cannabisnews.com: Defendant Claims Jury Set New Medical Pot Standard





Defendant Claims Jury Set New Medical Pot Standard
Posted by CN Staff on November 08, 2002 at 17:48:00 PT
By Terry Vau Dell - Staff Writer
Source: Chico Enterprise-Record 
Michael Farrell's refusal to come down from the roof of his rented Chico home last month until the news media arrived was only the opening salvo in what promises to be a spirited legal challenge over how the state's medical-marijuana law is being interpreted and enforced locally.The Chapmantown man has since been evicted from the residence and is being prosecuted on felony cultivation and sales charges.
Unbowed, he says he's more determined than ever to seek a way for others like him to obtain "safe, legal access" to an herb that not only eases his physical pain but has gotten him off the bottle after years of struggling with alcoholism.Farrell, 35, was detained for questioning one day after a Chico police detective, reportedly looking for a drive-by shooter, saw what turned out to be 18 backyard marijuana plants, some as tall as 17 feet, towering over the roof of Farrell's small Wisconsin Street rental.Farrell claims he was cultivating the pot for himself and a brother and several other medical marijuana patients too sick or scared to grow it themselves.As for the height of the plants, he said he was trying to obtain a "maximum yield" and still stay within what he felt was a legal limit.Authorities in Butte County have warned they will arrest medical marijuana patients with more than six plants.But Farrell argues a "local community standard" of 21 pot plants was established last year when a Superior Court jury acquitted Cohasset resident Mike Rogers of growing that number in the only other medical marijuana case to go to trial so far in Butte County."I believe that I was complying with the local community standard," Farrell maintains.District Attorney Mike Ramsey disagrees.He contends the Cohasset grower's acquittal last summer was the result of an "incorrect ruling by the judge" which allowed Rogers to base his defense partially on "a mistake in law.""There was no standard set whatsoever in Rogers," the district attorney said of the prior medical-pot verdict.Ramsey contends Proposition 215, the 1996 initiative that authorized smoking marijuana in California with a doctor's recommendation, was "specifically vaguely worded.""The challenge is to determine the folks who are using (Proposition) 215 as it's intended and those who are using it as a license to grow marijuana for non-medical purposes," said the district attorney.Butte's six-plant limit is only three less than is allowed in more liberal Berkeley, Ramsey noted.But Farrell and his supporters argue that such "arbitrary" limits "subverts the will of the voters."Patients in one Southern California county now can't possess or grow more than one marijuana plant without risking arrest and those living in Sonoma County are allowed up to 99 plants, notes Farrell."They (law enforcement) don't set the law differently for any other crime in this state, but when it comes to medical marijuana, their attempting to set different laws, depending on where a person lives - that's unconstitutional," charges Gordon Dise, one of Farrell's more vocal supporters.Farrell blames state and local legislators with "abdicating their responsibility" to provide clear guidelines on how medical marijuana patients can lawfully obtain a drug a majority of Californians have approved for medicinal purposes."Isn't it ironic that on Election Day six years after the law was passed by the voters, they are still circumventing the people's will and vote," asserted Dise, who lists his occupation as a "legal strategies consultant."He was among more than a dozen supporters, friends and neighbors accompanying the defendant to court Tuesday.Kandy Mitchell, who lives down the street from Farrell, said, "Mike has helped a lot of people. He's always been law-abiding. I think it's too bad what they're doing to him ... It's unfair and unjust."Farrell ran afoul of the law when Chico police officer Kevin Coulombe reportedly spotted the backyard garden while looking for a drive-by shooting suspect Sept. 17.Posting a copy of his medical recommendation on the back gate did not stop the Butte Interagency Narcotics Task Force from obtaining a search warrant the next day to raid Farrell's property and remove all but five of his plants.In addition to the 17-foot-tall plants in the back yard, officers reported seizing about 10 pounds of drying or processed marijuana inside the residence, along with "packaging material," which BINTF alleged was consistent with sales of the drug.Farrell maintains that after the Chico officer "illegally trespassed on my property," he had started to cut down and process some of the plants, and that was what officers found.If he was in the business of peddling marijuana for profit, the Chico man contends he wasn't a very good salesman.His one-room, $175-a-month bungalow didn't even contain a refrigerator or stove, and Farrell says he is $700 in arrears to PG&E.Since the well-publicized pot raid, Farrell has been evicted from the residence where he and his wife had lived about five years, but the landlord is permitting him to remain on the property in a friend's motor home until the couple can remove their belongings.He is due back in court Dec. 3 to enter a plea to the felony cultivation and sales charges.If and when the case goes to trial, Farrell said he will produce documents signed by some 20 other medical-marijuana patients, designating him as their "primary caregiver."He says he tried to show those documents to the drug agents during last month's bust, but they refused to examine them."I was simply trying to help others ... who have black thumbs, or are too sick or too afraid to grow it (marijuana) themselves," Farrell says.Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA)Author: Terry Vau Dell - Staff WriterPublished: Friday, November 08, 2002 Copyright: 2002 The Media News GroupContact: letters chicoer.comWebsite: http://www.chicoer.com/Medicinal Cannabis Research Linkshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/research.htmDoctor's Recommendation No Match for Warrant http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread14176.shtml
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