Code Orange: The Truth is Getting Out!

It was big news.

Five of twelve federal jurors who found Ed Rosenthal guilty of marijuana charges on January 31 appeared publicly to say they recanted their guilty verdict and felt "duped" by the federal judge who instructed them during the trial. Rosenthal, a botanist and internationally known author of books on growing marijuana, faces 10 years to life in federal prison for growing and distributing clones--starter plants--to Californians with doctors' recommendations to use marijuana as medicine.

Although the voters of California voted in 1996 to allow patients to possess and grow their own medical marijuana, federal law doesn't recognize the exemption, and in a small but growing number of cases the federal government is going after Californians who are exercising their state's rights. By judge's order, the jury in the Rosenthal trial wasn't told was that his operation was sanctioned by the City of Oakland, nor was any mention of marijuana as a medicine permitted at the trial. It's the kind of thing that lead Bill Maher to liken such federal trials to Stalinist show trials.

The New York Times ran an op-ed decrying Rosenthal's conviction on February 4 and covered the jurors' defection the following day; that night Rosenthal and several jurors were interviewed on CNN by Connie Chung. Two days later, on February 7, the national news story suddenly shifted. It was Code Orange! The public had to be informed, right away, about buying duct tape and plastic sheeting. The conceivable diversion worked, even though the precaution shortly became a joke.

After the Rosenthal trial, outraged commentators had begun speaking out about fully informed juries, another angle the government would like to squelch. Judge Charles Breyer's final words to the Rosenthal's jury were: "You cannot substitute your sense of justice for your duty to follow the law." However, it was once required that judges inform jurors of their right and duty to judge the law itself, using their own consciences. Juries' negation of bad laws go back as far as William Penn's 1670 trial for handing out Quaker literature in England. A jury refused to convict him and was sent to jail with only bread and water, but held fast and Penn was freed. Alcohol prohibition began to break down when juries started refusing to convict offenders, and juries also lawfully refused to convict newspaper reporters under the Alien and Sedition Act and African-Americans for violation of the Fugitive Slave Act.

Last week while the national focus was on the possible capture of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, our current federal government was working to imprison another Oakland medical marijuana activist, Jeff Jones, for spreading such truths. Jones was charged with jury tampering for handing out literature about fully informed juries at the trial of Brian Epis, a medical marijuana patient and provider who is serving a 10-year federal sentence after another of Ashcroft's show trials. In a bizarre move, Jones was sentenced to a three-month federal prison term but then let off on probation a few days later. In announcing his change of heart, US Magistrate Judge Peter Nowinski noted that his past week had been spent sentencing violent criminals, and said after thinking long and hard about it, "I don't think Mr. Jones is a candidate to have a bunk bed with any of them." Perhaps Nowinski's conscience set in when he considered the fate that the young and handsome Jones could suffer behind bars. Since some 60% of federal prisoners are serving time on non-violent drug charges, one wonders how many other young men weren't as lucky as Jones.

The feds also took time off from their War on Terrorism in the last few weeks to conduct a mass nationwide arrest of manufacturers of pipes and bongs that may be used for smoking marijuana. How many police were required to investigate and arrest the 55 bongo-terrorists? "Including federal, state and local officials, our estimate is about 1,200 were involved, just on that day," Drug Enforcement Agency spokesman Will Glaspy told Scripps-Howard news. Among them, "easily hundreds" of U.S. agents were deployed, "about 103 U.S. Marshals alone," Justice spokesman Drew Wade added. "It was just exhaustive."

In Arcata, a small town in California's north coast, forty people are out of work and their health benefits lost because of the bust of the 101 Glass company. Meanwhile, in Humboldt county where Arcata sits, logging activities that destroy habitat and the once-thriving fishing industry are permitted by a federal government that is rapidly expanding old-growth timber harvesting in national parks. The county is so impoverished that it has ended mental health services for children, and last week Southern Humboldt school board voted to close two schools and lay off nine teachers.

Though the beating of the war drum has nearly drowned out the news, recent actions of locally elected officials stand in stark contrast to their federal counterparts. On February 25, Humboldt county District Attorney Paul Gallegos filed suit against the Pacific Lumber company, alleging fraud in securing timber harvest plans and asking for $250 million in damages. A few days later, California Attorney General Bill Lockyer joined 10 other states in a lawsuit against the EPA, charging that the new federal "Clear Skies" plan endangers California's air quality. Lockyer followed up on March 3 by joining with California Governor Gray Davis to file a 1,000 page report with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission documenting that 85 percent of the state's energy costs during the 2000-2001 power crisis were influenced by illegal market behavior by dozens of power providers. The report alleges that some companies destroyed documents to hide unscrupulous business practices that led to at least $7.5 billion in excess costs that resulted in a gutting of the state's education budget, among other horrors.

Attorney General Lockyer, upon filing his suit against the EPA, said, "I would rather spend our limited budget suing a polluter than suing the federal government. But, unfortunately, the two are synonymous these days." The US government has also become synonymous with conducting or condoning torture, spying on UN representatives (not to mention its own people), and allowing corporations to plunder and pillage worldwide. As the men who claim leadership of this country prepare to send tens of thousands of troops into a land that was once the Garden of Eden and is now, by man's hand, a desolate wasteland, we can no longer allow diversionary tactics like the war on consciousness to blind us to the truth.