cannabisnews.com: AIDS Victim Hammered By Pot Charge AIDS Victim Hammered By Pot Charge Posted by FoM on November 20, 1999 at 22:27:28 PT By Charles Levendosky, Casper Star-Tribune Source: Fairbanks Daily News Imagine this: You're a juror in a criminal case. The defendant is whisked into the room in a wheelchair. He's gagged. His attorney follows. He's gagged, too. The federal government's prosecuting attorneys are present at their table. They aren't gagged. The prosecutors outline the case against the defendant. Neither the defendant nor his attorney can respond to the charges -- because of a ruling by the judge -- but the jury doesn't know why. This isn't fiction; it isn't a scene from a Kafka novel. It's real. Can the defendant expect justice in such a federal district court? The defendant in this Kafkaesque scenario is best-selling author and publisher Peter McWilliams. In 1996, he was diagnosed with both AIDS and an AIDS-related cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. McWilliams underwent chemotherapy and radiation for the cancer and a pharmaceutical therapy for AIDS. The cancer treatment resulted in complete remission. The AIDS treatment entails a mixture of chemically derived protease inhibitors and anti-viral medications in order to prevent the spread of the AIDS virus in his body. He must continue his AIDS treatment in order to live. When McWilliams began his intensive treatment, he experienced violent nausea from the moment the medications reached his stomach. He couldn't hold them down long enough for the medicines to be absorbed by his body. His doctor prescribed every anti-nausea medication available. None worked. He vomited out his numerous pharmaceuticals. McWilliams might have died -- except he discovered that smoking marijuana controlled the nausea long enough for his body to absorb his medications. The amount of live AIDS virus in his blood dropped dramatically. McWilliams lives in the Los Angeles area. In 1996, California voters passed Proposition 215, the ballot measure that allows patients to smoke marijuana with a doctor's recommendation. Proposition 215 also allows seriously ill patients or their primary caregiver to grow marijuana for the patients' personal medical purposes. McWilliams cultivated 300 marijuana plants for his own medical use. But the federal government isn't about to let states legalize marijuana, even for the compassionate use by serious and terminally ill patients who find marijuana a palliative that eases their pain and nausea. In July 1998, federal agents arrested McWilliams. He is currently charged with manufacturing marijuana, conspiracy to manufacture marijuana, and aiding and abetting the manufacturing of marijuana. The terms of his bail were that he cannot use marijuana to control his nausea and that he has to submit to random urine tests. McWilliams stopped smoking marijuana. He now takes the prescription anti-nausea drug, Marinol, that he claims only works about a third of the time. He vomits up much of his AIDS medications and, by the fall of 1998, the amount of live AIDS virus in his blood had reached a critical stage. McWilliams can no longer walk any further than 50 feet and uses a wheelchair. He often sleeps 18 hours a day. All this since the arrest. The federal prosecutors found a friendly federal district court judge in George H. King of the U.S. District Court of the Central District of California. On Nov. 5, King ruled that McWilliams and his attorney cannot use in McWilliams' defense: his medical condition; Proposition 215; the National Institute of Medicine's recent report on the medical usefulness of marijuana; a medical necessity defense; nor may they mention the federal government's own drug program which treats eight patients with marijuana. In other words, the defendant and his attorney are to appear in court, but they will be gagged. This sounds like a something out of a Soviet court during the Cold War: Say anything in your defense and you're guilty; say nothing and you're guilty. What has this nation come to? A defendant in a criminal trial is prohibited from telling a jury his reasons for smoking and growing marijuana, about the California law which is supposed to protect medical use of marijuana, about how his health plummeted because he can no longer use marijuana, about medical research that verifies the medical usefulness of marijuana and about the federal government's own marijuana program. McWilliams' attorney can't even tell the jury that he cannot address some key issues and why he can't. McWilliams' health is failing, his publishing house of 32 years is bankrupt and he faces 10 years in federal prison -- because he is ill and followed California state law. McWilliams' attorney, Thomas J. Ballanco, says the federal government is using his client as more than a test case: "They're making it a deterrence case. They want to hold this up to all the other patients, in all the other states who might want to implement the various state medical marijuana initiatives. And say look, 'We're still going to come after you. And we're still going to get big prison sentences."' On Nov. 12, McWilliams and his attorney sat down with the prosecution and a different judge to negotiate a guilty plea. Nothing has been decided yet. But pivotal to any plea agreement, according to McWilliams, is his right to appeal. Under Judge King's restrictions, McWilliams doesn't feel he has a chance to win in a trial: "This is an issue that is hopeless in a court of law, unless there is jury nullification -- unless somehow, some way the jury found out what was going on." Jury nullification occurs when a jury deliberately rejects the evidence of guilt or refuses to apply the law because it wants to send a message about a social issue or because the result dictated by the law is contrary to the jury's sense of justice, morality or fairness. If ever there was a case in American law that justified jury nullification, it's this one. The federal prosecutors, in this case, have acted like shameless bullies -- pounding a sick man into the ground. But their action is really aimed at all citizens who may suffer from AIDS or cancer -- our parents, children, loved ones. Newshawk: DdCPublished: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n1259/a12.html?397Related Articles & Websites: http://members.xoom.com/ptrial/ http://www.petertrial.com/ Activists Plead Guilty to Drug Charges - 11/20/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3734.shtmlMedical Marijuana Activists Plead Guilty - 11/19/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3733.shtmlLA Drug Case Bars Medical Marijuana Defense - 11/07/99http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread3585.shtml END SNIP --> Snipped Home Comment Email Register Recent Comments Help Comment #5 posted by jaime dee on April 19, 2000 at 18:49:25 PT: its messed up!! my mother has a disease where she cant walk and she only has one arm that is capable of working. she has MS. she takes so much medicine, it kills me too see her like that. every now and then i take her out to get high, and that is the only time that she actually feels better. im sorry i was using that as an example, but i think that people shouldnt judge it because its a drug, and they think all drugs are bad.. thats not true.. smoking weed NEVER killed anyone no ones ever died from it. i believe it does more good then harm. dont knock it till u try it. the feds make such a big deal over nothing. i know i said alot, but this crap bothers me. its bull... [ Post Comment ] Comment #4 posted by Georgejuan on November 29, 1999 at 14:19:44 PT it's a short life wish i could crack their skulls. the law says i can't...but the killing blow would be if and when the dear ones of these hypocrites themselves succumb to an illness which only cannabis can relieve.... well... until such a time.Smoke on!! [ Post Comment ] Comment #3 posted by Frustrated on November 22, 1999 at 17:24:09 PT Poor McWilliams and others... Yes, it is very depressing and scary that we have come to this point in American "Jurisprudence". My father is a lawyer who believes all the crap that smoking weed makes you "unmotivated" and destroys your life (blah, blah, blah, etc.). I feel it is my duty to try and educate others, including my dad, that pot can save people's lives, make them happier, and in general allow them to tolerate an otherwise bleak esxistence in a country such as ours. My heart goes out to anyone denied use of a medicine that will save their life. The only advice I can offer is: talk to your friends and family, educate them, and tell them to register and VOTE against these ridiculous laws and legislators----only then do we have a chance to change the direction things are going in. Good Luck everyone!!! Keep trying!!! [ Post Comment ] Comment #2 posted by kaptinemo on November 21, 1999 at 16:15:35 PT Like the man said...Kafka Anybody who has been following this case knows that, just as Mr. Ballanco said, this is a "deterrance case". It's sole intent is to tell others who hope to use the cannabis medical defense that they shall be dealt with as severely.It is doubly effective because it operates on a socially Darwinian level; I've no doubt whatsoever that they are thinking along the lines of: let the gays die off so they won't dirty our streets anymore. Let them suffer horribly as an example to any other socially deviant group the hazards of challenging the Powers-That-Be. I've said it many times before: they fully intended to *kill* McWilliams, through simple negligence which they could not be prosecuted for because they were only 'following orders.'Because the average American does not even know what has been happening, there is no outcry in the press, save for the brave stance of the above reporter and a few other decent souls. If many Americans did, they might be tempted to speak up. Speaking up leads to speaking out; speaking out leads to challenging authority. And authority doesn't like that. Not when they stand to fall off a 17 billion-dollar-a-year gravy train. So we shall continue to see even more high-handedness from judges and prosecutors, until some scion of a politician gets caught. And then it'll be a slap on the wrist, and bad, johnnie, go to your room, you can't drive the Mercie for a week.What a country. [ Post Comment ] Comment #1 posted by cannabis patient on November 21, 1999 at 09:30:14 PT federal bullies i'm speechless.how dare people sit and let this government break the laws of the constitution.i'm scared.... [ Post Comment ] Post Comment Name: Optional Password: E-Mail: Subject: Comment: [Please refrain from using profanity in your message] Link URL: Link Title: