This story caught my attention. They, most likely, will end up homeless and will be tortured by their local homeless concentration camp (government homeless services). All to force this man to take synthetic heroin pain-killers...
The Visalia Times-Delta | April 9, 2009
Visalia man arrested on pot charges released
Visalian was growing pot to treat pain from arthritis
BY DAVID CASTELLON
dcastell@visalia.gan nett.com
A week and a half after being released from jail, Richard Daleman still was trying to adjust to freedom after a jury found him not guilty of drug charges.
But relief isn't what the 61-year-old man was feeling as he walked around his home north of Visalia. Daleman expressed anger and confusion over his arrest and trial for growing and selling marijuana even though a doctor had recommended that he grow and use the drug to treat his chronic pain.
He had renewed his medical marijuana identification card with the Tulare County Office of Health and Human Services the morning of Dec. 16. Afterward, he came home to find several county sheriff's cars parked in front of his home.
Deputies serving a search warrant reported finding 12.3 pounds of processed marijuana in a variety of jars and large bags that Tulare County prosecutors would bring into court during Daleman's March trial.
He was charged with two counts each of possessing marijuana for sale and cultivating marijuana.
Nothing to hide
Deputies had paid an earlier visit in October.
Daleman not only admitted growing the plants, he showed deputies the marijuana he'd recently harvested in his backyard garden, along with several new plants he had beneath grow-lights in a trailer. He was comfortable doing so because in 1996, California voters passed the Compassionate Use of Marijuana Act, which allows those with a doctor's recommendation to possess and grow marijuana.
"I thought I was finally doing something right," he said.
After the December arrest, Daleman would stay in jail — with the exception of a two-day release and re-arrest because of a clerical error in the county's jail system — until the end of his trial in March.
Why he was arrested and tried remains unclear to Daleman, who grew marijuana to treat pain from arthritis in his knees and old injuries to his shoulder and ankle.
Unlike some patients, Daleman didn't smoke the drugs. Instead, he processed it so he could mix it with food or take it in other forms, including as a suppository.
"I didn't use it like drug addicts," he said.
Daleman's Tulare County public defender, Andy Rubinger, said his client was always innocent of the charges.
"He had two recommendations from two separate doctors giving him recommendations to ingest, grow and consume marijuana," Rubinger said.
Daleman was charged with selling marijuana even though sheriff's detectives never offered evidence of any sales, he said.
"They just said he had too much of it [so] he must be a drug dealer," Rubinger said.
Apparently, a jury agreed with Rubinger's arguments. But the lawyer said it was Daleman's sincerity on the witness stand that won the case.
Problems far from over
Daleman can't afford standard pain medicines. Judge Darryl Ferguson ordered that 6 pounds of the confiscated marijuana be returned, Daleman said, but the Tulare County District Attorney's Office has blocked his attempts to get it back. All he can afford now is aspirin — not for pain, but because he fears he might suffer a heart attack because of high blood pressure he believes he developed over the stress of being arrested and jailed.
Prosecutors said they aren't trying to keep Daleman from the medication to which he's entitled.
"We're happy to follow whatever the judge orders," Assistant District Attorney Don Gallian said. "We'll be happy to give him back the 6 pounds."
The problem, he said, is that Ferguson ordered that "up to" 6 pounds be returned.
"The defense wants us to pick the best of the 6 pounds," Gallian said. "And we don't do stuff like that."
A hearing is set for April 15 to decide the matter.
The government's take
Gallian said he wouldn't comment on why his office prosecuted Daleman despite the doctor's recommendation.
"I really can't go into that because Mr. Daleman has been found not guilty," he said. "We review the facts of the case and we base our decision on what has been presented to us."
The Tulare County Sheriff's Department did not respond Wednesday to a request to discuss cases involving medical marijuana. Daleman said he not only suffers stress and health problems from his time in jail, but also came home to find a foreclosure notice had been issued against his house. He had made a living doing work on building custom cars as well as breeding and selling parrots, but his wife had to sell a large number of his birds at drastically reduced prices in order to make ends meet while he was in jail.
Now, Daleman said, he's trying to negotiate with his lender to save his home.
"I want to sue [the sheriff's department]," he said.
palmspringsbum :: View topic - California, Tulare
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