Guilty Verdict In on Rosenthal Case

Do you suppose Ed Rosenthal and too many other supporters of Prop 215 voted for anti-Prop 215 Democrats Senator Dianne Feinstein, and "no position" Democrats Senator Barbara Boxer, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Tom Lantos, ad nauseum? Why is it that we have no federal medical marijuana law if all these "good liberals" are sitting in office, unless, of course, they are not liberal at all, but stinking fascists just like the Republicans?

I strongly urge all remaining Democrat-Republicans who suppot Prop 215 to change their party registration to a pro-prop 215 party like the Green Party or simply register "decline to state," as this writer is registered. also strongly the Green Party and non-party members to run for federal office on a prop Prop 215 platfrom. DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY CANDIDATE AT ANY LEVEL OF OFFICE WHO SUPPORTS THE DRUG WARS!

ONLY VOTE FOR CANDIDATES WHO SUPPORT PROP 215, AND BETTER YET, LEGALIZING ALL THE DRUGS. The drug issue is a healthcare issue, not a crime issue. If people want to put junk in their bodies (which they do everytime they eat McDonald's junk food), that is their decision. Legalizing these drugs will:
(1) Eliminate the profitability of selling these drugs and thus removes them from the street;
(2) Puts an end to the phony "drug wars" which are simply prison-filling rackets to keep the hoodlum sector of the workingclass employed and the poor workingclass communities in a constant state of police terror;
(3) Put the drug issue in the healthcare department, where it belongs. Anyone who has an addiction problem should be treated for that addiction. If anyone has a need for a drug, and it can be proven to have medicinal value, such as marijuana, they should be able to receive it, free of police state terror.
(4) Force the government to provide a serious jobs program with all the money saved by shutting down police departments and prisons no longer needed as the "drug wars" will cease to exist.

...that would cut out an enormous amout of profit
from the real drug cartels (CIA) and would endanger
wall street investments.

Hey you IMC folk.
What's wrong with your date & time?

Ed Rosenthal's representative is that good pro-Israel, anti-separation of Church & State Democrat, Congressperson Barbara Lee of Berkeley-Oakland. She has not been introducing federal medical marijuana legislation. Perhaps it is because she is too busy voting for the resolution in support of the bloodthirsty Nazi-US puppet of Israel, Ariel Sharon; the resolution condemning the excellent 9th Circuit decision to toss the reactionary pledge of allegiance because it violates the First Amendment mandated separation of Church and State (and the proudly defended her violation of her oath of office by saying she puts her religion first!), and for money for Israel to murder the Palestinians and for money for the US military to bomb Aftghanistan.

Really now, people, do not wait any longer for anymore witchhunting on the part of the fascist federal government. We cannot wait for the middle class people who usually sit on juries to stop being "Good Germans" and vote Not Guilty, because Ed Rosenthal is certainly NOT GUILTY.

You must, now, change your party registration to either the Green Party or decline to state and NEVER, EVER vote for any Democrat or Republican at an y level of government as not one of their federal legislators is doing anything to stop this modern version of the Salem witchhunt.

When you sit on juries, you must vote NOT GUILTY, for that is how the Salem witchhunts ended.

And, please do us all a favor and stop voting for Barbara Lee and stop promoting her anywhere. Those of us who know her reactionary record find it insulting.

Free Ed Rosenthal! Legalize all drugs! Stop the drug wars! Abolish prisons!

that's right--there is some logic to this disorder!!!

Ed Rosenthal Trial Pic's and News Articles. Medical cannabis. Photos and news article links have been compiled by FoM of CannabisNews.com. The news article links are at the bottom.
http://www.indybay.org/news/2003/02/1569354.php

For additional article links to come you can go here: http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/trialpics.htm

Hundreds of articles at both corporate and non-corporate news sources. For now the link below pulls up hundreds of articles. Please pass on the link. Search shortcut for around 4000 Google News sites:
http://google.com/news?q=ed+rosenthal

\"The jury\'s hands were tied...,\" YES, BUT ONLY BY IGNORANCE! Everyone reading this who thinks this is a gross miscarriage of justice needs to learn the meaning of the following words: JURY NULLIFICATION. Please read the link provided: http://www.fija.org

Hopefully the links will be clickable in this comment. If not, then copy and paste them into your browser address window.

Ed Rosenthal's Medicinal Cannabis News Articles & Trial Pictures. Compiled by FoM of CannabisNews.com. The news article links are at the bottom.
http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/trialpics.htm

Hundreds of articles at both corporate and non-corporate news sources. For now the link below pulls up hundreds of articles. Please pass on the link. Search shortcut for around 4000 Google News sites:
http://google.com/news?q=ed+rosenthal

This atrocity is on a scale that is being perpetuated to greater depths. Our greatest respects to you Mr. Rosenthal.

Damn anyone who would condemn that man. We live in a time of great atrocity and oppression by government, manifested and hidden through a myriad of fake democracy.

Mr. Rosenthal will be treated as a casualty of war. A prisoner of war's welcome will be entertained when he is freed from the grips of our great oppressors...our fake democracies, their myriad of corruption in bureaucracy, and the howling pain of our people in their prisons.

This is no game. The line has been drawn four times. Therefore as a navigator fixes the mark, so have we at the Mobile Audit Club.

There is a way out but we must act and demand the "Blueprint To Democracy" be followed. It is on the Observations link at the homepage of the site linked to this message from the Village of the Damned, the SE US, world capital of prisons, outside of California, of course.

It appears that the clocks are going back in time not only in this news thread, but in our real thread. Today is Monday February 3, 2003 C.E., CST. and the pics to the dieing soldier, and the astronauts smeared in a historic sky are on the same date of this post.

Sheeba must be webmaster tonight. "Nice sheen dude" "Beach day, huh!"

Prop 215, the medical marijuana initiative, not only passed with 55.6% of the vote in the November 1996 election, with what is considered a respectable and safe majority of 5,382,915 votes, but it passed in conservative San Diego and Orange Counties as well as San Francisco County, which led the state with 78% Yes on Prop 215. The medical community strongly supported the Yes on Prop 215 campaign, and in case all the politicans forgot, medical doctors, nurses and medical technicians are all VOTERS. The vote was so clearly supportive of Prop 215 in the majority of California counties that it is clear that:

(1) Gov Gray Davis & Senators Feinstein & Boxer, all opponents of Prop 215, should resign immediately a they do not represent California;

(2) Prop 215 was not supported by a fringe element, but BY THE MAINSTREAM; and

(3) The judge should issue a Judgment Notwithstanding the Verdict declaring Ed Rosenthal NOT GUILTY.

Those of you attending the court session on 2/4/03 and working on the appeal, might want to look at the Secretary of State's website on this election, which has an excellent color map with vote percentages for each of the 58 California counties. See http://vote96.ss.ca.gov/Vote96/html/vote/prop/prop-215.961218083528.html

Anything that passes with at least 60% of the vote is considered a landslide approval. There were many counties that far exceeded the landslide.

The HONOR ROLL voting at least 60% Yes on Prop 215 are:
San Francisco 78%
Marin 73%
Santa Cruz 73%
Alameda 70%
Sonoma 69%
San Mateo 66%
Santa Clara 64%
Mendocino 64%
Contra Costa 63%

Those counties which are also on the HONOR ROLL which voted 50-60% were:
Napa 59%
Monterey 59%
Yolo 58%
Humboldt 57%
San Benito 57%
Mono 57%
Alpine 56%
Los Angeles 55%
Solano 55%
Sacramento 53%
San Diego 52%
Santa Barbara 52%
Lake 52%
Nevada 52%
Ventura 51%
Orange 51%
El Dorado 51%
Trinity 50%

NPR's "All Things Considered" reported this evening (Tuesday, Feb. 4) that juror's in Ed's trial would have voted for acquittal if they had only known he did it to supply medical needs. Is there any more word on this that anyone at SF IMC knows about in this latest twist in the travesty of justice that occurred in Ed's trial?

Solidarity with Ed.
anti-spam

Answered my own question. Here is what seems to be the source of the report on NPR.
anti-spam

Jurors Denounce Their Own Verdict

By Ann Harrison, AlterNet
February 3, 2003

After she and her fellow jurors found Ed Rosenthal guilty of federal marijuana cultivation and conspiracy charges in San Francisco last week, Marney Craig discovered that that she had made a terrible mistake.

Instead of the "businessman" she thought she had convicted, Craig learned that Rosenthal, was, in fact, a widely published marijuana advocate who had been asked to grow medical cannabis for critically ill patients. The judge had kept this information from jurors, because Rosenthal was tried under federal drug laws that do not recognize the medicinal use of marijuana.

"What happened was a travesty and it's unbelievable, unbelievable that this man was convicted. I am just devastated," said Craig. "We made a terrible mistake and he should not be going to prison for this."

Craig is not alone in her remorse. Five other jurors, including the jury foreman, are expected to join Craig to denounce the verdict in a joint press conference this week. The event will take place immediately after a hearing to determine whether prosecutors will succeed in revoking Rosenthal's $200,000 cash bond and send him to jail until sentencing on June 4. Attorneys for Rosenthal, who is facing five to 20 years in prison, say they will ask an appeals court for a new trial.

"I was not allowed to tell my story," said Rosenthal. "If the jury had been allowed to hear the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, I would have been acquitted."

Juror Debra DeMartini said she was distressed to discover that Rosenthal had been deputized by the city of Oakland, California to grow marijuana for its medical cannabis program. Oakland city officials testified during pre-trail hearings that they had tried to reconcile the conflict between the federal Controlled Substances Act, which bans all marijuana cultivation, and California's Compassionate Use Act (Prop. 215) which permits patients to possess, consume and grow their own medical cannabis.

In an effort to provide medical cannabis to patients who could not grow their own, the city granted Rosenthal immunity from prosecution under a section of the Controlled Substances Act. But U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer halted every attempt by the defense team to directly tell jurors for whom Rosenthal's marijuana was being grown and blocked city officials from explaining Rosenthal's deputization during the trial.

"If I had known that he was told he could grow this by the city, that would have raised some questions for me in front of the judge," said DeMartini. "It's a waste of taxpayer money to bring these cases and prosecute people."

Craig sobbed as she recounted her growing concern during the trial that Judge Breyer was withholding critical information. Craig said she became alarmed when the judge took over questioning of the witnesses, when he repeatedly cut off the defense attorney, and when she saw protest signs in front of the courthouse suggesting that jurors were not fully informed.

"The more information we get, the more we realize how manipulated and controlled the whole situation was, and that we were pawns in this much larger game," says Craig. "As residents, we voted to legalize medical marijuana and now we are forced to sit here and not take any of this into consideration?

"In some sense it is a major setback, and in another it is a call to arms,"said Jeff Jones, executive director of the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, one of the medical marijuana clubs that Rosenthal was growing for.

Rosenthal's trail was attended by a number of medical marijuana patients, many of whom wept when the verdict was announced. Nicholas Feldman, a quadrapalegic cerebral palsy patient who says he smokes medical cannabis to ease the pain and spasticity in his limbs, was one of several people who arrived in court in a wheelchair. "How can they do this to us? People are in pain and it means a lot to us as citizens not to see a person suffer." said Feldman. "I stand here to day for people who could end up in jail for helping to ease my pain."

Despite the emotion surrounding the case, some jurors felt that they had no choice but to follow Judge Breyer's instructions, based on the evidence in front of them. DEA agents testified that they seized thousands of marijuana plants and cuttings at a San Francisco medical marijuana club, and at an Oakland warehouse owned by Rosenthal. But jurors said they distrusted the testimony and based their convictions on video tapes of the marijuana grow sites. They found that Rosenthal conspired with others at the club to to grow not more than 1,000 marijuana plants, as the prosecutor claimed, but more than 100 marijuana plants, a fact which will affect Rosenthal's sentencing. Jurors also found him guilty of growing more than 100 plants at the warehouse and maintaining a place to grow marijuana.

Shortly after the verdict was read, juror Bill Zemke walked solemnly from the courthouse past past two medical marijuana patients who sat weeping. "We considered the evidence in the case, the evidence that we could review, it was not an easy decision," said Zemke evenly. [Medical cannabis] was in the back of everyone's mind, a factor in the case, but it was not in the evidence in this case."

"We have state's rights," shouted the disconsolate patient, "you can't lock all of us up."

Jurors Have Power But Not The City

Jury foreman Charles Sackett agreed with Zemke that jurors came to the only conclusion that they could have, given the information they were provided. But he said he supports medical marijuana and hopes Rosenthal will win his appeal. "The medical issue was not introduced into the court proceedings, it was never an issue for us," said Sackett. "We weren't allowed to discuss it amongst ourselves, ever."

Sackett says he's now intrigued by the idea of jury nullification, which he says none of the jurors was aware of. Jury nullification is a legal principal which allows the jury to find a defendant innocent if the law itself is unjust or unjust in a particular application. Would jurors have taken the option of jury nullification in Rosenthal's case? "It would be speculation on my part, but it's very possible; dare I say, probable," says Sackett. "I think jury nullification is going to be part of the answer regarding states' rights in future cases."

Down at San Francisco City Hall, Matt Gonzalez, president of the city's Board of Supervisors, or city council, said jurors in cases like Rosenthal's should know that they can simply refuse to follow federal law. "The judge is not giving the jury any space, whatsoever, to engage in what has been an extremely long tradition in common law as it relates to jury nullification," said Gonzalez.

Craig said she believed that if she had taken a stand during deliberations and said the federal law was wrong, she would have been removed from the jury. "I didn't know what would happen to us if we didn't follow the rules, how much trouble I would get into," said Craig. "I was totally intimidated into going along with the verdict because I didn't see any other way."

San Francisco public defender Jeff Adachi noted that there have been a number of decisions involving jury nullification in which judges have removed jurors who have refused to convict. But he said a jury instruction that permitted this was ruled to be unconstitutional in the last year. "Over the past 20 years, there has been a movement to limit the power of the jury by keeping the jury ignorant of the facts," said Adachi. "Jury nullification is a constitutional right that every individual person who is called for jury duty possesses, and unless we appreciate that right, we will lose it because the courts will take it from us."

In the meantime, Adachi warned that Rosenthal's conviction will encourage federal authorities to arrest more medical cannabis growers and distributors. "The kind of prosecution that we are seeing in the Rosenthal case could be multiplied 50 or 100 times over in the next year or two here," said Adachi.

Despite the warning of coming prosecutions, Rosenthal's attorney Bill Simpich noted that city officials were absent during Rosenthal's trial. While Prop. 215 passed by 78 percent in San Francisco, he said officials have been slow to comply with a recent ballot initiative ordering them to investigate a city-run medical cannabis growing and distribution system.

"'The single biggest thing that hurt us is that we did not have the cities of San Francisco and Oakland by our side," said Simpich. "They were not there and if they had been there we would have won. They made a mistake and the time to correct it is now."

Simpich is calling for California cities and counties to continue immunizing medical cannabis caregivers because the judge's condemnation of this tactic applies only to those cases in front of him. "I'd love to get deputized," said Bob Martin, proprietor of the San Francisco's Compassion and Care Center medical marijuana club. "We are scared every day."

Gonzales says he is still meeting with officials and legal advisers to review the city's options. DEA spokesman Richard Meyer has made it clear that any San Francisco city authority involved growing or distributing medical marijuana will be subject to arrest and property forfeiture.

Craig said she upheld federal law and convicted Rosenthal because she felt she didn't have any choice. But she says that following instructions was no excuse for not acting on her conscience and refusing to convict a medical marijuana grower. "Anyone who said I was just following orders ... well yeah, we just wiped out this village in Viet Nam, we were just following orders, or the Europeans turning away when the Jews were taken away by the Nazis. We are no better than that if we can't take a stand for what we believe in," said Craig.

"I feel like if I had done something in this trial, even if I had been thrown off the jury, it would have made a difference because it would have been on the record that someone said 'No,' and that is something I have to live with."


© 2003 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15093
http://www.alternet.org/

a new trial under the same court of law will not change anything. Maybe if the jury were allowed to know about california state law and Ed's compliance of it. Or the fact that a jury is allowed to do whatever they please even if it is in conflict with federal law.
However, a new trail under the same federal law won't change anything for it is very evident that he violated fed law. The feds should have looked the other way but instead they have turned this into a states right issue that will prolly be in the courts for years.
Protest for state's rights not a new trail.

I am severly dismayed that the Judge and the prosecutor involved in the Ed Rosenthal case went to such extremes to prevent him from getting a fair trial. To so viciously attack the rights of a fellow human being is something that you would expect to see in animals. Both men should be impeached and removed from their positions.

2nd Annual Drug War Vigil Film Festival by the Drug War Vigil Memorial Group (14 Mar, 2003) Entries must be registered by March 14, 2003 The Drug War Vigil Memorial Group is a social justice think tank that was founded in the fall of 2000. We are five medical cannabis users, dedicated to ending the War on Drugs. We as a group collectively recognize that the militarization of this medical issue and the criminalization of the chronically sick, terminally ill and chemically dependent has resulted in the needless loss of human life, and that this is the true crime. We create and promote social justice journalism and the 2002 Cannabis Culture Toker's Bowl Drug War Vigil Film Festival was one such example. We are proud to announce the 2nd Annual Drug War Vigil Film Festival to be hosted again in May 2003. Our group is honored to be affiliated with this world-class event and thank Marc Emery for his extraordinary activism in action in support of this event. Send us your films of 30 mins or less on any topic related to cannabis, drugs and the drug war. Submitted only in plain old VHS tape or Hi-8 or digital 8. The films will be screened and judged by participants at the Cannabis Culture Toker's Bowl May 1-4 2003, in Vancouver, BC. The film chosen for first place will receive a Grand Prize of $2000 US. Cash prizes totalling $2700 US will be awarded for the top four runner-up films. Other runners-up shown on pot-tv.net will receive honorariums of up to $250.00 US. You must register your film for entry by March 14, 2003 to be eligible. We will need to receive the finished film by April 14, 2003. For more information, email dwvinfo@netscape.net Send your entry in to: D.W.V. c/o BCMP Bookshop 307 W Hastings Vancouver, B.C. V6B 1H6 CANADA