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US: Criminal charges against Guru of Ganja tossed - Ed Rosenthal
Jim Herron Zamora, Chronicle Staff Writer San Francisco Chronicle
Wednesday 14 Mar 2007 A federal judge threw out criminal charges today against an Oakland man accused of growing medical marijuana, ruling that authorities had vindictively prosecuted him because of remarks he made after he successfully appealed an earlier conviction. U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco dismissed charges of tax evasion and money laundering against Ed Rosenthal, 62, an author and activist who has been dubbed the "Guru of Ganja." Breyer declared that the government had improperly refiled the tax-evasion and money-laundering case last fall after Rosenthal successfully appealed his 2003 conviction for marijuana cultivation. "The reasonable observer will interpret the government's conduct as demonstrating that if defendants successfully appeal, the government will ensure that they face more severe charges and more prison time the next time around," Breyer said. "The government's deeds -- and words -- create the perception that it added the new charges to make Rosenthal look like a common criminal and thus dissipate the criticism heaped on the government after the first trial," Breyer said. The judge said he based his decision in part on the comments by prosecutor George Bevan during a hearing on the case. Bevan, according to transcripts, explained the decision to re-file charges, saying, "The purpose is this: Mr. Rosenthal, after the verdict, took to the microphone and said, 'I didn't get a fair trial.' ... So I'm saying, this time around, he wants the financial side reflected, fine, let's air this thing out. Let's have the whole conduct before the jury: Tax, money laundering, marijuana." Breyer's ruling is the latest twist in the five-year legal saga of Rosenthal, a former columnist for High Times magazine who has written more than a dozen books about growing cannabis. He was first arrested after a federal raid in February 2002 at a West Oakland warehouse where Rosenthal was growing marijuana for what he said was medical use, with the support of Alameda County and Oakland officials. At trial in 2003, Breyer refused to let jurors learn about the intended medical use of the plants and excluded evidence about Proposition 215, California's 1996 medical marijuana initiative. Rosenthal was convicted of violating federal drug laws, but seven of the 12 jurors said afterward that their verdict would have been different if they had been allowed to consider evidence about the medical use of the marijuana and Rosenthal's status as an agent in the Oakland program. They requested leniency for Rosenthal. Breyer sentenced him to just the one day in jail he had already served, saying Rosenthal had believed he was acting legally at a time when the law was unsettled. Despite the one-day sentence, Rosenthal appealed the conviction. Last April, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 3-0 ruling that Rosenthal was entitled to a new trial because one of the jurors improperly sought outside advice about the case. In October, a new federal grand jury indicted Rosenthal again on 14 felonies, including conspiracy to manufacture marijuana at his Oakland warehouse and distribute it to the Harm Reduction Center, a San Francisco dispensary, between 2000 and 2002. Those were similar to the charges in a 2002 indictment. But the new indictment also included four counts alleging that Rosenthal had laundered money -- four transactions totaling about $1,850 -- to conceal its source as the proceeds of marijuana sales, and five counts alleging that he had filed tax returns that failed to list his marijuana income. "The government responded to the reversal by re-indicting Rosenthal on essentially the same charges and adding four counts of tax evasion and one count of money laundering," Beyer wrote in today's ruling. "These circumstances -- upping the ante as a result of Rosenthal's successful appeal -- raise a presumption of vindictiveness." Breyer did not throw out the drug charges, but noted that "the government agreed at oral argument" that it will not seek more than the one-day sentence on those counts. Rosenthal, his lawyers and his supporters in the medical marijuana movements celebrated the court victory. "The government was clearly out of line to bring this case forward against me," Rosenthal said in a statement. "The court's ruling is reassuring, but my continued prosecution on the marijuana charges is still malicious. To make me and my family go through a second prosecution to obtain, at most, a one-day time served jail sentence seems personally motivated." A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco said prosecutors were evaluating their options. http://sfgate.com/
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