Search Results: new trial (463)

Photo: K.C. Alfred/Sign On San Diego
The court deprived Jovan Jackson of the medical marijuana defense that was used to gain an acquittal in his first trial

​Medical marijuana patient advocates on Wednesday will argue for a new trial in the case of dispensary owner Jovan Jackson, who was convicted on September 28 after he was tried for the second time in less than a year on the same charges of marijuana possession and sales.

After District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis failed to convict Jackson the first time, she was able to block his use of a medical marijuana defense at the second trial, virtually guaranteeing his conviction, according to patient advocacy group Americans for Safe Access (ASA).

Currently Colorado, Washington, California, West Virginia, Vermont, Kentucky, North Dakota, Oregon, Montana and Maine all have hemp farming laws in place, but farmers for years have been barred by federal law from cultivating the non-psychoactive cousin cannabis.
But a Republican-backed, 959-page farm bill that is quickly working its way to the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives would allow for hemp cultivation in ten states under federal pilot programs.

Tim Gabor for Westword.com

Last week, Denver Westword writer Melanie Asmar took a closer look at what recent marijuana legalization laws have done for industrial hemp in Colorado and what that could mean for the rest of the country.
In it, she details “a merry band of hempsters, a small but dedicated group of supporters that includes a retired Yellow Pages saleswoman, a self-described mad scientist, the victorious defendant in one of Colorado’s landmark medical marijuana cases and a handful of stone-cold sober lawmakers who represent the type of places where people have dirt under their fingernails and make their living off the land. Together, this group is determined to create a hemp industry and position the state at the leading edge of an agricultural boom.”
Read Asmar’s story “Can hemp escape the role of marijuana’s sober stepsiter” in its entirety over at Westword.com

Catrina Coleman/West Coast Leaf
Joe Grumbine outside the Long Beach Courthouse with his grandchild Jojo

Joe Grumbine and Joe Byron, whose recent trial for operating a medical cannabis dispensary in Southern California attracted worldwide attention — make that horror and disbelief — for judicial and jury misconduct and prejudice, has been granted a new trial.
“This was a terrible, terrible trial,” said Long Beach Superior Court Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani, who granted the motion for a new trial. 
“I read the transcript [of the previous trial]and I am appalled,” Judge Comparet-Cassani said on Friday, reports Cheri Sicard of The Human Solution, who attended the hearing along with Grumbine and other members of the group.

Graphic: Greencross Auckland

​Pro-cannabis group Auckland Greencross has endorsed the New Zealand Law Commission’s recommendations that clinical trials of cannabis are undertaken and that bona fide users of medicinal marijuana become exempt from prosecution.

Stephen McIntyre, spokesman for the medical cannabis patients’ support group, on Tuesday said both proposals would find favor with the general public, as two out of three New Zealanders support allowing cannabis for medical use.
“Sixty five percent of submissions to this report — a figure consistent with online polling — favored the establishment of a scheme allowing people suffering from chronic, debilitating or terminal conditions to legally access and use herbal cannabis,” McIntyre said.
“Most medical users of cannabis, alongside the serious condition they’re forced to cope with on a daily basis, have the added stress of finding reliable access to quality medicine from a trustworthy source, compounded by fear of being caught by the police,” McIntyre said.

Photo: Dakta Green
Dakta Green: “I will never stop campaigning to free cannabis users from these harsh and unfair laws”

​The trial of a New Zealand man campaigning to have cannabis legalized is going ahead next week after he lost his bid to stop the proceeding.

Dakta Green said he was nevertheless “encouraged” by comments from the judge.
Green is facing six marijuana charges and is scheduled to go on trial in Auckland District Court next week, reports 3 News.
“The truth is coming out,” Green said on his Facebook page. “If we don’t win in court we will win in the court of public opinion.”
Green had applied for a stay of proceedings on the grounds that the charges against him breached his rights under the Bill of Rights Act.
Friday in a reserved decision Judge Anne Kiernan threw out his application, ruling he had produced no evidence that his rights had been breached.
However, during her ruling, the judge said Green had produced some persuasive arguments for the legalization of cannabis, but that the court was not the right place for such arguments to be heard.

Hemp is where it’s at right now, especially in Colorado. Legal cannabis is cool and all — and we welcome Michigan and Vermont to the recreational party in 2019 — but that’s so 2015 in this state.

More about substance than style, industrial hemp’s many uses were finally recognized by the federal government in December, when President Donald Trump officially legalized it by signing the 2018 Farm Bill. Now that the plant is out from under the shadow of the Controlled Substances Act, it’s regulated by the Department of Agriculture and legal to farm in all fifty states.

A lawsuit filed by two Colorado landowners who claim that a nearby marijuana grow has reduced their property values in part because the smell makes horseback riding less pleasant goes to trial in Denver federal court today. And the repercussions of the suit’s strategy, based on federal racketeering laws, could have far-reaching effects on the cannabis industry in Colorado and beyond.

The case was filed in February 2015 by Safe Streets Alliance, a national anti-pot group, on behalf of two members, Phillis Windy Hope Reilly and Michael P. Reilly. Early on, the effort didn’t seem particularly professional: Note that the organization misspelled marijuana as “marajuana” in its initial press release on the subject. But SSA’s success in court over the past three years-plus has overcome this gaffe.

A bill introduced in the Colorado Senate would require that a tracking agent be applied to medical and recreational marijuana and industrial hemp plants — even though the technology hasn’t been invented yet. SB 029 calls for “an agent that is applied to a marijuana plant, marijuana product, industrial hemp, or industrial hemp product and then scanned by a device,” in an attempt to improve marijuana tracking and help law enforcement officials distinguish where marijuana products originated. But some activists and businesses think the proposal goes too far.

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