cannabisnews.com: Medical Marijuana User on 'Quest for Justice' 





Medical Marijuana User on 'Quest for Justice' 
Posted by CN Staff on August 09, 2002 at 10:16:23 PT
By Maline Hazle, Record Searchlight 
Source: Record Searchlight 
Almost three years after his acquittal on a charge of growing marijuana for sale, medicinal marijuana user Richard Levin took the witness stand Wednesday to detail his arrest and treatment at the Shasta County Jail.Levin, 52, and his wife, Kim, 38, both of Redding, are suing Shasta County and two sheriff's deputies for wrongful arrest and, in his case, mistreatment at the Redding jail.
Earlier defendants in the suit included an unnamed jail doctor and Shasta County District Attorney McGregor Scott, but they were dropped from the suit before testimony began late last week.Presiding over the trial is a visiting Superior Court judge from Los Angeles, Carol S. Koppel. She was assigned to the case after most Shasta County Superior Court judges recused themselves.The Levins are asking for attorney's fees, court costs and other unspecified damages."This didn't start out as a quest for money," Richard Levin said as he left the courtroom Wednesday. "It started out as a quest for justice."In Wednesday's testimony Levin told the nine-woman, three-man jury about the physical problems that he said led him to substitute marijuana for a plethora of pain medications and muscle relaxers.He also admitted that he had occasionally used marijuana before the devastating 1993 fall that left him what he said one doctor called a "walking paraplegic."A carpenter and contractor, Levin was working on a job in Chester when he slipped on an icy roof and slid off the edge, falling three stories and landing on his back atop a mound of frozen snow, he testified.The fall broke his back and caused extensive nerve damage, he said.After four surgeries he still is unable to urinate without inserting a catheter, he said. His bowel muscle doesn't work and he relies on "walking and gravity" and digital muscle stimulation. His leg muscles spasm and twitch. He suffers from depression.By 1997, Levin said, he realized he was unlikely ever to return to work again.But the pain continued and the pain prescriptions made him ill, he said. He had dropped almost 30 pounds. Then, in 1995, he tried marijuana and it worked, Levin said."It helped with my appetite, it kept the nausea down . . . and most important, it helped me sleep," he said.Now Levin said the only drug he takes is a pill for hypertension.After California voters passed the Compassionate Use Act in 1996, Levin said he talked to his doctor about permission to use marijuana."He said 'what do I write and how do you fill it,' " Levin recalled. "The law had just passed and nobody knew."But Levin said he read Proposition 215 and learned that it allowed medical marijuana use with written or oral approval from a doctor and he had that oral permission.He began growing marijuana in his back yard, he said, hiding the seedlings in opaque "grow boxes," then transplanting them at a friend's place in Shingletown.Just after 7 a.m. on May 6, 1998, sheriff's deputies Tom Barner and Chester Ashmun, who are named in the lawsuit, and three other deputies pounded on his front door, Levin said.The deputies told him they were looking for stolen or embezzled property and waved two pieces of paper with no judge's signature, Levin said.One of them went to the back yard and within two minutes returned to report that 41 marijuana plants were growing there.They handcuffed Levin, searched the house and found more than a pound of marijuana in his safe.Levin said he bought the packages from a friend in San Diego a few weeks earlier and most of what he bought was still packaged as it was when he received it.He asked the deputies to call his doctor, telling them he used marijuana medicinally, Levin said, but Ashmun replied that he didn't like the law and it hadn't been approved by Shasta County voters.Levin said he asked repeatedly to be allowed to take pain medication and his catheters to jail with him, explaining his condition to every deputy and authority he encountered.He was told he would get what he needed at the jail, he said.But when he talked to an unidentified medical worker at the jail, Levin said, he learned that only vinyl catheters were available. He needs rubber catheters, which he must order specially, he said.Instead of answering his requests for medical care, deputies put him in a solitary cell for more than a day and then refused to give him a pencil to fill out a request for medical aid, calling it a "dangerous object," he said. He got a new form and a pencil later the next day when he was transferred to a regular jail floor, he said.Levin said he was unable to urinate for three days and suffered from impacted bowels and a bleeding rectum by the time he was released from jail three days later.John Hagar, the San Francisco attorney hired by Shasta County to defend against the suit, questioned Levin about several jail forms that listed his medical ailments and one that apparently indicated that Levin received sick call attention on the very day he was booked.But Levin's attorney, William Simpich of Oakland, came back with questions that showed Levin's name was the last name on the sick call list and the time noted on the form was 8 a.m. — more than an hour before Levin was booked.Levin will return to the stand today to answer questions submitted by jurors. Source: Redding Record Searchlight (CA)Author: Maline Hazle, Record SearchlightPublished: Thursday, August 8, 2002 Copyright: 2002 Redding Record Searchlight - E.W. Scripps Contact: letters redding.com Website: http://www.redding.com/ Related Articles:Levins Sue Over Pot Arresthttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread4758.shtmlRedding Police Won't Return Marijuana to Vethttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread4663.shtmlSheriff's Hands Tiedhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread4647.shtml
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Comment #5 posted by FoM on August 09, 2002 at 17:26:24 PT
Another Poll
http://www.cnsnews.com/Viewer Poll Should it be legal to use marijuana for medical purposes? Current Results: 1.) Yes -- 51% 2.) No -- 38% 3.) Depends -- 9% 4.) Not Sure -- 2% 
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Comment #4 posted by FoM on August 09, 2002 at 15:02:51 PT
Hi DdC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm so glad to see you! I've been wondering if you were doing ok. Thanks for checking in. Stay Safe and Peace!
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Comment #3 posted by DdC on August 09, 2002 at 14:59:19 PT
Nothing New NO Comment Hi All Bye All
Hi FoM and all...I just came out of the backwoods of Big Sur, above the clouds (fog, traffic and wingnut politico's. Living on solar power and burning spliffs in peace. Santa Cruz has become a parking lot for San Jose...Nevada's looking good, regardless of the assinine insanity of Bushit's gestapo the times they are a changin.
Hope alls well, cya on the flipside (a few weeks maybe)
Peace, Love and Liberty or the Merchants of D.E.A.th!
DdC
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Comment #2 posted by Industrial Strength on August 09, 2002 at 11:29:17 PT
they need to be horsewhipped
How could any person read this without cringing, without feeling that mix of sickness and rage through your entire body. I hope someone falls down as hard as Mr. Levine for this. I doubt it. They can get away with murder most of the time, never mind jerking around some sick doper.
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Comment #1 posted by E_Johnson on August 09, 2002 at 11:07:47 PT
Someone should be criminally prosecuted here
But Levin's attorney, William Simpich of Oakland, came back with questions that showed Levin's name was the last name on the sick call list and the time noted on the form was 8 a.m. — more than an hour before Levin was booked.How did he get on sick call an hour before he was booked?How did that happen? Who was accountable for that? We do believe in accountability don't we? Is it not both morally wrong and illegal for anyone including the police to falsify police records?If so then someone needs to be held accountable not only in the civil sense but also in the criminal sense. 
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