Convicted pot grower Rosenthal is spared jail time — Medical marijuana backers claim victory
By Bob Egelko for SF Gate.

…U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer said the “extraordinary, unique circumstances of this case” justified an exemption from the usual sentencing requirements. He imposed the lightest term possible — a day in jail, which Rosenthal served after his February 2002 arrest. He also fined Rosenthal $1, 300 and put him on supervised release for three years with orders not to violate any criminal laws and to submit to searches.
The packed courtroom erupted into cheers and shouts when Breyer announced his sentence. Some spectators wept. Moments later, the information reached a crowd of Rosenthal backers in the hallway, prompting another celebration.
“This is Day 1 in the crusade to bring down the marijuana laws, all the marijuana laws,” Rosenthal proclaimed after the hearing to about 100 jubilant supporters.
Rosenthal, who had denounced Breyer as biased during the trial, was in no mood to praise him after the sentencing.
“He did me no favors,” Rosenthal said. “He made me a felon because he would not allow the jury to hear the whole story. He had an agenda.”
Rosenthal plans to appeal his conviction based on Breyer’s rulings that kept virtually the entire defense case from the jury — that Rosenthal was protected by Proposition 215, the 1996 California initiative that allowed seriously ill patients to obtain marijuana with a doctor’s recommendation, and that the city of Oakland had designated him as an officer to supply marijuana to a patients.

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We worked out the trouble at the Internet Archive and I’m back up and running.
So here are the MP3’s of last week’s interview with Ed Rosenthal on KFOG 104.5 FM, San Francisco:
Ed Rosenthal On KFOG (Hi-Res – MP3 – 5 MB)
Ed Rosenthal On KFOG (Lo-Res – MP3 – 3 MB)

I’ve also got MP3s of this all ready to go, but my archive.org account is hosed for the moment, so I have to wait until it’s late enough in the morning for me to give them a call. (Like 9:00 am maybe? 🙂 Then I’ll have that stuff uploaded for you pronto. (Hopefully by noon.) Luckily, I transcribed the whole thing last night already:
All fixed! Here are the MP3s:
Ed Rosenthal On KFOG (Hi-Res – MP3 – 5 MB)
Ed Rosenthal On KFOG (Lo-Res – MP3 – 3 MB)
Here’s a transcript:
Dave Mori: It’s 7:52 on KFOG. We’ve got the guy himself, Ed
Rosenthal. Thanks for coming on this morning.
KFOG (Dave Mori and two or three others also asking questions):
Now, Ed, I guess the good news is that the New York Times
yesterday came out with an editorial in support of you, several
supporters came out yesterday to join you in the city. The bad
news is you face a long prison term right now.
Ed: That’s right, I’m facing up to 20 years in prison.
KFOG: How do you…I mean…Do you feel you’re going to end
up actually having to serve time?
Ed: I don’t think I’ll serve one day, because I think that I will
be found “not guilty” and that the Medical Marijuana laws will
be coming down. (Lisa’s note: not sure if I
missed something in the second half of that last sentence…)
KFOG: What happens now? I mean, aren’t you currently found
“guilty?”
Ed: I was found “guilty,” but now we’re appealing for a new
trial on both legal and factual issues.
KFOG: Let me ask you, going into this, we’re you and your side
aware of the fact that the Feds were gonna pull this — not
allowing the issue of Medical Marijuana to be addressed within
the trial?
Ed: We weren’t aware of it, but it wasn’t the Feds. It was the
Judge’s decision not to allow us to have a defense and we feel
that that was anerror on the Judge’s part. We think the Ninth
Circuit will overturn his decisions.
KFOG: Who is this Judge? What’s his track record like?
Ed: He is an unusual Judge the way he handles the courtroom
and criminal procedures. Usually a Judge lets the two sides
fight it out, but this Judge intercedes a lot, asks his own
questions and tries to dominate the trial. That’s Judge Breyer.
KFOG: As this appeal progresses, do you think you’ll be hurt
by the fact that you’re not only a medical marijuana grower,
but have, over the years, been an advocate for the legalization
of Marijuana just…big picture, on the whole.
Ed: Up to now, I think that’s really helped me because I’ve
had some recognition and people realize that I didn’t do it
out of a profiteering point of view but I was able to use
lend my expertise to help people who needed some help
in getting started providing their own medicine.
KFOG: Might your case become a poster child for states’ rights
and that the Federal Government is gonna have to look closer
at what states vote into law?
Ed: I hope so.
KFOG: Can you see this thing going all the way to the Supreme
Court?
Ed: It might have that kind of legs. Although, there were so
many errors that the Judge and the Prosecutor made that this
case might just be dimissed.
KFOG: You’re out on half a million dollars bail? Is that correct?
Ed: It’s at half a million dollars bail with a $200,000 bond.
KFOG: How did you get that kind of money, if you don’t
mind me asking…
Ed: I mortgaged my house.
KFOG: There’s also that website, right?
Ed: Yes, it’s
http://www.green-aid.com,
and that tells everything about the trial, what’s going on, other
trials in California and elsewhere and it has all kinds of information
about what people can do.
KFOG: You’ve got a wife and kids. I mean, what do they
make of all of this?
Ed: They’re very supportive. They agree with me that what
I did was right. We have no regrets about what they did
because we feel, as a family, we were helping people.
KFOG: Thank you very much. We appreciate your time.
That’s for sure. Please keep in touch.
Ed: Great. Thank you very much.
KFOG: Take care.

Jurors Who Convicted Marijuana Grower Seek New Trial
By Dean E. Murphy for the NY Times.

In an unusual show of solidarity with the man they convicted last week, five jurors in the trial of a medicinal marijuana advocate issued a public apology to him today and demanded that the judge grant him a new trial.
The jurors said they had been unaware that the defendant, Ed Rosenthal, was growing marijuana for medicinal purposes, allowed since 1996 under California state law, when they convicted him on three federal counts of cultivation and conspiracy. He is to be sentenced in June and faces a minimum of five years in prison.
“I’m sorry doesn’t begin to cover it,” said one of the jurors, Marney Craig, a property manager in Novato. “It’s the most horrible mistake I’ve ever made in my entire life. And I don’t think that I personally will ever recover from this.”

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Here’s some background on the case. (More)
The Jurors in the Ed Rosenthal Medical Marijuana Growing trail are plenty pissed that U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer manipulated the case in order to secure a conviction.
Jurors Denounce Their Own Verdict
By Ann Harrison for AlterNet.

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…
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.

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