Faces at rally reveal tragic truth of medical marijuana patients

Sacramento Bee ^ | 22 September 2002 | Diana Griego Erwin

[MrLeRoy]

'Williams wishes all the naysayers and disbelievers had shown up. "Their hearts and minds would have been changed." They would have seen that no one there was faking a terminal illness or debilitating condition just to score a little marijuana for weekend parties.

'"We're talking sick, sick people," she said. "People who are pale and emaciated."

'At one point during the rally, Williams stood next to a man who looked like a skeleton wearing a Hawaiian shirt. When she commented about something a speaker said, he turned to her, looked in her eyes and smiled.

'"Something about him reminded me of my sister," she said. "And then I realized it was the eyes. His eyes looked so, so tired. There's just so little light there. . . . How uncompassionate are people that they would accuse these terminally ill people of being fakers; that government agents would raid their homes and handcuff them?"'

[07055]

Let me ask you then:

Do you believe marijuana should be available legally as a treatment for menstrual cramps?

[Lokibob]

This just ran on the news wire:

South Dakota to Vote on Extending Jury Rights
Sun Sep 22, 4:05 PM ET
By ADAM LIPTAK The New York Times

In November, voters in South Dakota will decide whether to give tax protesters, medical marijuana users and other criminal defendants a new right. A proposed constitutional amendment would allow defendants there to concede their guilt but nonetheless argue for acquittal on the grounds that the law under which they were charged is misguided or draconian.

The South Dakota initiative, known as Amendment A, is the next step in a centuries-old debate about the role of juries in deciding not just the facts of a case but also the wisdom of the law in question. The shorthand term for the complex subject is jury nullification.

Proponents of the amendment say it is a necessary countermeasure.

"I'm concerned with the increasing criminalization of more and more behavior, of things that merely annoy other people," said Bob Newland, the Libertarian candidate for attorney general of South Dakota and the chief proponent of Amendment A.

Among recent misguided prosecutions in South Dakota, Mr. Newland said, were those of a man convicted of cruelty to animals for using his cane to fend off an attacking dog, and parents convicted of child pornography after taking pictures of their toddler in the tub. He said these people were guilty under the letter of the law but should have been able to argue to the jury that the laws in question made no sense.

The initiative's chances of passage are hard to assess. Some 34,000 people signed petitions to place it on the ballot, which is more than 10 percent of the people who voted in the last statewide election.

Robert E. Hayes, the president of the South Dakota Bar Association, which opposes the initiative, said it could appeal to voters.

"Jury duty is taken pretty seriously here," Mr. Hayes said, "and there is some sense that juries are fundamental, citizen-level government organizations, so we want to empower them more."

Mr. Newland has allies across the ideological spectrum. In South Dakota, much of his support comes from the libertarian right, including opponents of gun control. Elsewhere, some liberal academics say nullification may be a sort of civil right.

"I would observe that they are strange bedfellows — pro-marijuana, pro-gun, anti-abortion, pro-environment," said Andrew D. Leipold, a professor at the University of Illinois College of Law who has written about jury nullification. "This cuts very widely across many political groups. They are a very interesting collection of people who believe philosophically in the power of juries, plus a lot of single-issue people."

Mr. Newland said South Dakota was "the center of the universe for the informed jury movement now," adding, "Everybody is watching what is happening here."

Earlier efforts to pass jury nullification laws in Oklahoma and Arizona failed. Similar legislation is pending in Alaska.

Lawyers say the case that prompted Amendment A was that of Matthew Ducheneaux, who was convicted in Sioux Falls last month of marijuana possession. Mr. Ducheneaux, 38, who had been caught smoking at a jazz festival in 2000, said he used marijuana to alleviate the leg spasms that have tortured him since he became a quadriplegic after an automobile accident.

Mr. Ducheneaux, whose five-day sentence was suspended, was forbidden to argue to the jury that the law under which he was charged was unwise.

The jury in the case was troubled by the prosecution, said Chris Moran, Mr. Ducheneaux's lawyer. "All of them conclusively said afterward that they didn't want to find him guilty."

The prosecutor in the case, Matthew Theophilus, sounded relieved to have won. "I've never seen a defendant more sympathetic than Matthew Ducheneaux," he said. "Did I want to prosecute Matthew Ducheneaux? No. Did I have to? Yes."

Mr. Theophilus opposes Amendment A. "It's basically saying that the law should apply to one person one day and not to another person another day," he said. "They're trying to use Amendment A as an end run around the legislatures, as an end run around democracy."

Mr. Ducheneaux emphasized the medicinal power of marijuana. "It's instant relief for everything," he said. "It even stimulates the mind for thinking."

All he asked, he said, was to be able to make these arguments in court.

"I think they're violating my constitutional right of making my defense and proving my case," Mr. Ducheneaux said. He is appealing his sentence, which requires him to abstain from marijuana for a year.

The proposed amendment would add a few words to a list of familiar rights in the South Dakota Constitution, and its opponents say it is artfully drafted to appear innocuous. The amendment would allow defendants "to argue the merits, validity and applicability of the law, including the sentencing laws."

Opponents of the amendment, which include most of the establishment bar in South Dakota, say it is antidemocratic in allowing a small group of people to decide the wisdom of a law.

Mr. Newland said a more general approach was unrealistic, given the hundreds of new laws enacted each year.

"One option is to go to the Legislature and argue for the repeal of a single bad law," he said. "The other option is to allow people to argue during the defense portion of the trial that the law in question is flawed, misapplied, or that `yes, I did this, but if you convict me I'm going to jail for a long, long time.' "

Paul Butler, a former federal prosecutor in Washington who is now a professor at George Washington University Law School, supports the initiative. He said no one disputes the idea that juries have the practical power to nullify laws in given prosecutions, because their deliberations are secret and unreviewable.

"I have always thought that the current state of the law is perverse," Professor Butler said. "It's sort of like a secret power. To the extent these initiatives tell juries about a power they have, I'm in favor of them."

In his academic writing, Professor Butler has encouraged jury nullification in some drug possession cases as a sort of protest against what he says are draconian drug laws that disproportionately affect African-American men. He says he has mixed feelings about drug distribution cases and opposes nullification in cases involving violent crime.

Professor Leipold of the University of Illinois said creating a right to jury nullification while hoping it will be applied sensibly was wishful thinking.

"It's like giving someone a credit card with no limit on it and saying, `Be very careful how you spend it,' " he said.

In colonial times and in the early days of the Republic, American juries played a more active role in interpreting and applying the law. In the libel trial of John Peter Zenger in 1735, for instance, Mr. Zenger conceded that he had printed defamatory matter, which under the law at the time required conviction. His lawyer urged the jury to interpret the law to allow proof of truth as a defense. Mr. Zenger was acquitted.

Professor Leipold said it was a mistake to draw too many lessons from the Zenger case. "All we do is look back on the cool cases," he said. "We don't look back at the cases where juries refused to convict the killers of Native Americans."

Indeed, said David A. Pepper, who has written on the history of jury nullification, the American experience with the phenomenon has been decidedly mixed. Juries have acquitted people who harbored fugitive slaves and members of mobs that lynched black men. They have gone easy on people prosecuted on alcohol charges during Prohibition and on men accused of domestic violence.

More recently, courts have been almost uniformly hostile to nullification arguments.

"We categorically reject the idea that, in a society committed to the rule of law, jury nullification is desirable or that courts may permit it to occur when it is within their authority to prevent," Judge Jose A. Cabranes of the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, in New York, wrote in 1997.

The lawyers in Mr. Ducheneaux's case have mixed feelings about it.

"I think there is some merit to his defense," Mr. Theophilus, the prosecutor, said, referring to the defendant's argument that he had a medical need for marijuana.

Mr. Moran, who represented Mr. Ducheneaux, says he is not sure how he feels about Amendment A.

"It could be very beneficial in some cases," he said. "But what sort of can of worms does it open?"

[Virginia-American]

Do you believe marijuana should be available legally as a treatment for menstrual cramps?

Sure, if it works for Queen Vctoria and my sister, it should work for a lot of women. It is after all a muscle relaxant and seems to make all the little tubes in the body expand a bit.

Granted, the FDA could do studies to make it all 'official' and make sure that my sister isn't just getting a placebo effect, but why bother?

It should be legal, period. If someone uses it to relax, someone else uses it for cramps, and a third person uses it to keep food down, it's no more my business that it is yours.

[Lokibob]

After reading all the info on DHMO, I still don't understnd what it is. If I believed all that is on the web site, I'd be scared to death. Guess I need to do more research.

I thought at first glance it was DMSO, the horse linament of 30 years fame. DMSO is also involved in a FDA fight.

[Protagoras]

Where's the 'dignity', in spending your final days in a dope haze?

More dignified to have your head in the toilet with your lunch all over the place.

[MrLeRoy]

Do you believe marijuana should be available legally as a treatment for menstrual cramps?

I believe that marijuana, like the much deadlier and more addictive drug alcohol, should be legally available to adults for any purpose whatsoever---and I believe it's particularly disgusting zealotry that even very sick people whose doctors think they would benefit from marijuana can't legally get it.

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

DiHydrogen Monoxide = DHMO = H₂O = Water

[Lokibob]

Ya got me!!!!! LOL

Guess I now have to go back to the web site and re-read. Thanks, I enjoy a good laugh.

[texson66]

I would say your suggested actions are heroic, but have as much value as my "get over it and get used to it"(resigned) attitude.

Unless we(you, I, and other FReepers) are prepared to take to court each and ever unconstitutional action by the feds, then they win hands down. Even in court, the federal judges have a conflict of interest in hearing many federalist/state issues. But that doesnt stop them from ruling for the feds anyway!

Biting the jackboot on your face may be gratifying at the moment, but utimately there are way too many boots!

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..BTW, how am I self-deluding? I'd be interested to know...

I didn't intend that in an offensive way, but everyone I've known who's addicted to the stuff seem to think they've got it under control, and it doesn't really affect them. You go over to visit and find they've had a couple of cones, they're in a dreamy state and their conversation is soporific. And if you try to tell them how affected they really are, they get defensive. Classical addictive behaviour.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..why? What rights couldn't be exercised properly?...

None of them. None of them could be exercised properly.

You can't control your tongue, so there goes the First. You can't control your gun, so there goes the Second. A clear frame of mind is a prerequisite for the proper exercise of rights, JG.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..middle English melwe, perhaps from melowe, oblique case of mele, ground grain, meal...

Thanks for the history lesson Steve but we're talking about California, now. Not England, a thousand years ago. Cheers, By.

[Byron_the_Aussie]

..I see. So it was the fact that he smoked marijuana that killed him, not the fact that he made the incredibly dim-witted decision to drive a motorcycle while intoxicated?...

Well, he wasn't killed. But you're mixed up. Forget the motorcycle. He made the decision, while intoxicated. And that's the problem with being under the influence of booze or drugs, you make the wrong decisions. Sometimes, fatal ones. The Darwin Awards would be a pretty short list, without that factor.

[NYCVirago]

You know absolutely nothing. My ex-roomate from college smokes about 4 or 5 joints a day. He is an accomplished musician, produces and arranges music for films, teaches music, reads, writes, produces intricate woodwork for restorations (dangerous work), waxes philosophical on a range of political topics, neither receives or asks for anything from his government or neighbors and leads a normal life in every way. How about you?

There are also some high-functioning alcoholics as well as high-functioning potheads. But I don't think you'd be bragging about a friend who drank a case of beer or two bottles of vodka a day and could still keep a job.