Search Results: gonzales (7)

Wing-Chi Poon/Commons.

Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot told the media last summer that returning marijuana to a medicinal user was “not how we do business.”
But Wilmot did not return calls or even issue a statement this morning after the U.S. Supreme Court decided — by its inaction — that Wilmot must give the pot back to the patient. With the decision to turn down the Yuma case for a hearing, the U.S. Supreme Court has sided squarely with the state’s medical-marijuana law.

Axis of Logic

By Robert Raich
The expansion of the police state under the Obama Administration is alarming and belies a wholesale erosion of individual liberties. As a presidential candidate, Barack Obama made numerous promises that would have led to reducing the pernicious power of the police state in America; however the actions of his administration are in opposition to those promises. 
One such promise was candidate Obama’s pledge to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay and dismantle the military commissions within his first year in office. Candidate Obama promised, “As president, I will close Guantanamo, reject the Military Commissions Act, and adhere to the Geneva Conventions.”
Yet now, during Obama’s fourth year in office, the prison in Guantanamo Bay remains open and the military commissions persist, in violation of international human rights conventions.  
The Obama Administration has not renounced the use of torture, continues to operate secret prisons around the world, retains the use of extrajudicial kidnapping euphemistically called “extraordinary rendition,” and has ended a longstanding principled policy against assassinations.  President Obama contrived a secret “kill list.” Although widely discussed in the media, the program’s existence – as well as its alleged legal “justification” – are themselves kept secret. 

Americans for Safe Access
This photo was taken in 2003, at the time the first “Truth in Trials” Act was introduced. Rep. Sam Farr is depicted with Ashley Epis, the daughter of Bryan Epis, who is a patient convicted without a defense and currently serving out a 10-year sentence in federal prison.

Congressional Medical Marijuana Bill, the ‘Truth In Trials’ Act, Would Correct Unfair Federal Trials 


Late on Tuesday, U.S. Representative Sam Farr (D-CA) and 18 co-sponsors (15 Democrats and three Republicans) introduced HR 6134, the “Truth in Trials” Act, bipartisan legislation to allow defendants in federal criminal prosecutions the ability to use medical marijuana evidence at trial, a right not currently afforded them.
Because of a June 2005 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Gonzales v. Raich, the government has the discretion to enforce federal marijuana laws even in medical marijuana states. The Raich ruling also allows federal prosecutors to exclude all evidence of medical use or state law compliance in federal trials, virtually guaranteeing the convictions of medical marijuana patients and providers.

The Law Offices of George I. Kita
The juvenile probation camp known as Camp Glenn Rockey is located in the city of San Dimas, California, and they’ve been finding more marijuana in dorm rooms lately

​Hold the phone, we have a new entrant for Mother of the Year. Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies arrested a woman trying to visit her son in a juvenile probation camp Saturday after they found marijuana and what they claimed was a fake medical marijuana card while searching her purse, according to department officials.

Rhonda J. Gonzales, 44, of Pomona, was visiting Camp Glenn Rockey, a camp for juvenile offenders in San Dimas, to visit her son who is a ward at the camp, according to the Sheriff’s Department, reports Rick Rojas at the Los Angeles Times.

Law Firm Blog

By Jack Rikess
Toke of the Town
Northern California Correspondent

None of this is true. It takes place in an office in a big nondescript government building, someplace where obedient, bored American people work and make lots of money arresting other Americans. We now go to a conversation already in progress.
Jack: I would like to speak to the person in charge of busting potheads.
Receptionist: He’s at the bar…
Jack: I’ll wait…
[Three hours later]
PICOBP: C’mon in, mind if I smoke?
Jack: Smoke what? 
PICOBP: Cigarettes? What else is there?
Jack: That’s why I’m here.

Graphic: International Cannabis & Hemp Expo

​The International Cannabis & Hemp Expo is coming to Daly City, California’s Cow Palace next month. Organizers say no marijuana will be sold during the expo, planned for April 17 and 18.

“It’s mainly to bring awareness and education to the public” on the medical, recreational and industrial uses of cannabis, according to Bob Katzman, the expo’s chief operations officer.
“We want to enlighten people on the fact that we are looking at an estimated $8 billion-a-year industry in California alone,” Katzman said, reports Neil Gonzales of the San Mateo County Times.

Patients are allowed to bring their own medical marijuana to the Cow Palace, according to organizers, but they will need to show valid documentation before they can enter a “safe, secure” designated outdoor smoking area.
​”It will be an area outside the building and only accessible to people who prove to have a valid prescription [he means a doctor’s recommendation]for medical marijuana use,” Cow Palace CEO Joe Barkett told The Oakland Tribune.

Photo: Monica Almeida/New York Times

​District Attorney Steve Cooley has been promising for months to “get tough” with marijuana dispensaries in Los Angeles County, and this week, he followed through.

The media-loving, trash-talking D.A. charged dispensary owner Jeff Jones — who, maybe not coincidentally, is also an outspoken medical cannabis advocate — with 24 felonies, including selling and transporting marijuana, as well as money laundering, reports Richard Gonzales of NPR.
Cooley, who infamously said last year that “approximately zero” of L.A.’s dispensaries are operating legally, is now basing what looks to be misguided political ambition upon a quixotic quest to drive the pot shops out of business.
Bail for Joseph was set at more than half a million dollars, an amount usually reserved for violent criminals, according to Joseph’s attorney, Eric Shevin.
“They made an example of him,” Shevin said. “He’s a very outspoken, well-known advocate of marijuana, so he sends a stronger message to the community than the many other dispensary operators that no one even talks about.”