Dispatches from the Field: Cops Break Law on Taxpayer Dime

Just as every cop is a criminal,

and all the sinners saints.

As heads is tails, just call me Lucifer,

‘cause I’m in need of some restraint.

~ The Rolling Stones, “Sympathy for the Devil”

“We lie to them,” testified Lead Detective Oscar Valenzuela. “We lie through our teeth." For once, he spoke the truth.

Lead Detective Oscar Valenzuela was on the stand as the People’s first “expert” witness in the trial of former medical marijuana dispensary owners Joe Byron and Joe Grumbine. It was Thursday, December 1, 2011 – Day Four of a massively expensive and pointless criminal trial in Long Beach, California. Detective Oscar Valenzuela was a main player in this jaw-dropping drama.

Not for the first time, lanky, blonde, hyper-vigilant bailiff Matt O’Donnell whirled around in his khaki sheriff’s uniform with its tasteful black leather holster belt and threatened the whole audience with expulsion if even one of them gasped again. Quite a tall order, given this sudden blast of naked truth from the man who masterminded the investigation of Byron and Grumbine – an investigation based on lies. Lies by the People and for the People.

Make no mistake. By “the People,” I sure as hell don’t mean you and me, my fellow citizen. I mean the Prosecution. And by “the Prosecution,” I don’t just mean the prosecuting attorney. I mean a vast cabal of law-scoffing law enforcement officials, up and down the chain of command, so ingrained into our culture that when you even begin to see the whole thing – when you even begin to see a pimple on the ass of the whole thing – it’s like a million pound shithammer to the cerebral cortex.

Voter Nullification

There’s no such thing as paranoia.

It’s worse than you think.

~ Outlaw biker to Dr. Hunter S. Thompson

Our vote doesn’t count any more. It’s that simple. To me, the vote is the sine-qua-non of a Democracy. Translated from the Latin by my dear, departed Dad, that means “without which, there ain’t no.”

If our vote doesn’t count, we don’t have a Democracy. Voter nullification is another way of saying, “coup.” Given America’s newly established (or at least newly acknowledged) corporate personhood, perhaps “hostile takeover” is a more accurate term. No matter. My point is that in a Democracy, the voters should have the last word.

Take election day, November, 1996. That was the day California voters decided to allow qualified patients safe access to medical marijuana by passing Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act. That was over fifteen years ago. The whole point was to protect patients and providers from the Oscar Valenzuelas of the world.

Which didn’t sit too well with the Oscar Valenzuelas of the world. But let’s not give an over-zealous gumshoe all the credit. Valenzuela’s overlord, the portly son of an FBI agent, Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley is even more rabidly anti-medical marijuana than his Long Beach gunsel. And the same goes for his boss and his boss’s boss. Ever since the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 was enacted into law, law enforcement has been working overtime trying to drown it in the bathtub.

Operation Eradication – Your Tax Dollars at Waste

In 2003, California Senate Bill 420 was enacted into law, allowing patients to cultivate marijuana collectively and cooperatively. Collectives formed and dispensaries opened all across the state. At the same time, police geared up to wipe them out.

The authors of SB 420 intended to make access to medical marijuana easier and safer for patients and providers, not to give police a hammer to hit them over the head with. But that very year, the California Police Chiefs Association created a Task Force on Marijuana Dispensaries, made up of “representatives of numerous law enforcement agencies and allies who share the goal of bringing to light the criminal nexus and attendant societal problems posed by marijuana dispensaries that until now have been too often hidden in the shadows.” [My italics.] The following paragraph is included as a reminder that each individual involved was collecting a government salary, paid by the same good people who voted to legalize medical marijuana.

More than 30 people contributed to this project as members of CPCA’s Medical Marijuana Dispensary Crime/Impact Issues Task Force, which has been enjoying the hospitality of Sheriff John McGinnis at regular meetings held at the Sacramento County Sheriff’s Department’s Headquarters Office over the past three years about every three months.

The hospitality and headquarters office space were obviously paid for by taxpayer dollars. No doubt we also covered meal and travel expenses for thirty people traveling to Sacramento from all over the state every ninety days for three years. So what did we get for our money?

We got a “White Paper” cranked out by California’s finest. We got city council members happily swallowing everything the top cops fed them about the “criminal nexus and attendant societal problems posed by marijuana dispensaries” in their communities; problems that were so hidden in the shadows that they may not have even noticed until the cream of local authority – the police chiefs – took it upon themselves to lobby them. We got county governments sheepishly falling in line with what the cops told them to do. We got dispensary bans in cities and counties all across the state, based on “model bills” written by our very own trusted public servants – at our expense.

Just as the rabidly right-wing, back-room dealing, corporate-funded ALEC (American Legislative Exchange Council) writes “model bills” for their member legislators to introduce at the state level – for the benefit of America’s corporate bottom line, including our loathsome prison industrial complex – California’s police chiefs are doing the same thing at the local level; spreading fear and lies, trashing the will of the people, destroying jobs and lives, and shoveling citizens they’re supposed to protect and serve into the gaping maw of a for-profit prison system that has no place in a democracy. That’s what we got for our money.

But wait. There’s more. We also got horrific, multi-agency raids on homes and dispensaries all across the state, destroying the lives and livelihoods of dispensary owners like Joe Byron and Joe Grumbine, forcing them to spend two years fighting for their Constitutional right to defend themselves in court. That comes to a total of over forty courtroom appearances, costing taxpayers between $10,000 and $15,000 per day for the courtroom alone, according to Judge Charles D. Sheldon's own calculations.

Then we got an eighteen-day trial in a kangaroo court that wrangled a guilty verdict out of an ill-instructed jury, thanks to procedural maneuverings by the prosecuting attorney and a blatantly biased judge who actually recused himself on sentencing day “to prevent the appearance of bias.”

And then, we got a brand new judge, two more court dates and a damn good chance to start the whole thing over again. The problem is, we also have a damn good chance of seeing the Joes taken away in handcuffs. Their third day in court with Judge Joan Comparet-Cassani is Friday the 13^th of April, 2012, at which time Judge Comparet-Cassani will rule on attorney Allison B. Margolin’s Motion for a New Trial.

And another thirty-five or forty grand of hard-earned taxpayer dollars circles the drain.

On April 2, 2012, Oaksterdam University – “the Harvard of Hemp” in Oakland, California, where hundreds of students have learned how to comply with state law in all things relating to medical marijuana – was raided by storm troopers from the DEA, the IRS, and the Oakland Police Department, instantly bankrupting founder Richard Lee, destroying more lives and livelihoods, handcuffing patients, some in wheel chairs or on crutches, and roughly shoving protesters with riot-control batons.

What we got for our money was a police state.

Don’t worry. We’ve got him good.

~ Detective Oscar Valenzuela, Long Beach Police Department

When we first reported on the Byron/Grumbine case in June of 2011, it was already a long and twisted saga. On December 10, 2008, Joe Grumbine had been arrested for marijuana possession in Riverside County, California. He and his partner Joe Byron were operating their first medical marijuana dispensary in Garden Grove, Orange County. Grumbine was driving home to Riverside County and transporting medical marijuana when he was stopped for having a trailer ball on his bumper.

He took his case to trial, and seventeen court days (times ten or fifteen grand per day in tax dollars) later, on November 2, 2009, he was exonerated of all charges. The Judge stated that, based on proof of patients, patient outreach programs and a huge witness list, “the Court finds that Mr. Grumbine was acting in accordance with California law.”

Right after Grumbine was exonerated, Long Beach Police Detective Oscar Valenzuela of Los Angeles County consoled the Riverside County District Attorney, saying “Don’t worry. We’ve got him good.”

Five weeks later, on December 17, 2009, all hell broke loose for Byron and Grumbine. Their homes and businesses, and those of their employees and volunteers – seventeen locations altogether – were swooped on by a SWAT team of over a hundred and twenty policemen with weapons drawn, drug-sniffing dogs, helicopters and a fleet of vehicles. The City of Long Beach has refused to put a price tag on the raids, in violation of multiple Freedom of Information Act requests by patient-activist Charles Monson. Claiming they don’t keep track of hours that way, Long Beach continues to stonewall on the cost of the raids, but estimates go as high as 2.4 million dollars – and higher.

“Expert” Training

Let me be clear about this: I don’t have a drug problem. I have a police problem.

~ Keith Richards, The Rolling Stones

On October 9, 2009, just two months before Byron and Grumbine were raided, the California Narcotics Officers Association put on a training course called The Eradication of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries in the City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County.

Touted as a “must class for patrol, parole, probation and narcotic investigators,” the whole concept goes against the intent of the Compassionate Use Act, not to mention the will of the people. The class was hosted by Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley (who enjoys an annual salary of $301,731 plus benefits and retirement, courtesy of you, the taxpayer); City Attorney Carmen “Nuch” Trutanich (who rakes in a cool $214,546 taxpayer dollars, plus bennies, every year); President of the California Police Chief’s Association and Pasadena Police Chief Barney Melekian (pocketing between $182,000 and $228,000 of your money per year, according to my calculations); and several other high-end law enforcement officials, including Head Deputy District Attorney, Joey Esposito of the LADA Major Narcotics Division – a team of specially trained attorneys responsible for prosecuting significant narcotics trafficking organizations in Los Angeles County. This outfit ensures that “highly effective prosecutors represent the people of the State of California in cases against drug traffickers most responsible for the drug supply.”

And with these well-chosen words, our local compassionate caregivers are placed squarely in the cross-hairs of specially trained cops and lawyers whose main purpose in life is to set them up as traffickers and feed them into the for-profit prison system, which in turn feeds them.

Busted down on Bourbon Street
Set up like a bowling pin
Knocked down, it gets to wearing thin
They just won't let you be.
~ The Grateful Dead, "Truckin'"

Denial: Not the Solution

The October 9, 2009 eradication training course offered participants an update on laws and current case decisions pertaining to Proposition 215 and SB 420 – which is why the Byron and Grumbine case is so important. Every case we lose gives them more ammunition to use against us. In spite of this, while a devoted handful of fellow dispensary owners have joined the ongoing protests in Long Beach on behalf of Byron and Grumbine (under the banner of non-profit support group The Human Solution, a.k.a. the Green Team,) far too many have not.

Unfortunately, they remain in denial about the danger they themselves face until it’s too late and they find themselves staring down the barrel of an assault rifle, while SWAT teams haul away all their computers (a.k.a. means of communication,) business records (a.k.a. exculpatory evidence,) patient lists (a.k.a. defense witnesses), cash (a.k.a. bail money and lawyer fees, now unavailable for that use) and medicine (to the detriment of patients whose safe access is mercilessly snatched away .)

The California Narcotics Officers Association training course detailed how to conduct a dispensary investigation. What it didn’t detail was how to recognize a legally compliant dispensary. The course offered specific training in the Compassionate Use Act… “to qualify as an expert when arresting person(s) in possession of quantities of marijuana for sale and are claiming the exemption under Proposition 215.” [My italics -- intended to highlight the prejudicial and undermining language used to demonize medical marijuana providers and thus, whip a room full of cops into a frothing-at-the-mouth gang of storm troopers out to save the world from evil drug cartels. Which, of course, they aren’t doing because they’re too busy copping doobies at dispensaries.]

K is for Kangaroo

Only in the courtroom can this special training be properly appreciated. This is where your friendly medical marijuana provider morphs into a low-life street thug, or in the case of Byron and Grumbine, “wolves in sheep’s clothing.” This is where you get to witness exactly what evidence your specially trained attorneys teach your peace officers to collect and, more importantly, what evidence not to collect, in order to get a conviction.

In retrospect, the exonerating statement by the judge in Grumbine’s Riverside case appears to have inspired a list of items the Long Beach police, prosecutor and judge, acting as the proverbial well-oiled machine, systematically prevented (or tried to prevent) from being admitted into evidence in the Byron/Grumbine case – namely, “proof of patients, patient outreach programs and a huge witness list.”

We will delve into such tactics in a later post, but for now here’s a taste: After the California Appellate Court granted an appeal by Byron’s attorney, Allison B. Margolin, and ordered Judge Sheldon to allow the Joes an affirmative defense, or explain himself to them, Sheldon gruffly allowed the defendants six witnesses each. The prosecution was allowed as many witnesses as she wanted. OK, here’s another taste: counting the number of defense objections overruled vs. prosecution objections overruled became a challenging spectator sport for the Green Team. My own notes are littered with hash-marks attempting to count them. Many were overruled before the word “objection” was out of the attorney’s mouth. Conversely, there were times the judge said, “sustained,” before the word “objection” was out of the prosecutor’s mouth. If lives didn’t hang in the balance, it would have been hilarious.

Jurors Denied the Whole Truth

In the courtroom, as the jury watches hours of soporific video secretly shot by an undercover cop with a fake ID and a real doctor’s recommendation, obtained by lying through his teeth, they don’t see the free wheelchairs in the corner, or the free food and clothing, or the job boards. They see price lists and “Twitter Specials” (highly incriminating; be warned. Ditto free doobies for first-time patients) that supposedly prove medical marijuana dispensaries to be fronts for drug traffickers. And if they can’t make that stick, they re-frame the crime itself. Suddenly the offense is “making a profit” instead of the original charge of felony marijuana “sales.”

The jury is then shown “Profit and Loss Statements” generated by the cops’ own computer programs, using incomplete financial records seized in raids. They don’t see the extent of start-up costs or business expenses. They don’t see how much of the medicine is there on consignment; the prosecution counts the street value of it as money going straight into dispensary owners’ pockets. But it’s actually money owed to the growers once the product is sold. It’s not an asset, it’s a debt. But the jury only sees money coming in -- money the Oscar Valenzuelas of the world misrepresent as “profit.” Misrepresent, as in lie through their teeth.

The overall effect is this: No matter what you do to comply with the law, you’re still wrong.

At the same time, through a series of well-honed courtroom procedures by the prosecutor and the judge – a self-described veteran of some 1,400 trials -- the defense team is systematically denied the right to defend their clients. A classic example was showcased when Grumbine’s attorney, Chris Glew tried to ascertain where Detective Valenzuela acquired his “expert” status on medical marijuana. When Mr. Glew started to ask whether Valenzuela had attended the above-mentioned eradication class, Judge Sheldon cut him off.

Together, Judge Sheldon and prosecutor Jodi Castano prevented either defense attorney from properly cross-examining the witness or ascertaining his credentials as a so-called expert. And this is only the opening salvo. We’ll explore these eye-popping tactics and other courtroom shenanigans in the near future. But I have to confess: I’ve spent four and a half months attempting to read my notes from the trial. Every time I open one of a stack of hastily scribbled notebooks, I am overwhelmed – not just by the sheer volume of it all, but also by the crushing weight of what it represents.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines kangaroo court as “a mock court in which the principles of law and justice are disregarded or perverted.” Wikipedia states that the “outcome of a trial by kangaroo court is essentially determined in advance, usually for the purpose of ensuring conviction, either by going through the motions of manipulated procedure or by allowing no defense at all.”

This accurately describes every day of this long and punishing trial. The Green Team – a dedicated group of medical marijuana patients and advocates, gathered under the banner of The Human Solution – witnessed every minute of it. Many of us took copious notes, which turns out to be a good thing because Judge Sheldon conveniently “shredded” every copy of his mumbled and confusing instructions to the jury, and the court reporter just happened to omit them from the transcript.

Rory Murray, a talented singer/songwriter and artist, made drawings of the courtroom proceedings. He too has provided a vital service, as Judge Sheldon barred cameras and recording devices from his courtroom. Two of Rory's drawings helped illustrate this story.

In our next post, we will take a closer look at the Green Team - true patriots who have dedicated their lives to fighting for justice. Were it not for a courtroom full of citizen witnesses this story would never have come to light. And the Joes would – and still may – join millions of their incarcerated fellow citizens who were similarly set-up, demonized, railroaded and imprisoned – on our dime.

###

Dispatches from the Field: Women in Prison -- An American Growth Industry

 However high the cost of justice,

the cost of injustice is greater still.

Who says “American Exceptionalism” is dead? Not when it comes to incarceration. Nowhere on Earth -- except the USA -- does a country put more of its citizens in prison. And, increasingly, those citizens are female.

In 1980, before the War on Drugs became big business and prison corporations were allowed to regain a toehold, there were 12,300 women incarcerated in the United States. By 2008, that number had grown to 207,700. The rate of increase between 1995 and 2008 alone was a staggering 203%. The $9 million dollars it cost to incarcerate female offenders in 1980 has now ballooned to over $68.7 billion.

Who are these women, and how did they come to be caught in the web of the prison-growth industry?

By and large, these are young women who have less than a high-school education, have a history of being battered and/or sexually abused, and, with that, a resultant history of drug abuse. They are more likely to be HIV positive or infected with Hepatitis C, have either symptoms or a diagnosis of mental illness, and prior to incarceration were unemployed. While young African American women are the fastest growing incarcerated population, roughly 49% of women in prison are white, 28% are African American, and almost 17% are Latina. More than two-thirds are incarcerated for drug, property, or public order offenses. And the vast majority are mothers of minor children.

Here’s one such story.

Oklahoma, Not OK

How do you tell your children you are going

to prison? How do you prepare for this?

~Patricia Spottedcrow

On New Year’s Eve 2009, in rural Kingfisher County, Oklahoma, Patricia Spottedcrow, a 24-year-old Cheyenne mother of four, and her mother, Delita Starr, sold a “dime bag” of marijuana out of Starr’s house for eleven dollars. Two weeks later, the person who sought them out for the first buy came back for a twenty-dollar bag. The buyer turned out to be a police informant.

Spottedcrow and Starr were charged with distribution and possession of a dangerous controlled substance in the presence of a minor, and were offered a plea deal of two years in prison. Having no priors, meaning they’d never been in trouble with the law, and having been busted for such a small amount, they turned the deal down. Both women pled guilty, thinking they’d get “community service and a slap on the wrist.”

Unfortunately, as is too often the case, it didn’t play out that way. Though it was a piddling amount of money and a first offense, in the eyes of Kingfisher County Judge Susie Pritchett, because Spottedcrow’s mother made the actual sale of the “dime bag,” and Spottedcrow’s nine-year-old son made change, Spottedcrow had involved three generations in a “criminal enterprise.” Seeking to teach her a lesson for selling thirty-one dollars’ worth of marijuana (and showing up for sentencing with traces of marijuana in a coat pocket), Judge Pritchett gave the young mother twelve years in prison -- ten years for distribution and two years for possession -- to run concurrently, with no probation. In addition, she fined Spottedcrow $4,077.89.

Starr was given a thirty-year sentence, suspended so she could care for her grandchildren. She was also saddled with five years of drug and alcohol “assessments,” plus $8,591.91 in court fees and fines. At $50 a month, she’s now paid off $600 of it. Her monthly income is $800.

Believing she would be released on probation, Spottedcrow made no preparations for her incarceration. When her sentence was handed down, she was taken into custody without having a chance to say goodbye to her children, shackled, and transported three hours away to Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center, where she became a minimum security prisoner at a cost to Oklahoma taxpayers of $40.43 a day -- ten dollars more per day than the total cost of marijuana sold in two separate incidents combined, and $25 more per day than it would have cost the state to provide drug treatment, were that available in Kingfisher County.

Eddie Warrior, a state-run facility that opened its doors in 1989, was built to house fifty women to a dorm, one or two to a cubicle. Just six years later it was at capacity. In the four-part documentary, Women in Prison, Eddie Warrior case manager Teri Davis states that shortly thereafter, with the facility already full, “they started hauling people in.” Now there are a hundred-and-twenty inmates to a dorm, some with serious communicable diseases, living in rows of bunks four feet apart.

“The inmates don’t like it,” says Davis. “And who would? Crammed up with another inmate in your face, coughing because she’s sick, coughing all over you . . . packed in like sardines in a can, with no amenities.”

Perhaps most disturbing about conditions at Eddie Warrior is that they are not unusual. Lurking behind the injustice of Spottedcrow’s harsh sentence is a darker story of human rights violations in America’s female prisons. In Inside This Place, Not of It: Narratives from Women’s Prisons, compiled and edited by Robin Levi and Ayelet Waldman, female inmates speak of atrocities “ranging from forced sterilization and shackling during childbirth, to physical and sexual abuse by prison staff.” Describing their lives as harrowing and rife with misogyny, author Peggy Orenstein declares their treatment “utterly unacceptable in a country that values human rights.”

For the privilege of living in these deplorable conditions, Spottedcrow’s sentence means a burden to taxpayers of nearly $150,000 in incarceration costs alone. This is the price to an already strapped society for a person’s having sold 0.105821 ounces of an herb that is considered harmless on the one hand, and highly beneficial on the other. Multiply that by the thousands incarcerated in Oklahoma, and then multiply that by the other forty-nine states. In fact, Oklahoma attorney Josh Welch, who is working for Spottedcrow’s release, predicts that if Oklahoma continues its current practice of incarcerating “anybody who comes before a judge” for drug-related offenses, even for a first offense, “it will bankrupt the state.”

However high the cost of justice, the cost of injustice is greater still.

A Clear Case of Civil Rights Violations

I’m just a human being trying to make it in a world that is very rapidly losing its understanding of being human.

~ John Trudell, a “blue Indian”

A growing civil rights movement in Oklahoma is demanding Spottedcrow’s release. The Society to Preserve Indigenous Rights and Indigenous Traditions (SPIRIT) got involved in Spottedcrow’s case “because she is Native American, poor, and a minority,” says Brenda Golden of SPIRIT. “We are not pro-marijuana and do not advocate breaking the law. But we do believe Patricia's sentence is way too harsh for the crime she committed and is indicative of the treatment we receive in Oklahoma….  We are committed to continuing the fight to get this sentence reduced so Ms. Spottedcrow can be reunited with her four small children.”

Trial Attorney Josh Welch took her case pro bono. Calling it an “abuse of judicial authority,” he filed a motion in Kingfisher County to modify her sentence, saying, “A judge’s responsibility is to help people, not just punish them.” On Monday, October 3, Mr. Welch received an Order from Associate District Judge Robert Davis modifying Spottedcrow's sentence from the original twelve years to eight years in prison with four years’ probation. Welch says he’s happy the sentence was modified, but not happy that only four years were removed. "The new judge didn’t back off the first sentence. He said the reduction was because she had done well while incarcerated. We disagree with the sentence. She shouldn’t even be in jail.”

“This may not be easy,” Welch told SPIRIT’s Brenda Golden in an email, “but we will not stop until she's released.” Welch plans to file an Application for Post-Conviction Relief. Change.org has created a petition to the Governor of Oklahoma requesting a pardon for Spottedcrow. As of this writing, they’ve gathered almost 35,000 of the 50,000 signatures needed.

A Trail of Tears

In the Women in Prison documentary, Judge Susie Pritchett, who imposed the original sentence, states that Spottedcrow “needed to learn that there were consequences to this lifestyle she had chosen.” Tragically, and in direct opposition to the sort of outcome the judge would seem to favor, Spottedcrow’s lifestyle was indeed forever changed. Because of her conviction, she can never again pursue her chosen field. Her “chosen lifestyle” was that of a certified medical assistant employed by a nursing home. When the economy tanked, not because of any choice Spottedcrow made, she lost her job. In fact, almost half of all incarcerated women were unemployed in the month before their arrest. Spottedcrow was not the first to look for a way to make some “easy money” when things got tight. But as she conceded in an interview with Ali Meyer of Oklahoma News Channel 4, “It was a stupid mistake that I paid an awful lot for.”

Speaking of consequences, however, what about the consequences of Judge Pritchett’s actions? Seventy-five percent of incarcerated women are mothers, most of them parents of children under age eighteen. What happens when the state takes a mother away from her children for an entire decade?

Children do hard time for their parents’ crime

~ womenandprison.org

Children of female inmates are at enormous risk to continue the cycle and end up in prison themselves, according to another Women in Prison participant, Dr. Laura Pitman, Deputy Director of Female Offender Operations for the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, who adds that thirty percent of the female prison population had at least one incarcerated parent themselves. African-American children are nine times more likely than white children to have a parent in prison and Hispanic children are three times more likely than white kids to have an incarcerated parent. All told, a million and a half children in America have a parent in state or federal prison, which, according to the Family and Corrections Network, “means a crisis for that child.”

           

The effect on Spottedcrow’s children has been devastating. Aged 1, 2, 4, and 9 at the time of her arrest, all but the eldest are unable to comprehend her disappearance. And because Spottedcrow is housed a full three-hours’ drive from her mother’s home, her family is unable to visit. As the youngest learns to talk, she knows her mother only as a voice on the phone. Meanwhile, Starr tries to explain to her grandkids. “It’s hard. The little girls do not understand why their mom’s gone…. The baby had a real hard time. We’ve spent nights crying. . . . She goes to the bedroom door and knocks: ‘Mama! Mama!’ And we cry.”

In Long Beach, California, when members of The Human Solution learned of Spottedcrow’s plight, they took up a collection and arranged for her children to receive new clothes to wear on a trip to visit their mom. In return, the Oklahoma woman who helped arrange the clothing donation made a cash contribution to The Human Solution so people would have gas money for court support. Thus, the movement to free prisoners of the drug war grows bigger and stronger.

  

The Two Joes: “We’ll Do This My Way”

It also grows louder. On Wednesday, November 2, 2011, angry protesters screamed in frustration outside Long Beach Courthouse, where former medical marijuana dispensary owners Joe Grumbine and Joe Byron were quickly losing ground. In preparing for their upcoming trial, Judge Charles D. Sheldon had eliminated as “irrelevant” all medical evidence. “We’ll do this my way,” he said, ruling out the two doctors who were prepared to testify that the Joes were, at the very least, qualified medical-marijuana patients. Having already been denied the right to defend themselves as legally compliant dispensary owners, the Joes had retreated to their fall-back position -- that of being patients first. But with his latest decision, Judge Sheldon had taken that away, too.

Protesters claimed the judge had denied the Joes their 14^th Amendment right to equal protection under the law. In two previous California medical-marijuana cases, defendants had been allowed an affirmative defense, meaning they were able to tell the jury they were legally compliant dispensary owners, as well as qualified medical-marijuana patients. In one such case, the defendant was found not guilty. In the other, the case was dismissed "in the interest of justice." Not so for the Joes.

Kangaroo Court

Like Patricia Spottedcrow, Grumbine and Byron have turned down plea deals, choosing instead to exercise their right to a jury trial. Motivated by the same do-good instincts that led them to create a medical-marijuana collective in the first place, they put their fate in the hands of a jury for the sake of all medical-marijuana patients and caregivers. They hoped to solidify the legal standing of their fellow patients and dispensary owners, along with their own, in a precedent-setting case. They thought the jury would hear all the facts. They were wrong. Instead, says Grumbine, it’s “a steamroller to conviction.”

Paranoia strikes deep

Into your life it will creep

It starts when you’re always afraid

You step out of line, the man come and take you away

~ Buffalo Springfield, “For What It’s Worth”

At a November 9 hearing -- their twenty-second court appearance -- the Two Joes suffered yet another defeat. Having filed a motion to quash the warrant that triggered a massive tri-county raid and turned their lives upside down, Grumbine and Byron had to appear before Judge Judith L. Meyer, who signed the original warrant. She denied the motion. After opining that the medical-marijuana-dispensary thing “is all a sham,” Judge Meyer reminded the defendants that their next court date with Judge Sheldon was on November 23 "in Department K, as in Kangaroo.” To quote Dr. Hunter S. Thompson out of context once again, “Jesus! How much more of this cheap-jack bullshit can we be expected to take?” Kangaroo court, indeed.

Don’t get out of jury duty, get into it!

Grumbine and Byron have only one defense left: the defense of last resort – Jury Nullification. Simply put, Jury Nullification (or “Juror Nullification”)  means a juror has the power – nay, the awesome responsibility – to refuse to convict if they believe the law is corrupt or the proceedings have been compromised. The Fully Informed Jury Association (FIJA) was created to inform American citizens that “juror veto – juror nullification – is a peaceful way to protect human rights against corrupt politicians and government tyranny.” With thousands of people in the street, and Occupy Wall Street demonstrators getting arrested in droves for rising up against government tyranny and abuse of power, the time for J-Null may have come.

Jurors Can Stop Government Tyranny by Refusing to Convict

As a juror, your first and greatest duty is to your fellow citizen. While jury duty may sometimes require you to punish a fellow citizen for breaking the law, it may also, at times, require you to protect your fellow citizen from tyrannical abuses of power by government officials.

Jury convictions, right or wrong, just or unjust, are almost never overturned. In a recent case in Georgia, Troy Davis was executed even after many jurors, upon hearing new evidence, tried to take back their guilty verdict. Imagine having to live with the knowledge that you sent a man to his death, based on insufficient or false evidence. In the case of Grumbine and Byron, there was no victim. Both defendants were motivated by a desire to help end suffering by providing patients legal access to a plant that helps and heals. For this, each now faces up to seven years in the slammer.

“Jurors cannot be required to check their conscience at the courthouse door,” says FIJA. Rather, they are empowered to use it in court, with absolutely no fear of retribution. So, in the future, don’t get out of jury duty, get into it. The life you save could be Joe Grumbine’s.

We’ll take a closer look at Jury Nullification in an upcoming post. In the meantime, FIJA has created a Juror’s Handbook to help inform potential jurors of their legal authority to refuse to enforce corrupt laws. “Short of being elected to office yourself,” says FIJA, “you may never otherwise have a more powerful impact on the rules we live by than you will as a trial juror.”

*****

In 1995 Cynthia Johnston directed public relations for an online publication, Sources eJournal, covering intelligence, espionage and terrorism. There, she wrote a three-part series, “Confessions of a CIA Brat.” She also wrote a business column, “In the Loop,” for an independent filmmaking web publication and several pieces for Bay Area computer magazine Micro Times. After Sources went down in the dot.com crash of the late Nineties, she took a leap of faith, moved into a funky cab-over camper, and started living curbside on the streets of San Francisco. She began her first blog before blogging was a word. Her online journal earned her the opportunity to write a piece, “Mobile Homeless,” for The San Francisco Chronicle. She’s been blogging ever since.

           

Johnston began writing about her experience as a medical marijuana patient as soon as she “got legal.” She went public on behalf of legalization in 1980 with the California Marijuana Initiative and a headline: “Marijuana Protester Busted at High Noon.”

Dispatches from the Field: Bend Over and Assume the Position

In the Halls of Justice, the only justice is in the halls.

~Lenny Bruce

Thursday, June 9, 2011

When Joe Byron opened the doors of Egg Heaven at seven o'clock that morning, breakfast was on him. For most diners, a free breakfast at this friendly spot on the corner of East 4^th Street and Ximeno Avenue in Long Beach would be a happy occasion, but the folks sliding into booths on this chilly morning bore the obvious signs of strain. It was a familiar drill for most of them. After breakfast they’d be heading to court to stand once again with Joe, a medical marijuana defendant, and his friend and former business partner, Joe Grumbine, in their ongoing legal nightmare.

This morning’s Pretrial Conference would be just one more step on the tortuous road the Joes had been traveling for a year and a half. The torment started in December of 2009, when the Long Beach Police Department unleashed one-hundred-and-twenty armed police officers with dogs, helicopters and a fleet of vehicles in a raid on seventeen locations across three Southern California counties – Orange, Riverside and Los Angeles. Three of those locations were legally sanctioned medical marijuana dispensaries co-owned by the two Joes – one in Garden Grove in Orange County, and two in Long Beach in Los Angeles County. Another was the collective grow room in Long Beach. The remaining incursions took place at the homes and businesses of everyone connected with the collective – owners, volunteers and employees.

They even busted Egg Heaven.

There were about nine people having breakfast at the restaurant when police barged in. They escorted the customers outside, then sat the waitress and two kitchen staff in separate booths while they searched the place, even collaring a friend of owner Joe Byron’s who was there to look at the cash register and offer advice on point-of-sale computer systems.

Byron, meanwhile, had just arrived at the “grow” on Long Beach Boulevard when he heard pounding on the door, saw it was the police, and offered to open it.

“I have a key,” he told them. But they had a battering ram.

Busting down the door, they shouted, “Get on the ground!” In seconds Byron was face down and handcuffed. “They went through my pockets and took everything I had, including some money and my wedding ring. Then they took me to my house, read me my rights, and took me to jail.”

At the same time, the dispensary Byron and Grumbine co-owned in Garden Grove, Unit D, was being set upon by another gung-ho SWAT team. While Joe Grumbine was handcuffed in one room, two female employees were handcuffed in another. The police broke down doors, tore things off walls, and confiscated everything – medicine, cash, and all their business records. After scrawling Merry Xmas on the wall, they arrested Joe and both employees and hauled them off to jail.

“You don’t think about what it’s like to assume the position and be violated,” Grumbine later told a gathering of supporters in Pasadena. It took some prompting by meeting organizer Lisa Chick to get Joe to admit that he was talking about body-cavity searches.

“Repeated, multiple body-cavity searches. Especially the women.”

The truth was obscure, too profound and too pure, to live it you have to explode

In the last hour of need, we entirely agreed,

 sacrifice was the code of the road.

~Bob Dylan, Journey Through Dark Heat

In April of 2010 – with bail for Byron set at $463,835 and Grumbine at $260,000, and with each man facing up to seven years in prison – Grumbine and Byron got a call from the Long Beach Police saying they could come to the station and collect some of their confiscated property. The property turned out to be file cabinets from Byron’s real estate office. Then, in November of 2010, before charges were filed, they were called into the office of L. A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley, where they were advised of the charges that were going be filed against them.

Triggered by a complaint from a “confidential informant,” the arrest warrant against Byron and Grumbine, issued by Judge Judith L. Meyer of Los Angeles County Superior Court, charged Byron with eighteen felonies, and Grumbine with fifteen, “committed on or about November 12, 2009.” The crimes? Twelve counts each of  “11360 (A) Health and Safety Code” violations, which make the sale of marijuana a felony “except as otherwise provided by law.” California law does in fact provide otherwise, making the sale of medical marijuana legal, but some jurisdictions choose to ignore it. And once defendants have been charged with a felony, however wrongfully, they are in the system, generating money for America’s vast prison industrial complex.

The People of the State of California vs. Joseph James Byron

Cooley’s office offered the Joes a deal: two felonies and no jail time. They turned it down.

On Tuesday, December 7, 2010, the case was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court in Long Beach. The following day, at a Bench Warrant Hearing, Grumbine and Byron heard the charges against them. They pled not guilty to all counts and Judge Arthur Jean, Jr., reduced Byron's bail to $300,000 and Grumbine’s to $200,000. Unable to come up with ten percent of that in cash, Grumbine was “remanded to custody,” which is to say, led from the courtroom in handcuffs and chains.

Three days later, on Friday, December 10, 2010, there was a Bail Review Hearing with Judge Judith L. Meyer, who had signed the original arrest warrant. Given such a long list of felony charges, Judge Meyer denied Byron’s plea for bail reduction, leaving it at $300,000, and reduced Grumbine’s to $120,000. Byron’s parents came up with $30,000 to keep their son out of jail, but Grumbine’s friends and family fell short of the $12,000 they needed to buy his freedom. Again he was “remanded to custody,” disappearing behind a metal door in handcuffs and chains.

A few days later, a handful of angels – literally people Joe had just met – put their nest eggs on the line to make his bail. As soon as they got the word, Liz Grumbine, daughter Candace, and a few friends piled into a van for an anxious ride to Los Angeles. At about 1:00 a.m., having waited long enough to charge the taxpayers for one more prisoner day, the jailers let Joe out.

It’s not the money, it’s the money.

Bill Graham, Rock Concert Producer

They Thought We Were Some Kind of Cartel

On June 15, 2011, the Drug Policy Alliance reported that the war on drugs has cost the American public more than one trillion dollars. The price tag for 2009, the year of the raids that ruined Joe Grumbine and Joe Byron, was fifty-one billion dollars. Students for a Sensible Drug Policy reported that over ten billion dollars a year is spent just enforcing marijuana laws. And that says nothing of the cost to those who are forced to defend themselves.

Although Byron has been picking up the tab for the ad hoc breakfast club for many months, it’s nothing compared to what the arrest and prosecution have cost him. “They’ve financially devastated me,” he said. “The hardest thing was having to ask my parents to help out with bail. It’s been a huge strain on my family and everyone involved.”

The police took all the money everyone had on them or in their homes, including one person’s emergency thousand-dollar cash fund. “They emptied the cash register at Egg Heaven,” said Byron. “They counted it as drug money! They thought we were some kind of cartel, or drug ring, but all they got from all seventeen locations combined was $36,000.” Not exactly cartel money.

“I just finished filing Chapter 7 with my bank,” said Grumbine, acknowledging some of what the ordeal has cost him. In the early days of the case, supporters would gather for breakfast at the Grumbines’ place in Perris – Willow Creek Springs – where Joe and Liz had coaxed a nursery and botanical garden out of the barren hills around them. Grumbine has barely kept the nursery alive and is unable to earn a living as he focuses on holding fundraisers and selling ribbons to raise money for legal fees and court support.

Grumbine and friends around a campfire at Willow Creek Springs.
Note the green Solidarity Ribbon.

“My life has flipped upside down. [Before the raids] the nursery was doing well. The collective was paying my bills. Everything’s changed. I haven’t lost my house yet, but it’s on the edge.”

Beyond the financial toll, he’s also lost friends and family. “Except for a couple of people. My dad stood by me. And his wife. My uncle bailed me out. I haven’t paid him back yet, but he stepped up.” He understands that people are scared, that he’s “tainted” by a dark cloud that follows him everywhere.

It’s precisely because of the sacrifices others make to support him, and because it’s who he is, that Grumbine shows up in court for every other medical marijuana defendant he can. And a green ribbon crew is right there with him, even when they’re down to just one or two people.

Wheels of Mercy

As early arrivals passed around menus, more court supporters descended on Egg Heaven, some of them having gotten up at 4:30 in order to make it. They came from all over Southern California to reconnoiter at breakfast, then carpool over to the courthouse – each wearing a green ribbon with a small red cross in the center, their statement of support for medical marijuana patients and defendants in court.

In Los Angeles that morning, Stephanie Landa was waiting on the corner in the dark when her ride pulled up. A champion of court support, Landa has waged an ongoing battle to keep more “political prisoners” from entering the system. Over omelets and coffee, she posted pictures to Facebook, enticing anyone within driving range of the Long Beach courthouse.

Free breakfast at Egg Heaven! Help make history! Court support is making a difference!

After serving forty-one months in prison for cultivating medical marijuana in compliance with California law, Landa co-founded LPOP, the Landa Prison Outreach Program. Her ongoing mission: to make sure other medical marijuana POWs, who were operating within existing laws but still wound up in prison, receive cards, letters, postage, and books during their incarceration. She publishes a newsletter, LPOP – Prison Outreach Press to raise awareness about the forgotten people who are serving decades-long prison terms for providing a legally sanctioned plant as medicine in compliance with the law.

Charles Monson of Orange, California, a quadriplegic due to a diving accident in 1979, was a qualified medical marijuana patient. On October 20, 2007, a dozen or more cops in bulletproof vests, humping assault rifles, came pounding on his door at 7 a.m. They handcuffed Monson’s caregiver and ordered Monson out of bed. After Monson convinced them he actually couldn’t get out of bed, they un-cuffed his caregiver.

“They came down on me like I was some drug kingpin,” he told Eugene W. Fields of The Orange County Register. In the end, all they got was sixteen plants and approximately two-and-a-half ounces of medical marijuana.

No longer able to grow the one medicine that could ease his pain, allow him to sleep, and calm his violent muscle spasms without side effects, and unable to buy it on his fixed income, Monson forged an alliance with the good people at Unit D. He also joined The Human Solution, the non-profit organization founded in 2009 by Grumbine and other medical marijuana advocates to build public awareness of the health benefits of the cannabis plant and advocate for the rights of medical marijuana patients and defendants.

On the nights before Grumbine and Byron were due in court, Monson would sometimes sleep in his wheelchair, as it took too long to get into it in the morning. When he wasn’t doing court support, he was wrangling and repairing wheelchairs for anyone who needed them, through his own non-profit organization, Wheels of Mercy.

“It’s a hardship to be a witness,” acknowledges Grumbine, recounting the things Monson and others, like long-time civil rights activist Madeleine Johnson, have gone through to show up in court time after time.

“I was having to choose between food and gas,” said Johnson. When Long Beach dispensaries heard about her situation, some of them offered to sponsor her. “I didn’t have to ask,” she said. “They make sure I have gas money to go fight for the patients.”

On Tuesday, June 7, 2011, Johnson took the fight to the Long Beach City Council. “You are cutting schools. Teachers are being laid off. Kids are losing education. But you can harass the collectives that give us our medicine? It’s not right, it’s not fair, and we’re tired of it.”

Long Beach Superior Courthouse, Thursday, June 9, 2011, 8:30 AM

“We’ve got a lot of people today,” observed Judge Sheldon as he entered his courtroom. Los Angeles attorneys Allison Margolin and J. Raza Lawrence were representing Joe Byron. Jina Kim of  Glew & Kim in Santa Ana was defending Joe Grumbine. Taking over the case for “the People” was District Attorney Jodi B. Castano.

In February of 2011, during a four-day closed-door preliminary hearing before Judge Jesse Rodriguez, the attorneys for Byron and Grumbine were prohibited from introducing evidence showing that their clients’ medical-marijuana dispensary activities were operating in full compliance with state law. The bulk of the legal wrangling so far has been over this point.

By interpreting the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 to mean that no money whatsoever may change hands for medical marijuana, L. A. County District Attorney Steve Cooley, who makes no secret of his personal war on medical marijuana, justifies the arrests of law-abiding dispensary owners by charging them with “sales.” Yet Senator Mark Leno of San Francisco, who co-authored the Compassionate Use Act, told Greggory Moore of The Long Beach Post on June 14 that the intent of the legislation “was not to prohibit dispensaries from engaging in sales of this medicine. In fact, it was to clarify the allowance of it.” [Italics ours.]

And therein lies the rub. The defendants have not been allowed to explain to a judge (never mind a jury) that they were selling medical marijuana to qualified patients with valid identification and legitimate doctors’ recommendations. California Penal Code Section 866 guarantees a defendant the right to what is called an “affirmative defense.” Having been denied that right, attorneys for Grumbine and Byron filed a Penal Code Section 995 motion to have their case dismissed.

At a Pretrial Conference on May 5, 2011, Judge Charles D. Sheldon denied that motion, upholding Judge Rodriguez’s finding that there was enough evidence to take the case to trial. The defendants were ordered to appear for another Pretrial Conference on June 9^th. And so they did. It would mark their fifteenth appearance since this whole thing began – fifteen occasions over twenty months in which attorneys and courtroom personnel carried on doing the things that allow them to make a living, while Byron and Grumbine lost so much of what they had.            

Judge Sheldon, having received a lengthy discovery report, suggested they start out by setting a date to continue in order to give everyone enough time to go over the material. Ms. Castano said she had also received the material, including flash drives and “lots of audio.” “The people don’t want to pay to transcribe the audio if there is no trial,” she told the judge.

No trial? Court supporters glanced at each other, wondering if they’d heard right. A date for the discussion of discovery issues was set for 8:30 a.m., July 8, 2011.

There had been a motion from the defense asking to see the warrant that triggered the raids. The prosecutor acquiesced; they would finally be allowed to see the piece of paper that turned their lives upside down. Chalk one up for the Defense.

Judge Sheldon then asked about the writ filed by attorney J. Raza Lawrence on May 23, 2011, seeking to overturn the results of the preliminary hearing. They were still awaiting the outcome from the California Court of Appeal.

“We have a June 17 trial date,” said the Judge. “We need to know what happens with the writ.” Again, the prosecutor said, “We don’t know whether there’s a trial.” She reiterated that she didn’t want the People to pay for transcription of the audio tapes if there would be no trial, preferring to stretch out the pre-trial so the outcome of the various motions could be absorbed.

The judge, defense and prosecution agreed to stretch out the timeline with a series of three pre-trial conferences while they waited to see how the current motions played out. The new trial date was set for August 22, 2011. And then it was over.

Everyone looked to Joe Grumbine. It was a small victory in a long line of defeats, but there was no time to celebrate.

First, it was by no means over. Second, there was another landmark medical marijuana trial going on at the same time in Westminster, a twenty-minute drive south. Grumbine had already dispatched half his court support team straight from breakfast. The Long Beach contingent would double their number. Another defendant in need of Court Support: Catrina Falbo of Huntington Beach. Now it was her case that could set precedent, since Judge Sheldon had postponed a decision on the Long Beach case. Unlike Grumbine and Byron, Falbo was able to present an affirmative defense. Once again, a judge was in the unusual position of deciding a case with minimal case law and a room full of witnesses. [See Update at bottom.]

The Truth May Set You Free

The following evening, author Cheri Sicard hosted an impromptu barbecue for Grumbine and crew. Naturally, the main topic of conversation was their case. One of the hardest things to understand, even for the lawyers, was why these two regular Joes had been singled out for prosecution when business licenses were being handed out to some twenty other dispensaries in the same area. In fact, another dispensary was currently operating at their former Garden Grove location, using the very same wiring and lighting equipment they’d installed a few months before the raids, without any repercussions.

It all came down to the so-called “confidential informant” whose name had appeared on the warrant. “I know the guy,” said Joe. “He worked for us. Rick Anderson. I had to fire him. He called the police after I fired him and said he could only give his first name because he feared for his safety. He pretended to be a whistleblower.” According to the story, Anderson told the police that he had rigged the wiring downstairs to steal power from a neighbor at the request of the Unit D folks. It was a lie. He never did any wiring. Not only did he lie to the police, but later, he lied on the witness stand.

Joe recounted that before firing Anderson, he’d given him a verbal warning about drinking on the job, and then a written one that Anderson had signed without dispute. That document, along with all their other records, was seized in the raids. If they win their appeal overturning the “prelim,” they will start the process over, only this time they’ll have the evidence that Anderson launched this whole nightmare with a false complaint.

Byron and Grumbine's next court appearance: 8:30 a.m., Friday, July 8, 2011

**Update: On Friday, June 24, 2011, Catrina Falbo’s medical marijuana case, in which an “affirmative defense” was allowed, was dismissed by Judge Robert Gallivan “in the interest of Justice.”

 Sometimes Lenny Bruce is wrong.

Dispatches from the Field: The Mother Teresas Refused to Cop a Plea

You should all be put down like animals.

~ Los Angeles Police Detective Salb

December 17, 2009, 10:30 AM.

It was almost Christmas, but the clatter outside was definitely not Santa’s reindeer. It was helicopters, SWAT teams, and police dogs. A total of one-hundred-and-twenty armed police officers swarmed seventeen locations across three Southern California counties in a highly-coordinated raid on legally sanctioned medical marijuana dispensaries, as well as the homes and businesses of everybody connected with them.

According to The Orange County Register, Long Beach police officials, with the help of the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office, served “a series of warrants” at locations in Orange, Los Angeles and Riverside Counties. Fifteen people were arrested.

At Unit D, a medical marijuana dispensary in Orange County’s Garden Grove, co-owner Joe Grumbine had just finished making a pot of coffee. When he opened the front door he found himself staring down the barrel of a 9-millimeter handgun. “I saw the round that would have taken my life. The officer had his finger on the trigger. If I’d sneezed…. I thought, Wow, that could be the last thing I see.”

There were an estimated ten police vehicles, including SUVs, in the Unit D parking lot.  Joe was kept handcuffed in one room, with two female employees handcuffed in another, while sixteen police officers ransacked the place. He was then arrested at the site along with both employees.

At the same time, in Perris, a small city in Riverside County, Joe’s wife Liz was out in the yard of the family home as more than twenty police officers broke through the gate with guns drawn. Their nineteen-year-old daughter Candace was in her bedroom, playing guitar.

Both Liz and Candace Grumbine were handcuffed for hours while drug-sniffing dogs and police agents tore their property apart. Two volunteers at work in the family nursery, Willow Creek Springs, were detained for over six hours.

A Detective Salb of the Los Angeles Impact Division told Liz, “You should all be put down like animals.”

After trashing the place, the police left human feces in all three toilets of the Grumbine home. In the end, all they got was Joe’s personal meds and a scale Liz used to weigh bee’s wax.

At the Unit D dispensary, they wrote a message on the wall:  Merry Xmas.

In Long Beach that morning, Unit D co-owner Joe Byron fared no better. He was at the “collective grow” on Long Beach Boulevard when he was arrested. Also raided were Byron’s home, real estate business, and restaurant, Egg Heaven. Byron’s and Grumbine’s new Long Beach dispensary “2200,” opened a couple of months earlier at the request of patients who wanted a collective closer to them, was also included in the raids, along with two other buildings leased for future grows.

The third dispensary raid occurred at 4^th and Elm Natural Health in Long Beach. The rest of the Orange County raids took place at the homes of employees and volunteers, and “everywhere they raided,” said Grumbine, “everybody looked at guns.”

In a December 9, 2010 article by Nick Schou in OC Weekly, Katherine Hamel, one of those arrested in the 2009 raids, “blasted city officials for terrorizing legitimate cannabis patients.” According to her account, “twenty uniformed Long Beach officers busted down our doors, pointed guns at my head and my friend’s head, handcuffed us, and took us to jail.”

Long Beach Police Commander Laura Farinella claimed “the enforcement” was a result of complaints from city residents about illegal marijuana sales in their neighborhoods. Ironically, co-owner Joe Grumbine had been found in full compliance with California law by a judge in a prior case five weeks before the raids.

Compassionate Use

A year earlier, motivated by the shared tragedy of seeing a close friend suffer and die of brain cancer, Grumbine, an organic gardener, and Byron, a local businessman, decided to open a medical marijuana dispensary. They’d seen cannabis tincture ease their friend’s pain in a way that morphine could not, and wanted to help others who were suffering.

In December 2008 they opened Unit D (officially called Unit D/Tangent Retail) in Garden Grove. The collective was created in accordance with existing California law, based on the Compassionate Use Act of 1996.

On January 1, 2004, California Senate Bill 420 went into effect, establishing statewide guidelines for the enforcement of the Compassionate Use Act. “Those guidelines are not specific on how to operate a collective,” said Joe. “They have recommendations, implications and innuendo, but no clear definition.”

The Compassionate Use Act, added to the California Health and Safety Code in 1996, was intended to “ensure that seriously ill Californians have the right to obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes… and that patients and their primary caregivers who obtain and use marijuana for medical purposes upon the recommendation of a physician are not subject to criminal prosecution or sanction.” [Italics mine.] It also encourages federal and state governments “to implement a plan to provide for the safe and affordable distribution of marijuana to all patients in medical need of marijuana.”

In the spirit of compassionate use, Byron and Grumbine gave medicine to people who couldn’t afford it. They spent a great deal of time with patients, providing food, clothing, wheelchairs, jobs and job placement outside of their collective to those who needed it. They built wheelchair ramps and gave bus passes to people who couldn’t afford to drive.

In addition to the collective, in early 2009 Joe Grumbine and a small group of medical marijuana advocates founded The Human Solution, a non-profit grassroots organization offering free seminars on the anti-aging and health benefits of marijuana, along with other services, to patients, caregivers, and the local community. They created, and wear, green Solidarity Ribbons championing patient rights and supporting medical marijuana defendants in court.

Perfect Storm

On November 2, 2009, just five weeks prior to the December 2009 raid, Grumbine was exonerated of all charges in a similar arrest. He described that event on the internet forum, InSession.

“At the time of my arrest, we still didn’t have a big safe. So one of the managers or owners would literally package up the contents of the collective and we would take it to one of our homes. It happened to be my night. It was a perfect storm. We had made some significant purchases that day and I had much more medicine than we normally carry. Then, literally, a mile and a half from my house, the Riverside County Sheriff pulled me over and lit me up for having a trailer ball on my bumper. No moving violation. I haven’t had a moving violation in twenty years.” Other than the trailer ball, he was in compliance with the law.

When asked if he thought he’d been targeted, Joe said, “No. It was just his lucky day. He was parked there and I happened to drive by.” He added that there was only one police officer involved, noting with bitter wisdom that there’s never a “raid of one.”

Seventeen trips to court and four prosecutors later, on November 2, 2009, Grumbine was exonerated. The judge stated that, based on proof of patients, patient outreach programs and a huge witness list, “the court finds that Mr. Grumbine was acting in accordance with California law.” But it was a costly arrest. To this day, Joe has not recovered financially. And, of course, the worst wasn’t over.

According to online publication MedicalMarijuana411.com’s The Daily Dose, after Grumbine was exonerated of all charges, Long Beach Police Detective Valenzuela, apparently unwilling to let the judge’s findings stand, consoled the Riverside County District Attorney, saying “Don’t worry. We’ve got him good.”

Sure enough, five weeks later Grumbine’s home and business were raided.

Taking a Stand

Of the fifteen people rounded up in the raid, felony charges were brought against only two – Joe Grumbine and Joe Byron.

Having established their dispensaries in full compliance with state law, as found by the court just five weeks earlier, Byron and Grumbine refused to “confess to crimes they did not commit,” insisting instead on their right to trial by jury. A jury trial is a rare occurrence in Long Beach and the many other jurisdictions where dispensary owners find themselves under intense pressure to take plea deals. The outcome may have repercussions for every dispensary in California, and perhaps the nation.

Grumbine understands that theirs may be seen as a test case. What’s being tested is the right of law enforcement to attempt to erode medical marijuana protections by charging collective owners with sales, using Los Angeles County District Attorney Steve Cooley’s interpretation of the law to mean any sale is illegal. “If they win enough cases, it undermines the protection collectives have…. This is the precedent they are trying to set. By claiming all sales are illegal, then charging people with sales, they are saying there can be no legal dispensary. If they win, everybody goes down.”

They Chose the Wrong Guys

I already assumed

That we’re in the felony room

But I ain’t a judge, you don’t have to be nice to me.

Bob Dylan ~ “She’s Your Lover Now”

Nearly a year later, in December 2010, a Bail Reduction Hearing for the two Joes was conducted in Long Beach Superior Court. The courtroom, as well as the hallway outside, was filled with people – some in wheelchairs, some with walkers or on crutches – all wearing The Human Solution’s green Solidarity Ribbon with a red cross in the middle. They had come to support these men whose actions had made such a difference in their lives.

In a December 10, 2010 article in OC Weekly, Nick Schou quotes attorney Chris Glew, who at the time was representing both Joes, as saying, “If they could pick anybody in Long Beach to prosecute, they chose the wrong guys. These guys are representative of the true intention of this whole industry and what it should be. That’s who they are…They are the Mother Teresas of medical marijuana.”

At the hearing, the judge set bail for the two Joes at half a million dollars – two hundred thousand for Grumbine, three hundred thousand for Byron –  more than Los Angeles County charges for rapists, kidnappers and child molesters. And without the help of several “angels” who put their retirement money and life savings on the line to make his bail, Joe Grumbine would still be sitting in the slammer. Add to that his massive legal bills, and regardless of the outcome, he will spend many years paying for these raids.

Grumbine remains very moved and encouraged by the show of support at his bail hearing, as this photo taken by MedicalMarijuana411.com attests.

Grumbine told Cheri Sicard of The Daily Dose, that “for the two seconds I was able to scan the courtroom, I saw it filled with caring faces. I knew that this was a sacrifice for everyone, to take time out of their lives to travel, pay for parking and gas, and to be treated poorly by the court. I knew that whatever happened to me in there was going to be witnessed by everyone. I will remember that moment all my life. I am almost brought to tears every time I think about it. Those people gave me strength to endure the rest of my stay in custody.

“Court support is one of the most powerful things an individual can do with the least amount of effort,” he went on. “Some folks say that it makes no difference, that judges are above reproach and can’t be touched by such a statement, but I say this: there are few cases where people act the same when they are being watched and scrutinized as they do when they are all alone with nobody watching.”

How You Can Help

If you’re in the Southern California area, and especially if you’re a medical marijuana patient, put your boots on the ground. Bear witness. Stand in solidarity. Wear the green ribbon. By raising public awareness, we not only hold our justice system accountable, we educate the jury pool. “Jurors have an obligation to do the right thing,” said Joe Grumbine. “They cannot be punished for that.”

After all these years of raids and prosecutions and politics and wasted tax dollars and lawyerly wrangling, it all boils down to one simple thing: Nobody should go to jail for using or providing, as medicine, a plant that is safer and more beneficial than aspirin.

On Thursday, June 9, 2011, trial proceedings begin for Grumbine and Byron at Long Beach Superior Court. Thus begins another round of lawyerly wrangling over whether the two Joes will be allowed to tell the jury they were providing medical marijuana in compliance with California law. A date for jury selection will be set. The Human Solution plans a rally on the day jury selection begins. Court attendance is needed and requested.

By our actions today we help set the legal precedents for tomorrow.

Please Attend:

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Trial Proceedings Begin

9:00 am to 12:00 pm

Long Beach Courthouse

415 West Ocean Boulevard

Long Beach, California 90802

In addition to court attendance, supporters are needed to help plan and coordinate a courthouse rally. Please call 951-436-6312 for information.

Contributions to the defense fund of Joe Grumbine and Joe Byron can be made by clicking the Donate button on The Human Solution webpage.

Or by sending checks to:

26521 Hammack Avenue

Perris, California 92570