Fed Jury Slaps Guru of Ganja With New Pot Charges

[DdC]

Fed Jury Slaps Guru of Ganja With New Pot Charges By Josh Richman
CN Source: Oroville Mercury-Register October 12, 2006 California

Oakland "Guru of Ganja" Ed Rosenthal was re-indicted by a federal grand jury Thursday on a host of marijuana-related charges, roughly six months after an appeals court tossed out his earlier convictions.

The superseding indictment filed Thursday contains 25 counts against Rosenthal, 61, and two of his original co-defendants, Kenneth Hayes and Richard Watts. Rosenthal faces 14 counts including conspiracy, use of a place to manufacture marijuana for distribution, manufacturing marijuana for distribution, laundering money from marijuana sales, and filing false tax returns.

"I knew they had a grand jury but I didn't know what was going to happen," Rosenthal said Thursday night.

"What they're trying to do with these indictments and with my continued persecution is to close down all of the dispensaries in California, to deprive people of their medicine."

"It's not the way I planned to spend my time for the next year but I'm resigned to it," he said, describing himself as an "everyman" who won't be cowed. "Most people considering their circumstances for one reason or another are forced to give in under the weight of government pressure. I'm not only standing up for dispensaries but for all these people who've been harassed and hounded by the government."

But he won't let it ruin his life, either. "We're still going out to dinner tonight," he said wryly.

Famed for his marijuana cultivation books and the "Ask Ed" column he wrote for High Times magazine, Rosenthal was convicted of three marijuana-growing felonies in 2003, more than a year after federal agents raided sites including his Oakland home, an Oakland warehouse in which he was growing marijuana, and a San Francisco medical marijuana club he supplied.

Medical use of marijuana on a doctor's recommendation is legal under state law but prohibited by federal law, so Rosenthal was barred from mounting a medical defense at trial. Breyer sentenced him to one day behind bars -- time he'd already served.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his convictions in April, finding juror misconduct -- a juror's conversation with an attorney-friend during deliberations -- compromised Rosenthal's right to a fair verdict and so warranted a new trial.

But the court also rejected Rosenthal's claim of immunity from prosecution as an officer of Oakland who grew the drug under the city's medical marijuana ordinance. The court in July refused Rosenthal's requests for rehearing or for an "en banc" rehearing by a larger panel.

He and his lawyers appeared before Breyer in August and September as prosecutors prepared to retry him on the original charges, even as witnesses were being subpoenaed by a grand jury investigating new charges.

Watts was arrested and charged in the same 2002 raids which nabbed Rosenthal, but injuries sustained in a car accident have kept him from trial until now. Hayes fled to Canada to avoid prosecution.

Thursday's indictment essentially claims Rosenthal from October 2001 through February 2002 conspired with Hayes and Watts to grow marijuana at sites on Sixth Street in San Francisco and on Mandela Parkway in Oakland; laundered marijuana proceeds by buying four money orders totaling $1,854 during that time; and falsified tax returns for 1999, 2000 and 2001 by omitting income from his marijuana distribution. Hayes and Watts face similar, related charges.

"With these new more serious charges, I think I'll get even more community support," Rosenthal said Thursday. Citing recent federal raids of Bay Area, Modesto and Granada Hills dispensaries, he said his new indictment is part of "a concerted effort by the federal government" to crack down on medical marijuana.

Note: Ed Rosenthal says it's federal effort to shut down state pot clubs, "deprive people of their medicine."



Complete Title: Fed Jury Slaps `Guru of Ganja' with Host of New Pot Charges

MediaNews reporter Karl Fischer contributed to this report.

Contact: biano@cncnet.com * Website

Ed Rosenthal's Pictures & Articles

The concept of "bud cycle" was not apparent until Ed Rosenthal and Mel Frank published their first works in 1976. Prior to this, many of us simply grew big plants, either outdoors or under some form of artificial light, and just consumed whatever presented itself.
-- DJ Short, breeder of the Blueberry strain

Ask Ed update 26 Mar, 2002
Ed Rosenthal explains his recent bust and how you can help.



Ed Rosenthal Raided and Arrested by DEA

`Ganja Guru' Wants Grand Jury Info

Feds Take Aim at `Ganja Guru' Again

[Brother Adam]

Too bad someone won't SLAP that judge in return for his hospitality.
_________________
-Brother Adam (we are all one family)

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison

Police officers acquitted for beating a 64 yr old man recently in New Orleans. In the words of their defense attorney "all he had to do was comply"....and they wouldn't have fractured his face.

[Brother Adam]

Too bad someone won't SLAP that judge in return for his hospitality.
_________________
-Brother Adam (we are all one family)

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

-James Madison

Police officers acquitted for beating a 64 yr old man recently in New Orleans. In the words of their defense attorney "all he had to do was comply"....and they wouldn't have fractured his face.

[DdC]

Marijuana Advocate Faces New U.S. Indictment By Carolyn Marshall
CN Source: New York Times October 14, 2006 San Francisco  

A leading medical marijuana advocate who successfully appealed his federal conviction this year has been indicted on new criminal charges that include tax evasion and money laundering.

The man, Ed Rosenthal, a well-known spokesman for the movement to legalize marijuana, was already facing a retrial on federal charges of growing marijuana for medical use. He is to be arraigned Monday in Federal District Court here on the new indictment, unsealed late Thursday.

It accuses Mr. Rosenthal, 61, of 14 felony charges that include cultivating marijuana plants; laundering $1,850, which the government says he got from selling the plants to medical dispensaries; and tax evasion. His tax returns, prosecutors said, omitted income from the sale of the plants.

Reached Friday at his home in Oakland, Mr. Rosenthal said he thought the efforts to prosecute him were part of a campaign to shutter medical marijuana sites in California and to subvert the state law allowing them.

“They want to shut me up,” he said. “They are vindictive. They don’t like anybody beating them, and they will go after you again and again until they wear you down.”

The state and the federal government have been locked in a legal and cultural battle over the medicinal merits of marijuana since 1996, when California voters approved a ballot measure giving seriously ill patients the right to buy and use the drug with a doctor’s prescription.

The Drug Enforcement Agency has been aggressive in investigating medical marijuana facilities. Last week, the authorities raided and closed five Bay Area sites, arresting 15 people.

A spokesman for the United States attorney’s office, Luke Macaulay, would not comment on the new indictment, but said, “Drugs are a priority for the Justice Department, being that marijuana is illegal under federal law.”

The new charges against Mr. Rosenthal are similar to those in a 2002 federal indictment. At the time, Mr. Rosenthal worked for the City of Oakland and was sanctioned under city and state laws to grow marijuana plants and sell them to dispensaries.

He was convicted by a jury, but a federal appeals court overturned the decision, citing juror misconduct. He was granted a new trial, and prosecutors were moving forward, but the new federal indictment supersedes the earlier one.

Complete Title: Medical Marijuana Advocate Faces New U.S. Indictment

Contact: letters@nytimes.com * Website

Ed Rosenthal's Pictures & Articles



Fed Jury Slaps Guru of Ganja With New Charges

`Ganja Guru' Wants Grand Jury Info

Ed Rosenthal's verdict was an injustice and the federal government should change its policy and stop prosecuting patients.
San Francisco District Attorney Terrence Hallinan

Feds Take Aim at `Ganja Guru' Again

Federal Judge hands down historic sentence: 1 Day


Ed Rosenthal is surrounded by his wife, Jane, and daughter, Justine, as the foreman of the jury that convicted him reads an apology to Rosenthal for the verdict. The marijuana grow-book author was deputized by the City of Oakland to provide medical marijuana for patients in accordance with state law. Despite these facts, he was charged under federal laws, The jury was not allowed to hear any evidence or consider any possibility that there had been medical use.

[Dano]