cannabisnews.com: How The Feds Duped Jurors in Marijuana Trial How The Feds Duped Jurors in Marijuana Trial Posted by CN Staff on February 09, 2003 at 10:44:10 PT By Clarence Page Source: Chicago Tribune Washington -- It is not every day that a jury apologizes to a man it has just convicted.So Ed Rosenthal should feel honored that seven of the 12 jurors who convicted him on three federal counts of marijuana cultivation and conspiracy are now apologizing to him and calling for their own verdict to be overturned on appeal. Five of them appeared and two others had statements read at a news conference Tuesday outside a courthouse in San Francisco. They wanted to let the world know that they felt misled by the federal judge and prosecutors who did not allow the defense to raise issues of state and local medical marijuana laws in Rosenthal's trial.Rosenthal, 58, a well-known author, magazine advice columnist and advocate for the medicinal use of marijuana, was growing the grass for medicinal purposes. California is one of eight states (Oregon, Maine, Washington, Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada and Colorado are the others) that have passed laws to allow the sick and dying to smoke or grow marijuana with a doctor's recommendation.Rosenthal was deputized by the city of Oakland to provide marijuana for those whose doctors recommend it. Ironically, the program is intended to help the ill and dying avoid the street dealers that the federal drug czar's current multimillion-dollar TV ad campaign (Your dollars at work, fellow taxpayers!) is warning us against.But none of that highly pertinent information about Rosenthal's methods or motives was allowed to reach the eyes or ears of his jury. U.S. District Judge Charles R. Breyer barred Rosenthal's defense from mentioning the state law because Rosenthal was indicted under federal law, which does not allow the growing of marijuana for any purpose.As a result, Rosenthal was prosecuted like a member of the Soprano crime family, convicted and faces a minimum of five years in prison when he is sentenced in June."Last week, I did something so profoundly wrong that it will haunt me for the rest of my life," Marney Craig, a property manager who served as a juror in the Rosenthal trial, wrote in a later San Jose Mercury-News op-ed. "I helped send a man to prison who does not belong there."It is no wonder that the jurors feel like, if I may coin an old colloquialism, they got took. After all, they were.And, of course, it is easy to see why prosecutors did not want Rosenthal's motives to be revealed. In California, which legalized medicinal use of marijuana in 1996, it must be quite difficult to find a jury of 12 people who would convict a man whose only criminal offense was to provide the weed to the sick and the dying.Californians are hardly alone in this nuanced view. Although fewer than 40 percent of Americans would legalize marijuana for recreational use, recent polls have found that about 80 percent support legalizing it for medicinal use.Even presidential candidate George W. Bush told reporters in October 1999 that on the medicinal marijuana question, "I believe each state can [make] that decision as they so choose."Or, maybe not. President Bush's administration is going after California's medicinal marijuana providers with a zeal that is appropriate for the pursuit of Colombian drug cartels.Despite California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's pleas to former Drug Enforcement Administration head Asa Hutchinson last year, the DEA has stepped up raids on state-sanctioned cannabis growers and treatment facilities.In July, Bryan James Epis, 35, organizer of a cannabis buyers club in Chico, was found guilty of charges similar to Rosenthal's and sentenced to 10 years. His conviction has been appealed.And watch what you say, buddy, as well as how you say it. In December, Jeff Jones, executive director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, was found guilty of "an attempt to influence jurors," in the words of U.S. Magistrate Judge Peter A. Nowinski, simply for passing out leaflets in support of Epis outside the courthouse.Nowinski dismissed Jones' free speech defense. After all, there's a war on drugs to be fought. Jones' sentencing is scheduled for Feb. 27.With antics like these, prosecutors might find it harder to get any kind of a marijuana conviction out of a jury, whether it is medicinally related or not.Who, I wonder, will stop this madness?For starters, Congress should move the country toward sanity by taking the long overdue step of downgrading marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. It makes no sense for cannabis to be ranked with heroin, LSD, morphine and other drugs in Schedule I.Or does anyone really believe marijuana is more potent, dangerous and devoid of redeeming medicinal value than cocaine, opium, codeine, injectable methamphetamines and other Schedule II drugs?Perhaps, after that step, we might be able to handle marijuana as a properly controlled hazardous drug, instead of a political football.Source: Chicago Tribune (IL)Author: Clarence PagePublished: February 9, 2003Copyright: 2003 Chicago Tribune CompanyContact: ctc-TribLetter Tribune.comWebsite: http://www.chicagotribune.com/Related Articles & Web Sites:OCBChttp://www.rxcbc.org/Ed Rosenthal's Trial Pictures & Articleshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/trialpics.htmBryan Epis Protest Pictures & Articleshttp://freedomtoexhale.com/protestpics.htmAngry People Regret Ruling They Had To Makehttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15431.shtmlReefer Madness - Baltimore Sunhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15427.shtmlMisguided Marijuana War - New York Timeshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread15365.shtml Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #18 posted by charmed quark on February 10, 2003 at 06:46:30 PT Morphine is NOT schedule 1 As far as I know, it is still a schedule 2 drug that is routinely used for pain control. Of, course, you never know with the current DEA. But I think it's just sloppy journalism in this case.Frankly, none of the Schedule 1 drugs should be labeled as such. Heroin is a perfectly useful opiate that has some minor advantages over morphine for pain control. LSD and such have been used for psychiatry, and so on.-Pete [ Post Comment ] Comment #17 posted by The GCW on February 09, 2003 at 16:39:28 PT The U.S. government, should keep up the good work.If they do a few more screwball things, they will help make cannabis Re-legalized even more quickly.The citizens are zeroing in on the urine suckers.Just keep it up.Perhaps cage a well known politicians kid. Perhaps take a bunch of near death citizens and put them in a cage. Isn't it about time for the SWATSTIKA to kill another innocent?The most grotesque amonst Us are the ones that harbor desires to cage humans for using a plant.Are they the same that fought to keep slavery alive?The U.S. gov. is run by terrorist.The belly of the urine sucker is a dark place.When the time came that Jehovah ruled the earth as well, a great stirring came about below. "The only course left to us now... is terrorism," Satan said. And terrorism in their hearts and souls allows them to kill in Iraq.STop them from killing in Iraq?We can not even stop them from caging humans for using a plant! [ Post Comment ] Comment #16 posted by FoM on February 09, 2003 at 16:16:54 PT eco I've never been able to get everything from a search tool I might be looking for and that's what made me think about the need to have a page for important events and update it daily until the news stops or slows down considerably. That way I keep them all together and can find them fairly easily. I actually don't know what score means! LOL!http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/trialpics.htmhttp://www.freedomtoexhale.com/protestpics.htmhttp://www.freedomtoexhale.com/valc.htmhttp://www.freedomtoexhale.com/eventpics.htmhttp://www.freedomtoexhale.com/mj.htmhttp://www.freedomtoexhale.com/raid.htm [ Post Comment ] Comment #15 posted by Dankhank on February 09, 2003 at 16:10:11 PT: MMM99 http://hbaca.freeyellow.com/MMM99.html [ Post Comment ] Comment #14 posted by eco-man on February 09, 2003 at 15:59:34 PT About phrase searching. million+marijuana+march I discovered something else. The expanded CannabisNews search form has a checkbox for phrase searching. Or you can add "&PS=on" to the search shortcut URL. In either case phrase searching is not perfect, because when searching for 3 or more terms, the search engine pulls up articles with any of the terms adjacent to one of the other terms. All the terms must be in the article or comments somewhere though. But not necessarily all 3 terms adjacent to each other. 2 adjacent seems to be enough. So not all the articles may be about the MMMhttp://www.cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=million+marijuana+march&PS=on&H=320 [ Post Comment ] Comment #13 posted by eco-man on February 09, 2003 at 15:40:46 PT Scoring? I don't understand what scoring is. I checked the number of times "million marijuana march" was in the top search result. It was only in it once. In a comment. I saw the scoring link on the results page. So I guess one can click it after any search [ Post Comment ] Comment #12 posted by FoM on February 09, 2003 at 15:21:34 PT eco this is using score http://www.cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=million+marijuana+march&H=320&PS=on&T=B&S=score [ Post Comment ] Comment #11 posted by eco-man on February 09, 2003 at 15:11:08 PT &H=320 It is even better set to pull up the maximum number of articles allowed: http://www.cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=million+marijuana+march&PS=on&H=320 [ Post Comment ] Comment #10 posted by eco-man on February 09, 2003 at 15:02:54 PT Thanks FoM. FoM. Your last message helped me figure out how to pull up MMM articles from specific years. I was having difficulty doing that with Google search shortcuts for CannabisNews.comAlso, the expanded CannabisNews search form has a checkbox for phrase searching. Or one can add "&PS=on" to the search shortcut URL. This avoids the problem with quotes in the URL. http://www.cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=million+marijuana+march&PS=on Results are in chronological order. The default order for results is by date of the article (not the comments). So it is fairly easy to figure out the year of the article by running your cursor over the result URLs and noting the numbers. This produces better results than using Google MMM search shortcuts for CannabisNews. Google results are not in chronological order of the articles, and so it can be more difficult to find the year of an article without opening the article. Because the year term may be found in the comments. [ Post Comment ] Comment #9 posted by p4me on February 09, 2003 at 14:45:14 PT LTE- not sure what I said myself Dear Sir:I read the article “How the Feds Duped Jurors In Marijuana Trial” and I have something to say about it.First, there is a website called CannabisNews.com that focuses on all news of anything cannabis. One striking observation is that the suppression of the cannabis subject in the print media means there might not be but 4 or 5 articles from around the world that make any worthy statement on the cannabis issue.The jury was duped because of the fact that the words “jury nullification” are subject to the same blackout as the cannabis issue in our corporately controlled media. Now that the Rosenthal story has given the cannabis issue some legs, many people are going to wonder what else the public has been duped on.The issue of cannabis as medicine still does not get any elaboration by your paper or any other paper of note. For example, why does The International Association for Cannabis as Medicine exist if it there were not answers needed related to the scientific questions concerning cannabis? ( http://www.cannabis-med.org/english/home.htm ) Why would all the states have passed laws in the 1970’s if cannabis were not medicine and why was the effort renewed starting with the Compassionate Use Act in California in 1996. Why did Lilly sell cannabis extracts before prohibition? Why does Canada recognize cannabis as medicine? Why is Holland making cannabis available for prescription that will be able to be used by travelers to this country under international law and what is going to happen when they appear on one of satellites’ 700 channels? And how about the 7 people that still receive federal cannabis under the cancelled program? And what will happen when people learn that GWP is selling cannabis extracts possibly by the end of the year? They will thing they have been duped by the government that is clearly representing the interest of the wealthy/multi-nationals with the complicity of the conglomerate media.In your column you say “For starters, Congress should move the country toward sanity by taking the long overdue step of downgrading marijuana from Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act. It makes no sense for cannabis to be ranked with heroin, LSD, morphine and other drugs in Schedule I.” That is quite true but you do not present an “A game” for the situation. You do not mention that if cannabis were properly classified there would be no problem with state laws regarding medical cannabis then again you do not raise the issue of freedom that should make it legal outright. Have Unimed, the manufacturer of Marinol, in Illinois should make its classification as a Schedule 3 drug even more pertinent to the readers of your column. You do not present the insanity of classifying individual cannabanoids as a Schedule 1 substance while allowing for synthetic manufacture by the pill companies of more evidence of the political nature of the whole issue and in fact you do not say that the classification has nothing to do with reason and is a political position with all the propaganda paid for at taxpayer expense. Your article appeared at http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread15432.shtml I hope you read the comments that accompany your article and read up on what informed people are saying about the cannabis situation. You may want to contact Dr. Russo, author and researcher on cannabis, assuming you really care about informing the public of anything. You may learn to call the Schedule 1 position of our corrupt government The Schedule One Lie and see that you and most of America have been duped. I personally do not like being fiddled and I do not like the corruption of government that the cannabis issue illuminates.I enjoyed your article but it has to go a little further just to be regarded as a half truth to an informed person on the subject. If I thought this might appear in your paper I would call on all your readers to cancel their subscription for all time and read from independent sources on the Internet instead of one of the conspirators that perpetuates cannabis prohibition and does not even mention The Schedule One Lie. [ Post Comment ] Comment #8 posted by FoM on February 09, 2003 at 14:22:10 PT Thanks eco Here are articles from CNews search too.http://cannabisnews.com/thcgi/search.pl?K=ed+rosenthal&H=320 [ Post Comment ] Comment #7 posted by eco-man on February 09, 2003 at 14:18:54 PT Oops. Oops. It seems this comment form can't convert the MMM search shortcut URLs correctly due to the quotes in the URLs. The URLs can be copied into the address window of one's browser. And also sent in email and become correctly clickable usually. I am loading the clickable MMM URLs here right now: http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/mmmlinks.htm#mmm and http://corporatism.tripod.com/mmmlinks.htm#mmm The Ed Rosenthal shortcuts work fine here: [ Post Comment ] Comment #6 posted by eco-man on February 09, 2003 at 14:03:41 PT Search shortcuts. There are more articles to be found at these 2 links: http://www.mapinc.org/people/Ed+Rosenthal and http://google.com/news?q=ed+rosenthal Hundreds of articles at both links above. And check this out below, FoM. I just created these: *MMM search shortcuts for specific years. The whole web. http://google.com/search?q=2003+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=2002+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=2001+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=2000+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=1999+"million+marijuana+march" and *MMM search shortcuts for specific years. Using Google search of MAP/DrugNews. Not many MMM media articles were sent in to MAP until 2002. Though there were many MMM media articles worldwide starting in at least 2000. http://google.com/search?q=site:mapinc.org+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=site:mapinc.org+"million+marijuana+march"+v99 and http://google.com/search?q=site:mapinc.org+"million+marijuana+march"+v00 and http://google.com/search?q=site:mapinc.org+"million+marijuana+march"+v01 and http://google.com/search?q=site:mapinc.org+"million+marijuana+march"+v02 --Many articles. http://google.com/search?q=site:mapinc.org+"million+marijuana+march"+v03 and*MMM search shortcuts for specific years. Using Google search of CannabisNews.com -- Note that the MMM phrase or the year may be from a comment, and not from the article itself. http://google.com/search?q=site:cannabisnews.com+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=site:cannabisnews.com+1999+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=site:cannabisnews.com+2000+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=site:cannabisnews.com+2001+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=site:cannabisnews.com+2002+"million+marijuana+march" and http://google.com/search?q=site:cannabisnews.com+2003+"million+marijuana+march" and*For more Google help, search tips, advanced search, and many more options: http://www.google.com/help/ and http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/y/search.htm [ Post Comment ] Comment #5 posted by FoM on February 09, 2003 at 13:37:55 PT greek_philosophizer Thank you and I'm glad you like it. I really am trying to keep everything important on this page. This could be the straw that breaks the camel's back. I sure hope it will be. [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by greek_philosophizer on February 09, 2003 at 13:27:44 PT: Thank you FoM. Thank you FoM.That is a nice page. [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by FoM on February 09, 2003 at 13:14:47 PT greek_philosophizer I update the news articles about Ed Rosenthal at least once a day and put them on my page. The updated articles are about half way down on this page. I updated this morning so all but one or two will be there.Ed Rosenthal's Trial Pictures & Articles: http://freedomtoexhale.com/trialpics.htm [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by greek_philosophizer on February 09, 2003 at 13:10:39 PT: Many major papers have commented on this It seems like many of the major newspapers have editorialized against the show trial that Ed was subjected to.Does anybody by any chance have a list of all the papers that have covered this story? [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by Truth on February 09, 2003 at 11:30:03 PT A croft This is good, it's in todays cronic. http://www.sfgate.com/columnists/fiore/ [ Post Comment ] Post Comment