Maine medical marijuana grower’s prison sentence upheld by Maine Supreme Court

(Bangor Daily News) Voters passed a referendum in November 1999 and the Legislature amended it in 2002 to allow the medical use of marijuana. The law allows a designated caregiver to possess 2½ ounces of harvested marijuana for the benefit of a patient eligible to receive medical marijuana plus a total of six plants, of which no more than three could be mature, flowering plants, according to Bickerman’s brief.

Since the enactment of the law, people have asked [Donald K. Christen, 55] to be their caregiver once they have received the necessary medical permission to use the drug medicinally from their physicians. Christen [argued he] was following the law when Somerset County sheriff’s deputies, armed with a warrant on Nov. 10, 2004, seized 13 marijuana plants from his residence.

Christen [argued he] had the proper paperwork to show that he was acting legally as a caregiver to at least six people, including his wife, Pamela Christen, 45, of Madison, who was suffering from ovarian cancer.

Let’s see, six patients times three flowering plants equals eighteen plants, doesn’t it? And an ounce shy of a pound of medicine, right? A wife suffering from cancer, thirteen measly plants, what else does a guy have to do to prove he’s not abusing the medical marijuana law?

Donald K. Christen, 55, was sentenced in August 2007 to 14 months in prison with all but six suspended, followed by two years of probation. A jury found him guilty four months earlier of aggravated marijuana cultivation and not guilty of drug trafficking at the end of a three-day trial in which Christen represented himself. The Maine Supreme Judicial Court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the 2007 conviction.

Well, there’s the first mistake. A person who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.

Peter Bickerman, the Augusta lawyer who represented Christen in the appeal, argued that Superior Court Justice Kirk Studstrup incorrectly instructed the jury about the state’s medical marijuana law.

Because Christen did not ask for specific jury instructions or object to jury instructions at the time of the trial, the court was limited in its review to obvious mistakes, [Justice Ellen] Gorman wrote. She also said that although Studstrup never specifically told jurors that a designated caregiver could possess a usable amount of marijuana for each eligible patient, he did give them written copies of the law.

This is why the battle over medical marijuana must include marijuana legalization for all.  As long as cannabis is prohibited to the majority of its users, medical marijuana laws will always have to draw lines to separate the “criminals” from the patients.  Many legitimate patients will be left on the “criminal” side and the rest will suffer the scarcity, prices, and hassles prohibition brings to all cannabis users.

And when it comes to marijuana, always get yourself a real lawyer.  Lawyers are cheaper than a lifelong criminal drug conviction.