision, the court said the 1996 initiative, Proposition 215, exempted medical marijuana patients and their caregivers from state prosecution, but didn't limit an employer's authority to fire workers for violating federal drug laws. "We have no reason to conclude the voters intended to speak so broadly, and in a context so far removed from the criminal law, as to require employers to accommodate marijuana use," Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar said in the majority opinion. [continues 723 words]
Police can't enter a home without a warrant just because they see someone inside smoking marijuana, a state appeals court ruled Friday. In overturning a Pacifica man's conviction, the state Court of Appeal in San Francisco said officers may enter someone's home to preserve evidence of a crime - but only if the crime is punishable by jail or prison. Under a 1975 California law, the court noted, possession of less than an ounce of marijuana is a misdemeanor carrying a fine of as much as $100, with no jail time even for a repeat offense. That means police who see someone smoking can enter only if they have the resident's permission or a warrant from a judge, the court said. [continues 379 words]
A person who carries a small amount of marijuana with a doctor's note allowing medical use can't be convicted of dealing the drug just because police thought he was a dealer, a state appeals court ruled Friday. In overturning an Orange County man's conviction for possessing marijuana for sale, the Fourth District Court of Appeal in Santa Ana said the prosecutor needed more evidence of sales than the opinion of a sheriff's deputy who specialized in investigating narcotics dealers. [continues 374 words]
A divided federal appeals court on Thursday upheld a law requiring all convicted federal felons to provide DNA samples for a database available to any police agency in the nation. The law, passed by Congress in 2004, expanded a previous statute in 2000 that covered only prisoners and parolees who had been convicted of violent crimes in federal court. In a 2-1 ruling, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said requiring DNA from all felons would aid law enforcement agencies without intruding seriously into the privacy of drug offenders and other nonviolent criminals. [continues 323 words]
Police who confiscate medical marijuana must give it back when drug charges against the user are dismissed, a state appeals court has ruled in a case that could settle a hotly disputed issue of conflicting state and federal drug laws. Statewide police and prosecutors' organizations and 16 city governments from around California joined officials of the Orange County community of Garden Grove in arguing that the court-ordered return of a patient's pot supply would condone drug use, interfere with federal enforcement and even expose police to possible federal prosecution for distributing marijuana or aiding in its use. [continues 678 words]
Sacramento -- A divided California Supreme Court grappled Tuesday with the application of the state's medical marijuana law in the workplace, debating whether an employee who uses pot to cope with pain or illness can be fired for violating federal drug laws. The case of Gary Ross, a 45-year-old computer technician fired by a small Sacramento firm for failing a drug test, is the latest in a series of federal-state conflicts since California voters approved Proposition 215 in 1996, legalizing the medical use of marijuana if a doctor recommends it. At least 11 states have since adopted similar laws. [continues 554 words]
Privacy Rules Don't Apply to Internet Messages, Court Says Federal agents do not need a search warrant to monitor a suspect's computer use and determine the e-mail addresses and Web pages the suspect is contacting, a federal appeals court ruled Friday. In a drug case from San Diego County, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco likened computer surveillance to the "pen register" devices that officers use to pinpoint the phone numbers a suspect dials, without listening to the phone calls themselves. [continues 320 words]
Marijuana advocate Ed Rosenthal lectured a federal judge Friday before being sentenced to a day in jail -- which he has already served -- for growing pot plants for medicinal use. "I am proud of what I did. I know I have done nothing wrong," Rosenthal told U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer. Referring to the two juries that convicted him of violating federal drug laws without hearing evidence that the marijuana was intended for medical use, Rosenthal said, "You have now hurt 24 jurors. ... You left them feeling guilty about their unwitting role in these faux trials." [continues 377 words]
Smoke a joint in Alabama or Oregon, and you can permanently lose the right to adopt a child. Smoke one in Oklahoma, and you're ineligible ever to be a foster parent. Light up in Utah, and get a lifelong eviction notice from public housing. Grow a marijuana plant in any one of a dozen states, including California, and you're permanently barred from receiving welfare or food stamps. Those laws and others are detailed in the first nationwide study of the consequences of marijuana convictions, in areas ranging from family life to voting and jury service. Researchers headed by a Northern California lawyer said they had found a hodgepodge of state and federal restrictions that seemed to conflict with the overall trend of reduced criminal penalties for pot. [continues 727 words]
Tigger or Other Such Decoration OK As Student Expression As long as they're not carrying messages about "bong hits 4 Jesus," students have the right to express themselves in the clothing they wear to school, whether it includes a cancer awareness pin or embroidery of Tigger on their socks, a Napa County judge has ruled in halting enforcement of a school's dress code. For the past nine years, Redwood Middle School in Napa has required students' clothing and backpacks to be entirely solid colors and has banned pictures, words, symbols or patterns -- except the school logo - -- as well as jeans or "denim-looking" clothes. [continues 498 words]
'Bong' Case Limits Student Speech The U.S. Supreme Court tightened limits on student speech Monday, allowing schools to punish youths for statements that might promote drug use -- a ruling that gives new prominence to laws in California and a handful of other states that provide protections for expression on campus. The 5-3 decision came on a day when the court's conservative majority flexed its muscles with rulings that favored corporate and union political donors, developers and the Bush administration's efforts to steer federal money for social services to religious groups. The final rulings of the 2006-2007 term, including one on whether school districts can consider students' race in integration plans, are scheduled to be released Thursday. [continues 887 words]
Though Guilty Again, No Jail for Rosenthal Ed Rosenthal was a free man, but not a happy one, after a jury convicted him Wednesday for a second time of violating federal drug laws by growing marijuana for medical patients. Rosenthal, 62, of Oakland -- an authority on cannabis cultivation, former columnist for High Times magazine and longtime advocate of legalizing marijuana -- was fuming that the same federal judge who declined to imprison him had also refused to let him argue to jurors that his purpose was healing people, not dealing drugs. [continues 475 words]
Police in Rohnert Park who ripped open a teddy bear inside a sealed package and found it stuffed with marijuana can't justify their no-warrant search on the grounds that the sender used a phony name, a state appeals court has ruled. The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco agreed Tuesday with a Sonoma County judge who dismissed drug charges against Gilberto Pereira after ruling the search illegal. The court rejected a prosecution argument that Pereira had abandoned his right to keep the contents of his mail private by using a pseudonym on the return address when he shipped the bear. [continues 240 words]
San Francisco Pot Advocate's New Trial Begins The lawyer for marijuana advocate Ed Rosenthal pushed as far as she could Tuesday against a judge's edict to keep the subject of medical marijuana out of his retrial on federal cultivation charges, trying to let jurors know that Rosenthal was growing cannabis for sick patients. Defense attorney Shari Greenberger began her opening statement in federal court in San Francisco by addressing jurors as "fellow Californians,'' a less-than-subtle reminder that state voters legalized marijuana for medical use in 1996. She later acknowledged that "this is a federal case brought by the federal government. There are certain areas where we cannot go.'' Greenberger said, "Mr. Rosenthal is a scientist and the government will attempt to suppress his ideas. ... For the past 40 years, my client, Ed Rosenthal, has been a proponent of marijuana advocacy and reform, and that is why we are here.'' Her opening statement drew repeated objections from the prosecution, and U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer told the jurors they were there to decide whether Rosenthal was guilty of growing marijuana, not to draw conclusions about why the government was prosecuting him. For his part, Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan described the case as a straightforward prosecution for marijuana cultivation. He reminded the jurors in his opening statement that they had promised to apply the law according to Breyer's instructions. Rosenthal, 62, an authority on marijuana cultivation and writer of numerous books and magazine articles on the subject, was arrested in 2002 and charged with growing thousands of plants in an Oakland warehouse for patients at a San Francisco dispensary. He was convicted in 2003 but sentenced by Breyer to only one day in jail, which he had already served. [continues 283 words]
One Case Dropped; Ruling Bars Defense Claim In Second A medical marijuana patient whose challenge to federal drug laws reached the U.S. Supreme Court dropped her long-running legal case Thursday, while in another case a noted pot advocate lost an attempt to introduce evidence about the medicinal value of cannabis at his retrial on cultivation charges. The separate developments represented victories for federal prosecutors who have sought to override California's 1996 medical marijuana initiative in federal court. Although the law, which allows patients to use the drug with their doctor's recommendation, remains in effect, patients and suppliers can be prosecuted under federal law that recognizes no legitimate use for marijuana. [continues 482 words]
Federal prosecutors brushed off a judge's suggestion that they not retry a prominent marijuana advocate on cultivation charges and said Friday they would press ahead, even though he cannot be sent to prison if he is convicted. Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan made the announcement at a hearing in San Francisco before U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer, who presided over the first trial of 62-year-old Ed Rosenthal of Oakland. When Bevan said last month that the government intended to retry the self-described "guru of ganja," Breyer urged him to reconsider, suggesting that federal resources might be used more productively in prosecutions that result in imprisonment. [continues 496 words]
Conviction Upheld in Napa County Case California's medical marijuana law doesn't protect card-carrying patients from being stopped and searched by police who detect the presence of the drug, a state appeals court ruled Thursday. The 1996 initiative legalizing medical marijuana, Proposition 215, shields patients only from being convicted of growing or possessing cannabis for their health, and does not prevent officers from conducting their usual investigation when they have evidence of a crime, said the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco. [continues 294 words]
A federal prosecutor said Friday that he plans to retry a prominent marijuana advocate on cultivation charges even though the man faces no punishment if convicted -- a decision the trial judge suggested he reconsider. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer postponed Ed Rosenthal's retrial, which was to start Monday, and gave prosecutors a month to decide whether to appeal his dismissal of charges of tax evasion and money laundering, the only charges that carried possible prison sentences. In papers filed before the hearing, Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan said the government wouldn't drop the case even if it fails to reinstate the dismissed charges, or decides not to appeal Breyer's dismissal order. [continues 196 words]
A federal appeals court upheld the U.S. government's authority Wednesday to prosecute medical marijuana patients in California, but left open the possibility that a gravely ill patient could defend against criminal charges by showing that marijuana was her only shield against excruciating pain or death. Ruling in a case that reached the Supreme Court two years ago, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected an Oakland woman's last constitutional challenge to the use of federal drug laws against medical marijuana patients -- that it violates the fundamental right to preserve one's life and be free of severe pain. [continues 611 words]
Judge Calls Charges Against Oakland Man Vindictive -- Second Trial Seen As Unlikely The federal government's five-year effort to throw one of the nation's most prominent advocates of marijuana in prison appears to be all but dead after a judge ruled that prosecutors had vindictively piled on charges against the Oakland man after he successfully appealed his pot-growing convictions. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer ruled Wednesday that prosecutors had illegally retaliated against Ed Rosenthal, 62, last fall when they added tax-evasion and money-laundering charges to his previous indictment for growing marijuana for medical patients. [continues 831 words]
