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Title: Eager To Imprison Medical Marijuana Users, Prosecutors Hide The Truth From Jurors
Source:
Forbes
URL Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobsu ... nt-the-jury-to-hear-the-truth/
Published: Jan 29, 2015
Author: Jacob Sullum
Post Date: 2015-01-30 09:17:11 by Deckard
Keywords: None
Views: 6291
Comments: 37
Imagine you are a juror in the federal trial of five people charged with growing and distributing marijuana in northeastern Washington. The prosecution cannot present any direct evidence that the defendants sold marijuana to anyone, and the defendants say they were growing all 74 plants for their own personal use. A bit of arithmetic reveals that the total number of plants comes to just under 15 per defendant, which happens to be the presumptive limit for patients under Washington’s medical marijuana law. Yet no one says anything about medical marijuana during the trial. What you don’t realize is that the defense attorneys have been forbidden to discuss their clients’ reliance on Washington’s law, since federal law bans marijuana for all purposes. You also do not realize that each of the defendants faces at least 10 years in federal prison, because their lawyers are not allowed to talk about that either. And despite your suspicion that the defendants were growing marijuana for medical use, you are told that your job is to determine whether they violated federal law, which they undeniably did. That is the situation jurors will confront when they sit down to hear the evidence against the Kettle Falls Five, whose trial is scheduled to begin on February 23 in Spokane. Larry Harvey and his co-defendants—his wife, Rhonda Firestack-Harvey; Rhonda’s son, Rolland Gregg; his wife, Michelle Gregg; and a family friend, Jason Zucker—are gambling that at least one juror will figure out what is really going on and vote for acquittal in the interest of justice, federal law be damned. That is their only hope of avoiding prison unless a federal judge agrees with defense attorneys that the prosecution is barred by a spending restriction Congress enacted last month or the feds suddenly decide to drop a case they have doggedly and inexplicably pursued since August 2012. On the face of it, the Kettle Falls Five case defies Justice Department policy. Since 2009 the DOJ has been saying that prosecuting patients who use marijuana in compliance with state law “is unlikely to be an efficient use of limited federal resources.” Deputy Attorney General James Cole confirmed that policy in an August 2013 memo that extended the department’s forbearance to state-licensed suppliers of recreational marijuana, provided their activities do not implicate “federal enforcement priorities.” As a result of this policy, businesses growing far more than 74 plants operate openly throughout Washington, including the very city where Harvey et al. are to be tried, without federal interference. That situation makes the feds’ persistent pursuit of the Kettle Falls Five all the more puzzling. By federal standards, this would be a small-time case even if the defendants were supplying the black market, and there is no real evidence that they were—no customers, no deliveries, no undercover buys, no neighbors reporting suspicious visitors. All five have medical conditions that their doctors said could be treated with marijuana, including gout, osteoarthritis, wasting syndrome, and chronic pain from severe back injuries. They made no attempt to hide their plants, which they grew outside the Harveys’ house in a garden marked by flags bearing the green-cross symbol for medical marijuana. They clearly strove to stay within the state’s presumptive limit of 15 plants per patient, although Washington’s law would have allowed them to argue that more was medically necessary. Harvey et al.’s lawyers, in a February 2014 letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, said Michael Ormsby, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Washington, was unimpressed by the evidence of medical use. “In a meeting with the United States Attorney in late 2012,” they wrote, “a member of the defense team went to painstaking lengths to explain the exact nature of the defendants’ medical marijuana usage. A dual-board-certified doctor who is internationally recognized as being an expert witness on cannabis as medicine described in detail how the amount and various forms of marijuana seized [are] clearly indicative of patient consumption. Unfortunately, the USAO insists on proceeding with this unnecessary indictment at great expense to taxpayers and against the DOJ’s direct orders.” In framing that indictment, prosecutors made sure the defendants would qualify for prison sentences of at least 10 years. Speculating about previous harvests, they charged Harvey et al. with growing a total of at least 100 plants, which triggers a five-year mandatory minimum. They also noted that the Harveys, like many people in eastern Washington, had guns in their house, which according to the government means the defendants possessed firearms “in furtherance of” a drug trafficking crime. That qualifies them for another five years, and the two sentences must be served consecutively. Three other charges in the indictment—conspiracy to grow marijuana, distribution of marijuana, and “maintaining a place…for the purpose of manufacturing, distributing, and using marijuana”—could make the defendants’ sentences even longer. 
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#4. To: Deckard (#0)
But, but ... they're doing it!
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Top • Page Up • Full Thread • Page Down • Bottom/Latest"As a result of this policy, businesses growing far more than 74 plants operate openly throughout Washington"
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