"We are never going back. We are never going back into the shadows again. We have stepped into the light, and in the light we shall remain."Steve DeAngelo
Imagine, if you will. You worked hard all summer long toting water to your cannabis plants. Traveling way into the woods, you know, OPP (other peoples property.) One day you look at one of your plants, and you decide to take a picture of it. A little time goes by. Hell, you probably done smoked it by now, and you decide to share the picture online.
Next year comes, everything seems cool, you're getting ready to harvest your plants, and Bam! Out of nowhere you got a SWAT team surrounding you with guns in your face!
How did they figure out where to find your cannabis plants and bust you? You might be pondering. Well, that picture of that sweet cannabis plant you took a picture of a year before, it had a location code written into the picture, and all the police had to do is read it and find out where your crop was using global positioning.
This scenario can happen. So, be warned, and be careful what pictures you take with a smartphone. When you're heading to the crop, just don't take your phone with you.
I never heard of someone utilizing a Jury Nullification Defense until I started writing to Ed Forchion aka The New Jersey Weedman a few years ago. I have been following his case and was very proud to see him follow through on his endeavor to actually try and persuade at least one jury member that the law was wrong, not him. Not only did he follow through, but he got an intent to distribute charge dismissed by unanimous decision.
Photograph of NJ Weedman courtesy of James Babb.
He also defended himself! Nowadays, lawyers are looking at cannabis
arrests as easy money. Most folks just plea out. Attorneys don't have to
do anything but show up in court, have you sign a piece of paper for a
plea deal, and pick up their check at the end of the day. So right off,
if you're busted this is what the lawyer is pretty much expecting to
do.
Most people who have something to gain from cannabis prohibition are the one's that are most likely opposed to legalization. I suspect most attorneys would not like to see cannabis cases disappearing from the courts. I put most attorneys in the same category of other people who profit from cannabis being illegal such as Private Prisons, Correctional Officer Unions, Police Departments depending on financial assistance for Federal Subsidy's for cannabis arrests quotas, to the Pharmaceutical Industry.
They're so many variables out there now that make the case to defend yourself more possible than ever before. Maybe if someone went into a court armed with this knowledge, they might seriously consider opting out of a plea deal and considering Jury Nullification.
- First, changing public opinion on cannabis has increased exponentially over the past few years. To the point now where 18 states plus Washington DC have legalized medicinal use of cannabis. 2 States Washington and Colorado have completely legalized it. Odds are at least one person on a jury can be cannabis friendly. Now if they are aware of jury nullificatiojn, you could most likely go home a free person.
- More and more people are less interested in our government spending money to enforce cannabis laws. It has gotten to the point where it is more expensive to incarcerate someone for a year than a year in college!
- People are becoming more and more aware how racially based the arrests for cannabis is and was. In 48 states, the arrest rate between blacks and whites is disproportionately higher for blacks. In Iowa for example, the population of blacks in their state is 3%, yet they make up 79% of the arrests for cannabis. United States Marijuana Possession Arrest Rates by State and Race (2006)
-This is a big one: Government Credibility enforcing cannabis prohibition. If you were to Google "Is the government lying about marijuana?" The first thing that pops up and many more after are many documented referrals stating that this is the case.
A good example of this was recently when the Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomburg said that Medicinal Cannabis was "The greatest hoaxes of all time"
Considering New York City is known worldwide for it's racial profiling stop and frisk policy. Spiking cannabis arrests by making people put personal cannabis in public view for a more egregious penalty. I would believe doctors over politicians and law enforcement any day regarding the medicinal benefits of cannabis... It truly is a healthcare issue, not a criminal issue.
- DEA being dishonest and refusing to admit that cannabis is less dangerous than heroin or that it has no medicinal use is another example. Considering the government has a patent on medicinal cannabis, it really shows just how schizophrenic our government is on this policy.
Last year Congressman Jared Polis from Colorado questioned the head of the DEA, Michelle Leonhart. She repeatedly refused to give the congressman an clear honest answer. The congressman was trying to have a straight open debate and all he got was the run around.
The governments lack of credibility enforcing cannabis prohibition is out there for everyone to see, but unfortunately when a defendant goes to trial they'll most likely be unable to effectively attack the government's credibility, and prosecutors are hoping a potential juror is uneducated to these facts. In a nutshell a perfect juror for the prosecution is an ignorant juror... For a defense lawyer that's the last thing they would want.
All these things are out there for one to discover for a
potential juror. If they can realize how unjust this law is, maybe we
can finally change cannabis laws once and for all.
- Junk Science
All over the country there have been multitudes of cases where drug testing labs have tainted evidence to support the prosecution. Most folks do not realize that the drug testing procedures used to determine if a substance is cannabis is supposed to be a subjective test not a definitive one, yet although it is admissible as evidence in court, it commonly gives false positives for cannabis with a multitude of other substances.
A few years ago, I was on a Grand Jury for several months. I helped several people have cannabis cases dismissed, from possession to intent to distribute. To the chagrin of visibly irate police officers, because they could not sway my vote to have them prosecuted. I kind of rocked the boat when they realized they had a cannabis friendly juror and they were not able to do anything about it.
Part of being on that Grand Jury was they give you a tour of the jail, and the sheriff gives the tour. I still remember how he had a gleeful tone in his voice and a twinkle in his eye when he invited us to his next big asset forfeiture auction. He was telling us about all the cars he had acquired and hoped that the folks would stop on by and support their sheriffs department.
So I believe the reason why prosecutors don't want a juror to know about jury nullification are because they know that if people were to be aware of this that they would lose. The big bad tiger called government does not like losing. They will intentionally screen out potential jurors who they think will impose jury nullification, or are aware of it. If you contest a cannabis charge, they feel impelled to stack the deck against you to use the jurors to support their weak law.
When it comes down to it, if that's what they have to do to win, then we are truly winning. More and more folks need to be educated about jury nullification to the point where prosecutors will have no choice but to accept them on jury pools..
In the meantime if you're selected for jury duty and you support cannabis legalization , Do your duty, be professional, and keep your mouth shut until it is time to deliberate. You don't have to explain to the other jurors why you think a person is not guilty. You just have to say to yourself "The law is wrong, not them"
If you want to become more educated on Jury Nullification, this is a good place to start.
The VIP unspoken part of this article (see below) is that forensic
science from its inception up until and continuing now has been
systemically flawed, including of course all drug testing, resulting in
untold numbers of wrongful convictions. My point is poignantly
illustrated by the quoting of the new president of the American Academy
of Sciences, Barry Logan, who has been implicated in extensive fraud in
2010 by massive evidence and the opinions of no fewer than 7 judges, inter alia. And He the new president!
Attached is a recent decision in Ohio rejecting drug test result evidence as well governmental expert testimony.
The decision is scientifically and legally rock solid and applies equally to marijuana testing and is something
I've been saying for five years.
For the time being at least, Travis County's "rocket docket" has been grounded. The docket was designed in 2002 to ease jail overcrowding by
expediting lower-level drug possession cases – which account for roughly
a third of the criminal case docket – by allowing defendants to waive
indictment and plead guilty based in part on the results of
police-administered field testing of suspected drugs.
And so it went, and well, for more than a decade, with very few cases
overturned or dismissed based on false-positive field drug tests. At
least that's how it was until January, said District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg, when prosecutors realized that since August 2012 there had been an unprecedented string of 12 false-positive field tests in rocket-docket cases. Since then, she's conferred with the courts and with Austin Police Chief Art Acevedo
before ultimately deciding to slow the docket and not accept any pleas
until after a final drug test has been reported back from the APD's lab.
And because the lab is short-staffed and backlogged, that means the
docket's speediness will, for now, be reduced to a crawl.
In fact, the APD lab
hasn't been keeping up with the county's criminal justice system, as
that system's reliance on scientific evidence – including chemical drug
analysis – has grown. The rocket docket used to move as swiftly as its
name implies – in 2009, cases on that docket took an average of just 11
days to close. But as the general backlog at the crime lab has
increased, so too has the amount of time taken to return to prosecutors
the final lab reports in these otherwise expedited cases. Lehmberg said
the average turnaround time for a final lab report had been roughly 14
days; by last summer, that had stretched to nearly two months. (City Council
last week voted to give APD an additional $180,000 this year to hire
three forensic chemists to help reduce the lab's general backlog; see "Budget Games.")
Despite that growing lag time, that delay isn't ultimately what has
slowed the rocket docket. Rather, it's the number of false-positive
field tests for drugs that prompted Lehmberg to put on the brakes.
Essentially, the field tests help move the docket; for example, if cops
find what they believe is a small baggie of cocaine on a person they've
stopped, they'll employ a field test – essentially a chemical reaction
test – to check their assumptions. If the substance reacts positively,
they'll pop the person for possession of cocaine and send the baggie off
to the lab for a final, conclusive test. In the meantime, however, the
defendant, now slated for the rocket docket, is given an opportunity to
plead guilty before indictment and before that final test is performed –
a process that reduces jail time and helps unclog the criminal dockets.
But in 12 recent cases, the final lab results have come back with a
finding of no "controlled substances detected," even though a field test
came back positive.
Exactly why the tests have come back false-positive isn't clear.
Lehmberg says she's been told that it's a recent problem, not just in
Travis County, but "everywhere." She and Acevedo said the issue in part
is that the field tests aren't precise enough to detect what sort of
"–caine" suffixed drug they're detecting. Indeed, it may not be cocaine
that the person has been sold, but may be an adulterated drug with an
anesthetic base, like lidocaine or benzocaine – both dangerous drugs
(possession of either is a Class A misdemeanor, Lehmberg said), but
neither as tightly controlled as cocaine, classified as a narcotic.
Whether the field tests are truly false, or whether they're simply
not precise enough, is something that Lehmberg is currently trying to
determine. She said she's requested the lab notes for each of the 12
cases that have come to her attention, to see if there was actually no
drug detected by APD chemists or if there is some other drug there, but
not cocaine. If the latter, those cases might need to be reconsidered
for misdemeanor prosecution, she said. For now, however, she's not
"willing to let people plead [guilty] without a lab report," she said.
"Right this minute, until we figure this out, we're not pleading any
more cases."
