[hoosierskypilot]

All in all, he was growing a lot of dope.

[rhombus]

All in all, if people are upset they should overturn marijuana laws and stop creating more jobs for lawyers, judges and bored cops. But the trial lawyers associaton wouldn't like that would they?

[Mr. K]

"A bank robber is not allowed a defense that he was stealing money for his starving children, even if he was," said Rory Little, a Hastings College of the Law professor. ..."

This is MOT a good anology... He was growing FOR a state entity, complying with state laws... he was not ROBBING anyone. I used MJ in the past, and do not care to again, but I think it should be decriminalized. There would be NO profit for the drug dealers if it was decriminalized, because you can grow it yourself so easy. I am not say SUPPORT its use, I just say stop making it a crime to use it, unless you are driving while impaired or such...

[MindBender26]

These are simply drug pushers in three piece suits, etc.

Whenever they make teir “states’ rights” argument, they are using the same logic and reasoning the Ku Klux Klan used 50 years ago to keep Black children out of school in the segregated South.

White sheeted night riders, George Wallace and Ed Rosenthal, great pair.

Rather than killing only Black Southern children with billy clubs, bullwhips and bombs in Birmingham churches, these new drug gangsters want to poison all our kids slowly so they can buy another Rolex, sawed off shotgun or stretch limousine.

[Lexington Green]

... Ed took a ride on the Kangaroo Railroad.... he's lucky he wasn't visited by the Government Death Squads

[dirtboy]

"A bank robber is not allowed a defense that he was stealing money for his starving children, even if he was," said Rory Little, a Hastings College of the Law professor.

A court should allow admission that the defendent was in compliance with state law and operating with the supervision of county authorities in compliance with state law. But the feds can't have those uppity states asserting their 10th Amendment rights now, can they? So the entire concept must be squelched.

[MrLeRoy]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/831245/posts

Did a top DEA agent tell local medical marijuana advocates they would be left alone by the feds? The question was the center of legal skirmishing Monday, as lawyers for marijuana guru Ed Rosenthal filed an appeal in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals trying to force Judge Charles Breyer to allow testimony from Mary Pat Jacobs, a key defense witness. Rosenthal faces up to life in prison for cultivating marijuana and conspiracy.

In a sworn affidavit, Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana spokeswoman Mary Pat Jacobs testified that she had several conversations about medical marijuana with Drug Enforcement Administration Supervisor Mike Heald.

During those conversations, Heald stated, "the DEA was not interested in interfering" with the implementation of Proposition 215, the medical marijuana law passed by California voters in 1996, according to Jacobs' Jan. 16 testimony.

She also said she regularly discussed Heald's alleged comments with Rosenthal, leaving the pot advocate and writer with the impression that he was on solid legal ground in experimenting with the growth of different types of cannabis.

Breyer -- who has said that medicinal marijuana is not relevant to Rosenthal's drug cultivation case -- has instructed the jury to ignore any testimony touching on the medical uses of the marijuana Rosenthal has openly admitted to growing.

[society-by-contract]

Were I on the jury, I would have invoked my 1,000 year old common law right to judge the facts of the case, *as well as the law itself* and nullified by voting not guilty.

http://www.fija.org

Prohibitionists are tyrants. By the way, Ed helped me get through school with no Fedgov debt.

[Protagoras]

It's only a matter of time before the citizens take matters into their own hands via jury nullification as they did in the first prohibition.

If I was on this jury, it would have been hung at best.

[an amused spectator]

Jurors said they felt cheated because they weren't allowed to hear that Rosenthal supplied Oakland's medical marijuana program, an outgrowth of a 1996 medical marijuana initiative that conflicts with federal law.

The little stage play that is the American "justice" system, the ever-growing joke where the facts ain't the facts if one of the lawyers can suppress them.

What a mockery.

[Roscoe]

I suspect the former jurors are being misled by the marijuana evangelists now. Proposition 215 did NOT purport to supercede federal law and it contained NO provision for Oakland to modify it.

[tdadams]

The conduct of the court in this case is egregious. They clearly made a deliberate effort to misrepresent the defendant and mislead the jury as to his motives. This is prima facie proof that he did not get a fair trail and his conviction should be overturned.

The behavior of this court makes third world kangaroo courts seem fair by comparison. This should not happen in America.

[MEGoody]

If this guy was truly growing pot for sale to the city for it's legal medical marijuana program, he should get off. If the program is illegal, then the feds should go after the city, not this guy.

[MEGoody]

If this guy was truly growing pot for sale to the city for it's legal medical marijuana program, he should get off. If the program is illegal, then the feds should go after the city, not this guy. (I do think the guy not only grows dope, but is a dope, but that is beside the point.)