Dec 1, 2009 – A San Diego jury’s not guilty verdict for medical marijuana defendant Jovan Jackson sends a powerful message to District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis to call off the heat and dismiss the numerous other defendants currently facing similar charges in San Diego.
The jury rightly cited the vagueness of current laws as a reason not to convict Jackson of illegally possessing and selling marijuana.
It is to be hoped that Jackson’s case will set a precedent for other medical marijuana defendants in San Diego. The city should move promptly to adopt reasonable regulations for the siting and operation of dispensaries as recommended by the city’s MMJ task force.
In other news, a state appeals court in San Diego has ruled that exactly how much marijuana a medical-marijuana user can legally possess is a question that jurors should decide, and using limits defined in state law is improper.
Nathaniel Archer of San Diego was appealing his 2007 convictions for cultivating and possessing marijuana. Archer was a medical-marijuana patient who was arrested by San Diego police with 98 pot plants in his residence and an additional 1.72 pounds of dried marijuana.
Also, last year’s paraphernalia raids in San Diego county were a mystery to those of us elsewhere in California, where the sale of bongs & MJ smoking devices has been going on without problems for years. Now comes the explanation: San Diego asst. DA Damon Mosler didn’t know the law. He didn’t realize that to charge someone with paraphernalia violations requires proving that they intended to sell their devices for illegal use – e.g., recreational marijuana – as opposed to tobacco or medical MJ.
The staggering incompetence of the San Diego District Attorney’s dep’t must be blamed squarely on its chief, Bonnie Dumanis, who seems more committed to prosecuting people than in determining whether they have actually committed a crime.
See: http://www.nctimes.com/news/local/sdcounty/article_53b99192-5206-5a7d-9339-0289e9225472.html