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Activist Post
With few options left for people to protect themselves from the ever growing police state, an old and long forgotten aspect of constitutional law is making a huge comeback, and becoming very popular in cases where people are facing jail time for nonviolent offenses.
This reemerging defense is the act of jury nullification, which is basically the right for any juror to not only judge the facts of the case, but to also actually judge the validity of the law itself. This means that if a jury feels that a defendant is facing an unjust charge they actually have the right to rule in their favor even if they are technically guilty.
Ed Forchion is a medical cannabis user and cancer patient known as the “NJ weedman”. Ed claims dual residency in Pemberton Township, New Jersey and Los Angeles, California. Due to his residency in California he has a prescription for Cannabis and is legally allowed to grow and consume the plant in that state.
However, he is not legally allowed to possess the plant in the state of New Jersey and unfortunately while in New Jersey on April 1, 2012 Forchion was stopped by police and found with a pound of cannabis and $2,000, enough to get slapped with a distribution charge.
At an earlier trial last spring, he was convicted of possession, but that jury could not reach a unanimous decision on the more serious distribution charge, leading to this week’s retrial. With the distribution charge he was facing 10 years, and it is likely that the jury couldn’t send him away with a clear conscience. Ed’s primary strategy throughout his whole ordeal has been jury nullification, much to the dismay of Superior Court Judge Charles Delehey, who presided over both trials.
Forchion was passionate in his closing arguments, wearing a shirt that said “Marijuana … It’s OK. It’s Just Illegal” and telling the jury that he had been munching on pot cookies throughout the whole trial. Then at one point he was nearly held in contempt of court for trying to advance his jury nullification argument.
Considering the fact that most of the nonviolent offenses on the books today are extremely unpopular for a variety of reasons, you would think that jury nullification would be household knowledge, or taught in schools even. However, this is a very well guarded secrets, with many judges actually preventing the defense from informing juries of their right to nullify laws that they feel are unjust.
When Forcion started to talk about nullification, Delehey quickly stopped him, reminding him that he wasn’t allowed to go there, but Forchion fought back with intelligence and intensity. Frustrated, the judge ordered the jury out of the room and told him he would be held in contempt if he continued to speak the truth.
According to Phillyblurbs the judge told him “If you want to make a martyr of yourself, the court will deal with you. You’ve done everything you can to disrupt this trial.”
There has been a constant tug of war between the defendant and the judge for the past year. During last May’s trial, Forchion and his supporter’s placed pamphlets about jury nullification on cars parked in the jury parking lot and were very vocal about the illegitimacy of the law and the juries right to decide the validity of the law.
In pretrial motions, which were subsequently barred from being argued before the jury, Forchion challenged the constitutionality of the state’s criminal code now that New Jersey has a Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana law that recognizes the benefits of cannabis.
He said Thursday he looks forward to the state Appellate Division reviewing that motion when he appeals the possession conviction, which he still faces sentencing on. Oddly enough, it will be the same judge who decides his sentence, but he will still have the ability to appeal, which can possibly lead to another acquittal.
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio. He is also an artist with an established record label and event promotion company that hosts politically charged electronic dance music events. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com.
Forchion was passionate in his closing arguments, wearing a shirt that said “Marijuana … It’s OK. It’s Just Illegal” and telling the jury that he had been munching on pot cookies throughout the whole trial. Then at one point he was nearly held in contempt of court for trying to advance his jury nullification argument.
Considering the fact that most of the nonviolent offenses on the books today are extremely unpopular for a variety of reasons, you would think that jury nullification would be household knowledge, or taught in schools even. However, this is a very well guarded secrets, with many judges actually preventing the defense from informing juries of their right to nullify laws that they feel are unjust.
When Forcion started to talk about nullification, Delehey quickly stopped him, reminding him that he wasn’t allowed to go there, but Forchion fought back with intelligence and intensity. Frustrated, the judge ordered the jury out of the room and told him he would be held in contempt if he continued to speak the truth. According to Phillyblurbs the judge told him “If you want to make a martyr of yourself, the court will deal with you. You’ve done everything you can to disrupt this trial.”
There has been a constant tug of war between the defendant and the judge for the past year. During last May’s trial, Forchion and his supporter’s placed pamphlets about jury nullification on cars parked in the jury parking lot and were very vocal about the illegitimacy of the law and the juries right to decide the validity of the law.
In pretrial motions, which were subsequently barred from being argued before the jury, Forchion challenged the constitutionality of the state’s criminal code now that New Jersey has a Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana law that recognizes the benefits of cannabis.
He said Thursday he looks forward to the state Appellate Division reviewing that motion when he appeals the possession conviction, which he still faces sentencing on. Oddly enough, it will be the same judge who decides his sentence, but he will still have the ability to appeal, which can possibly lead to another acquittal.
J.G. Vibes is the author of an 87 chapter counter culture textbook called Alchemy of the Modern Renaissance and host of a show called Voluntary Hippie Radio. He is also an artist with an established record label and event promotion company that hosts politically charged electronic dance music events. You can keep up with his work, which includes free podcasts, free e-books & free audiobooks at his website www.aotmr.com.
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3 comments:
Excellent. ;-)
I know Ed. He would give you the shirt off his back if you asked him. He is known for helping other very ill patients by giving them Cannabis even at it's most expensive. He believes as I do, what comes around goes around, hence the nullification. Great job Ed! And God Bless.
I want everyone who does not use medical cannabis to know specifically about how things work right now for cannabis patients.
I want you to imagine you go to your doctor at Kaiser Permanente (or other big mainstream hospital)
Lets say you have chronic pain, and the doctor knows it and writes you a prescription.
You say thank you and pay the doctor, now you take your subscription to the pharmacy.. Whoops last night over 300 pharmacies have been raided by the DEA and SHUT DOWN, good luck with that fucking prescription, there's nowhere to take it, because your local city council changed the zoning laws of a perfectly legal taxpaying job creating business.
When you shut down all the pharmacies it also kills jobs. But frankly as a patient in pain you don't immediately give a shit about all that, you just want your fucking medicine.
So, all the pro products are now gone. Edibles and salves, drops, and concentrates. You are told you can grow it yourself though this doesn't consider how professional food packaging products are killed off like bhang chocolate or alpha medicinals or high CBD cannabis butter, even if your can and are growing your own (and some of us CAN NOT grow it ourselves mind you) you don't have the resources even with what you grew to make these products. You are not going to make a $20 1 oz salve by spending $1000's on grow lights and horticulture materials. Like wise you won't be making shiva snaks. Most people don't even know HOW to make such cannabis based medicine.
So anyway, this was your health care plan, you did did have a doctor who did give you a recommendation. However there's no place to get your RX! as the fucking city council abuses zoning laws to screw your "cannabis pharmacy" with a raid or legal threats until they shut down in fear.
Add into this fucking mess Obama Care.
Add into this fucking mess 30000 drones snooping for outdoor grows.
Add into this fucking mess, city councils who say you can't even grow on your OWN property outdoors, within the city limits.
Add into this fucking mess, confusion, anger, and pain ramped up with nothing to cut the edge off.
Add into this fucking mess now the weapons ban for cannabis patients. Did you lose your gun rights when you went to Kaiser for your RX?!
That's the State of America 2012.
It's 9 people on the city council who are fucking us on access to safe medicine in my city in California.
So next stop is the underground again, where we don't get such good quality controlled medicine. There may be fungus in the product, there may be mites in the product, or god knows what added from god know what sources, that underground growers may make it non organic. Would you like some fungus and mites in your Kaiser RX? Touch shit, our leaders think we are a pack of hippy fucking dogs.
But I'd rather have my pain kept in check, while I put up with being called a dirty stinky hippy dog, than to be the oath breaking piece of commie fag shit the cock sucking city council is.
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