Medical marijuana scored a major victory in the District Court for the Northern District of California this week. Judge Richard Gus Seeborg ordered federal prosecutors to pack their bags and stop hassling two law-abiding Humboldt County farmers. His reasoning was they were abiding by California laws, and cited two legal principles to substantiate his decision.
Were it not for these two principles, the Feds had a case as watertight as a good hookah ever was. Los Angeles Times reports they found ‘more than three hundred marijuana plants in a pair of greenhouses’ at Anthony Pisarski and Sonny Moore’s place five years ago. They also discovered ‘guns in a house on the sprawling property and about $225,000 in cash, much of it bundled in vacuum-sealed pouches, hidden in a garage and some pickup trucks’.
When they looked further, they found ‘another large stash of cash, along with bars of gold and silver’ so clearly they thought they had stumbled onto something big. Not true, Anthony Pisarski and Sonny Moore argued before the judge. We sold our palliative pot to legit collectives, and we abide with California law.
Judge Seeborg concurred with them. He ruled, “Their conduct strictly complied with all relevant conditions imposed by California law on the use, distribution, possession, and cultivation of medical marijuana.” In so doing, he relied on these two legal principles:
- The Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment: This prohibits the U.S. Justice Department from spending money to ‘prevent states from implementing their own state laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession, or cultivation of medical marijuana.’
- The S. v. Mackintosh Judgement: This confirmed the authority of the Rohrabacher-Farr Amendment, although agreeing ‘the rider is not a model of clarity’. The 9th Circuit Appellate Court has jurisdiction over Alaska, Arizona, California, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands.
While the dust was settling, Anthony Pisarski and Sonny Moore’s defiance attorney Ronald Richards told LA Weekly “This is the first time in my 23-year career I’ve had a case stopped because of an appropriations rider. What the court did, in this case, may be used as a blueprint for other cases. It opens the door for people not to get scared.”
“This shows that you can prevail – defendants in federal court could have their prosecutions halted,” Tamar Todd of Drug Policy Alliance confirms. “It’s enjoining the prosecution from being able to spend any more money on this case. It’s very encouraging. It gives a lot of teeth to Rohrabacher-Farr.”