DdC

When the jurors who last week convicted medical-marijuana cultivator Ed Rosenthal later expressed disgust with their own ruling, I actually yelled at my computer: "Well then why didn't you take Nancy Reagan's advice and just say no?"

The trial was a joke from the start. Because Rosenthal was being tried under federal law, not California's, the judge forbade any discussion of the Golden State's medical marijuana statute or the fact that Rosenthal was growing the pot with the special sanction of the city of Oakland. As a result, the jury was not allowed to consider any such information.

With no possible defense left, Rosenthal's attorney, Robert Eye, made what the Sacramento Bee called "a thinly veiled plea for jury nullification."

"Please do justice," he said. "We don't ask you to check your common sense of justice at the door when you judge this case. I can only hope there are those of you whose sense of justice …"

Jumping on Eye, the judge interrupted and told the jury, "It's not your determination whether a law is just or unjust. That can't be your task." Going further, according to jurywoman Marney Craig, the judge instructed, "You cannot substitute your sense of justice … for your duty to follow the law."

The judge is wrong.

"If the jury feels the law is unjust," according to the Fourth Circuit in the 1969 case U.S. v. Moylan, "we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence. … If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust … the jury has the power to acquit …" (emphasis added).

Some buck at the notion of jury nullification. They see it as going against the rule of law – a dozen anarchists passing judgment on a whim. Endowed with such power and the guilty will walk free because a chili onion supreme didn't sit well in the stomach of the jury foreman.

Perhaps – but the founders didn't see it that way.

"I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution," said Thomas Jefferson in a 1789 letter to Thomas Paine. His comments presuppose laws which go above and beyond the national charter (such as drug prohibition today) and the jury's vital role in seeing that no citizens are harmed by such tyrannical legislation.

John Adams, the second American president, sang from the same hymnal. "It is not only [the juror's] right, but his duty," he said in 1771, "to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, though in direct opposition to the direction of the court."

Likewise, in an 1804 libel case, Alexander Hamilton argued that "the jury have an undoubted right to give a general verdict, which decides both law and fact."

"This distribution of power, by which the court and jury mutually assist, and mutually check each other," Hamilton continued, "seems to be the safest, and consequently the wisest arrangement, in respect to the trial of crimes. ... To judge accurately of motives and intentions, does not require a master's skill in the science of law. It depends more on a knowledge of the passions, and of the springs of human action, and may be the lot of ordinary experience and sagacity."

In other words, the people are deemed sensible enough to decide when one of their fellows is getting the shaft from an unjust law. This only makes sense. The people are judged sensible enough to elect legislators in the first place. If things go awry after the ballot box, the jury box provides one more place to check and stop the progress of tyranny by nullifying bad laws passed by those legislators.

Far from viewing nullification as a gateway to random enforcement of law and anarchy, the founders viewed it as an essential tool for combating despotism and preserving liberty – one more method of denying absolute power to any single man or governing body.

What is so striking about nullification and the Rosenthal case in particular is how applicable the reasoning of the founders proves to be. The law violated the consciences of the jurors and was unconstitutional, to boot.

"There is no such thing as medical marijuana," DEA spokesman Richard Meyer told the Associated Press. "We're Americans first, Californians second."

In terms of the law, that is unmitigated bull.

The U.S. Constitution gives the federal government no power to prohibit pot. Article 1, Section 8, provides congressional marching orders on many tasks – banning weed is not one of them. Neither is skirting the 10th Amendment, which specifically holds the duties of the government to what the Constitution permits; all else is the business of the states alone.

Such is the case with California's medpot law, Prop. 215, which permits precisely what Rosenthal was doing.

By nullifying, the jury would have been fulfilling Jefferson's perceived role of the jury, holding the government to "the principles of its constitution."

It's too bad the judge lied to the jury before it found Rosenthal guilty. Had they known better, the jurors may have felt free to follow their own conscience and sense of justice and thus spared an innocent man from a travesty.

Find out more about the rights and duties of juries at Fully Informed Jury Association -- <a href="http://www.fija.org/" target="_blank">http ://www.fija.org/</a>

SPECIAL OFFER

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Joel Miller is managing editor of WND Books. Additionally, he runs his own publishing house, Oakdown.

Juries: Just Say No
<a href="http://www.worldnetdaily.co m/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ ID=30946" target="_blank">http ://www.worldnetdaily.co m/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ ID=30946</A>

Source: WorldNetDaily (US Web)
Author: Joel Miller
Published: February 8, 2003
Contact: letters@worldnetdail y.com
Website: <a href="http://www.worldnetdaily.co m" target="_blank">http ://www.worldnetdaily.co m</A>
Mirror: <a href="http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread15416.shtml" target="_blank">http ://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread15416.shtml</A>

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Robert Anton Wilson On the hotly-debated question of jury nullification, I will not offer my own arguments this time (I have done that often) but will quote some authorities far more learned in Anglo-American law than I am. To wit: <a href="http://www.rawilson.com/prethought.html" target="_blank">http ://www.rawilson.com/prethought.html</a>

Every jury in the land is tampered with and falsely instructed by the judge when it is told that it must accept as the law that which has been given to them, or that they can decide only the facts of the case.
-- Lord Denham, O'Connell v Rex (1884)

The jury has the power to bring in a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts.
-- Justice Holmes, Homing v District of Columbia, 138 (1920)

If a juror accepts as the law that which the judge states then that juror has accepted the exercize of absolute authority of a government employee and has surrendered a power and a right that once was the citizen's safeguard of liberty.
-- Bancroft, History of the Constitution

If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence.
-- 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, US v Moylan, 1969

When a jury acquits a defendent even though he or she clearly appears to be guilty, the acquittal conveys significant information about community attitudes and provides a guideline for future prosecutorial discretion...Because of the high acquittal rate in prohibition cases in the 1920s and early 1930s, prohibition laws could not be enforced. The repeal of these laws is traceable to the refusal of juries to convict those accused of alcohol traffic.
-- Sheflin and Van Dyke, Law and Contemorary Problems, 43, No. 4, 1980

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__________________

DdC

Plastic Sam

Plastic is Crude Oil, Polyester, Rayon, Nylon and Dacron is crude oil. The plastic package wrap going in the trash or the bag that brought it is crude oil. The pesticides sprayed by planes or cans propelled by more chemicals are based with crude oil, same as the herbicides. The magazines covered in it with the fliers and bumper stickers to save the trees. The household items saving time to buy more plastic at the 5 & dime. Convenience like the Styrofoam and disposable bic lighters. Not to mention the gasoline profiting more "ons" like Chevr and MobilExx. Sitting in traffic makes em happy. The crude oil potholes are going somewhere and more will be there in a month or so. The fiberglass bodies or the steel all obtained with machines using crude oil too. The oil is limited and harmful to the elderly and kids when it burns. Hurts the air and the soil and the water and yet we still crave it. Enough to kill or die for in the name of the flag, also made of crude oil or chemical cotton. How many things made of crude oil, the hydrocarbon replacing what we have illegalized?

Carbohydrates make plastic, fuel and clothing and instead of International profits it stays with the farmer. The king of weeds has few others bothering it and bugs don't like it and its roots are so deep it aerates the ground bringing back worms to fertilize crops. Then instead of discarding it into future asthma or landfills its stalks can be worn or burned in the gastank. Its seeds are the most nutritionally balanced of all the foods known and its flowers can heal us from 100's of ailments.

We were told by the founders that we are all individually equal to the right of a life without foreign hostilities attacking. Like Parkinson, MS or Cerebral Palsy. We don't have to abide by bad laws that are lies upon lies with no sense or Ganja victims other than what prohibition provides. We don't need permission to speak out in protest and we don't have to buy a ticket to win back what is stolen. The Colombians or Arctic Indians or Nomads in Iraq shouldn't die from our bullets or Monsanto agents. But this war does profit a few old boys who are reluctant to think of what We the People really means. Then others follow them like a herd of red herrings. And those observing think, are they really worth helping? Throwing drowning victims life preservers and they complain about the color? They toss them aside and then curse at the darkness and plot how to burn some more witches and cleanze this lame Kingdom made of liars and thieves, running around buck naked like in the kids story.

Now we know from Ed and WAMM that Justice is dead, if we had any doubts that is. Now we know the media passes on memo's from politicop pages just following new weird odors. We know we are right and we know it doesn't matter, cause most are still walking around in a thorazine shuffle. Minding our own business to get through the day without some gaspig roadhog raging. $7 billion a year to keep pot from the dying and those who want to smoke it are forced into treatment to raise the statistics or put into cages as corporate slave labor to survive from the hideous conditions. When the states are cutting budgets to pay for the whims and fancies of the few Internationalist.

Oprahs fine tuning yuppies from dealing with life, while outside the studio thousands spare change. How do you snort a coca leaf? Or inject a poppy? Doesn't that take corporate chemicals and more plastic for syringes? Is Bunsons burners factories forfeited as drug paraphernalia? Why aren't Coca Cola drinkers busted for possession? Same vegetable as hemp is to Ganja. Except both cannabis stages are schedule #1 narcotics or hallucinogens depending on the propagandist, though they can't be both according to physics. Thats just a trivial fact like its not addictive or does it lead to man made substances. Unkle Sams growing it and then buying zig zags and rolling it, and shipping it through the U.S. Go Postal Service to 7 remaining citizens. While terrorizing hundreds of thousands of others is status quo for the millennium McCarthy, Waldo. Where is the solidarity among the victims of these thugs? Each fending for themselves in minority, afraid of the stigma invented by the same ones who are harming your children. Jerk and spasm that old red white and blue with the Chinese label using Sadamn's crude. Pretend John Phillip Sousa or Francis Scott Key are in allegiance to sell the Bill of Rights at a White House garage sale. To forward the crude cause and maintain our dysfunctions. I'll be here kicking back, twisting up another.
Peace, Love and Liberty or D.E.A.th & OiNk DeCePtions!
DdC


<a href="http://www.sumeria.net/politics/shadv3.html" target="_blank">http ://www.sumeria.net/politics/shadv3.html</A>

It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it. -- Upton Sinclair, "The Jungle"

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while; in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.
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__________________

Bruceltura

[quote] Good job telling a bunch of pot heads how ed shouldnt be in jail...
woooo...seriously... .<hr></blockquote>

Christ your a dickhead. Will somebody please fuck him so he'll shut the hell up?

I very much appreciate these threads. They provide important information and get people motivated. Of course potheads are going to want to free Ed, but the issue here is not with pothead's opinions but with the very founding beliefs of this democratic justice system. Its about building a bridge so potheads can cross and fix a dark part of this country. Please keep them coming DdC.

__________________
"Don't hail me
An don't idolize the ink
Or I've failed in my attentions
can you find the missing link
Your only validation is in living your own life
Vicarious existence is a fucking waste of time
So I send this song to the offended
I said what I meant and I've never pretended
As so many others do intending just to please
If I damned your point of view
could you turn the other cheek" Guns n fuckin Roses - Dont Damn Me

patriot

Great posts here. GHM just needs to understand that these posts are put here so we "potheads" can send them along all over the internet. We really have very creative writers on this forum. Isn't it amazing how creative "potheads" are? Ed Rosenthal actually was following what the law prescribed. He was doing what the citizens of California had called for. He is no more of a criminal than Robert Downey Jr. Keep up the good work all. The movement has come a long way in the 10 plus years I have been involved.

__________________
A true patriot is always ready to stand up against his own government.

We can't be using plants that come from the Lord for beneficial purposes. Now hurry up, or we'll be late for church.

The bigger the lie, the more people will believe it.-Adolf Hitler

Legalizing marijuana won't grow our economy-Barack Hussein Obama 2009

memogirl

DdC,

Good info. Have you thought about writing a law review article? Someone should.

DdC

County May Join WAMM Suit

The county may decide Tuesday to join a medical marijuana club in suing the federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Supervisor Mardi Wormhoudt has asked the board to approve signing on as plaintiffs with the Wo/Men’s Alliance for Medical Marijuana’s suit against the DEA, to be filed in two weeks. Continued ...
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__________________