cannabisnews.com: Defense Gets Key Ruling in Pot Trial





Defense Gets Key Ruling in Pot Trial
Posted by CN Staff on January 30, 2003 at 10:19:07 PT
By J.K. Dineen of The Examiner Staff
Source: San Francisco Examiner
 In a surprising development, the federal judge presiding over the trial of medical marijuana guru Ed Rosenthal has decided to allow Alameda County Supervisor Nate Miley to testify on the pot advocate's behalf.  Miley, who became a supervisor in 2000, is expected to say that while a member of the Oakland City Council, he took a tour of the Mandela Parkway building Rosenthal allegedly used to grow marijuana. Miley is expected to testify that he worked closely with Rosenthal on the implementation of Proposition 215, which legalized medical marajuana in California.
Judge Charles Breyer at first said he would not allow Miley to take the stand, but changed his mind Wednesday after Assistant U.S. Attorney George Bevan suggested Rosenthal had tried to hide his marijuana crop.  Bevan said Rosenthal "did not publicize at all, outside of an inside group on the Oakland City Council, what he was doing."   "Mr. Rosenthal has even written a book on various ways to conceal the growing of marijuana from police. I've read it," said Bevan, referring to the book "Ask Ed's Marijuana Law: Don't Get Busted."  Bevan's comments, which took place after the jury had been dismissed for the day Wednesday, could be seen as a major opportunity for defense lawyers, who have been eager to introduce into the trial the idea that Rosenthal was openly growing marijuana in accordance with state medical marijuana laws.  Rosenthal had an Oakland business permit for the building and had discussed the facility with various city officials, including Miley and fire inspectors.  Breyer warned prosecutors that they would be opening a can of worms trying to prove that Rosenthal was running a clandestine operation "with a consciousness of guilt."  "You can't have it both ways, Mr. Bevan," said the bow-tied judge, whose brother is Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. "If you're going to argue that Mr. Rosenthal took steps to conceal the activities, they would be entitled to bring in evidence that he did not do so."  Miley is one of many character witnesses the defense had hoped to call up. When defense attorney Robert V. Eye first said he hoped to call Miley to address Rosenthal's efforts to reform marijuana laws, Breyer lashed out at him.  "I don't doubt for a minute that Mr. Rosenthal believes strongly in that, but I don't believe it's a pertinent character trait," said Breyer. "You could be of good character and want to reform marijuana laws or you could be of bad character and want to reform marijuana laws."   But the judge's tone changed with Bevan's assertion that Rosenthal had acted surreptitiously.   "If what you are going to do is prove consciousness of guilt, I would allow them to rebut," he said.Source: San Francisco Examiner (CA)Author: J.K. Dineen of The Examiner StaffPublished: January 30, 2003Copyright: 2003 San Francisco ExaminerContact: letters sfexaminer.comWebsite: http://www.examiner.com/Related Articles & Web Sites:Green-Aid.comhttp://www.green-aid.com Americans For Safe Access http://www.safeaccessnow.orgEd Rosenthal's Trial Pictures & Articleshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/trialpics.htmPot Trial Focus on DEA Agenthttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15302.shtmlPot Advocate Helps Fedshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15276.shtmlPot-Possession Trial Tests Lawhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15252.shtml
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Comment #7 posted by The GCW on January 30, 2003 at 15:57:15 PT
War mongers make mistake...
(at least they did not kill anyone.)BIG 'POT' STASH WAS ONLY HAY http://www.mapinc.org/ccnews/v03/n117/a09.htmlBIG 'POT' STASH WAS ONLY HAY Had it actually been marijuana, the three wise men might be viewed in a whole new light. What Chicago police thought was more than $660,000 worth of dope in a pickup truck last month turned out to be hay from a Roman Catholic church's nativity scene. Prosecutors dropped felony drug charges Thursday against Jose Galvan, 43, and his co-worker, Juan Luna, 21, after crime lab tests confirmed the mistake, said Jerry Lawrence, spokesman for the Cook County state's attorney's office. The two remained at Cook County Jail as federal immigration officials checked to see if they are in the country legally. Also, Luna will appear in court Jan. 28 on an unrelated felony marijuana delivery charge he thought had been dismissed, said attorney Peter Vilkelis, who is representing both men. Chicago police got an anonymous tip on Dec. 30 that a major marijuana stash was being moved in a truck that looked like the one Galvan was driving. After two officers pulled over Galvan and Luna in the 3800 block of North Pulaski, two small plastic bags with crushed green plants fell out of the cab, police spokesman Pat Camden said. Police tests in the field showed those plants to be marijuana. Camden did not know if the about 220 pounds worth of plants beneath the truck's liner were field-tested. Galvan and Luna had been planning to haul the hay from St. Wenceslaus Roman Catholic Church, where they are parishioners, back to a far south suburban horse farm where a friend had loaned it to them, Vilkelis said. They were coming home from work in Skokie when they were arrested. "Somebody must have seen these two big bales, saw the men were Mexican and made an assumption," Vilkelis said. "These guys were treated like they were cartel drug traffickers," he added. "Once we finally secure their release, we will be talking to a civil rights lawyer." 
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Comment #6 posted by FoM on January 30, 2003 at 15:29:11 PT
The GCW
Here's an article from the Rocky Mountain News too.http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread15325.shtml
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Comment #5 posted by The GCW on January 30, 2003 at 15:24:30 PT
To be American should require You understand this.
Drug war won't bring even moral victories http://www.denverpost.com/Stories/0,1413,36%257E53%257E1145115,00.htmlhttp://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v03/n150/a05.html?397Thursday, January 30, 2003 - U.S. Senior District Judge John Kane is really good at this. He's been giving versions of the same speech for nearly a decade now. He wows every audience. It's easy to see why. His argument is compelling. It's based on mountains of evidence. And it's the product of a keen legal mind.Furthermore, he delivers it with wit, candor and blistering conviction.So when he brought the City Club crowd to their feet this week, it was nothing new.What would be new, however, is if the leaders in the country's futile and destructive war on drugs would pay attention.If they did, they'd learn, for example, that in 1914, when drugs were readily available without prescriptions, the addiction rate in the U.S. population was 1.3 percent. In 1979, before the war on drugs was fully mobilized, the addiction rate was 1.3 percent. "Today, while billions of dollars are spent to reduce drug use, the addiction rate is still 1.3 percent," Kane said.In 1975, the number of youths who said it was easy to obtain marijuana was 87 percent. In 1998, after millions of arrests and billions spent on law enforcement, he said that figure rose to 89.6 percent. Meanwhile, prices for illicit drugs such as heroin and cocaine have plummeted.The war on drugs drains more than $18 billion a year from taxpayers' wallets, Kane said, and another $9 billion is spent annually to incarcerate an estimated 458,000 drug offenders.And while the financial costs are shocking, the price to our country in human terms is appalling.Thanks in large part to the war on drugs, "more African-Americans were imprisoned during the Clinton administration than in all the rest of U.S. history," Kane said. Two million Americans are behind bars.But that's only a beginning.If the policy of arresting and convicting every illegal drug user in the U.S. actually was fulfilled, the prisons would have to accommodate "the 9 million Americans who smoked marijuana last month, the 1.2 million who ingested cocaine during that same period and the nearly 6 million who ingested it during the past year."Oh, and half of all graduating high school seniors also would go to prison since they admit to having experimented with drugs.Of course, that won't happen because we all know the war on drugs is a laughingstock. We mock it with impunity, and that creates another set of problems.The fact that millions of "otherwise law-abiding citizens" ignore the country's drug laws makes us "cynical about all laws and our legal system and the political process in particular," Kane said.But if you really want to know cynicism, consider this: Despite the widespread recognition of failure, reform of the nation's drug laws is unlikely because law enforcement agencies profit from them.Police departments rake in untold billions each year through the seizure and sale of private property - houses, yachts, airplanes, artworks, cars, jewelry, cash - from drug offenders and suspects.Kane said we should "terminate the symbiotic business relationship that law enforcement has with the illegal-drug industry.""Indeed, the two groups who would suffer most from an elimination of the black market in drugs would be, in nearly equal measure, organized crime and law enforcement."Oh, and there's a third group that would suffer - the elected officials who for 30 years have exploited our fears, divided our communities and trampled our civil liberties with a phony war on drugs.Because, as Kane said, then we'd all see that "the emperor has no clothes."
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Comment #4 posted by AlvinCool on January 30, 2003 at 14:47:12 PT
Fair Play? I THINK NOT
Dark Star:Don't bet on Breyer having a sense of fair play. That isn't why he allowed them to call Miley. He only allowed it because the defence screwed up and mentioned that the federal government thought Rosenthal was hiding his operation. Now he has to allow the point to be rebutted or the case will be thrown out on appeal. I assure you he is grinding his teeth.
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Comment #3 posted by JR Bob Dobbs on January 30, 2003 at 13:49:50 PT
Watching?
The eyes of the world are reading, perhaps, but watching? Where's Court-TV when you need it?Hey, there's an idea for future reference (as it's a lil' late now, unless it goes to retrial)... just how do we go about requesting coverage of events like this on CourtTV? Surely they must have some way of figuring out which trials the public would be most interested in... 
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Comment #2 posted by Truth on January 30, 2003 at 11:14:26 PT
Eyes of the World
The whole world is watching and Breyer knows it. He will be held accountable to what he does so maybe he'll start playing fairer.
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Comment #1 posted by Dark Star on January 30, 2003 at 10:47:04 PT
Major
This is big news. The prosecution took a calculated risk and it blew up in their faces. It seems that Judge Breyer has some remaining sense of fair play. Our populace will need to decide whether "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," should be hostage to government gag rules that make conviction a foregone conclusion.
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