Download the NORML Daily Audio Stash for 2008-07-03

It’s a special comedy edition of the Daily Audio Stash!  Tere Joyce (Last Comic Standing, Hollyweed Live) is joining us now on Thursdays as our Cannabis Comedy Correspondent.  Each week she will put us in touch with the best up-and-coming comedians who are on the cutting edge of reefer comedy.

Tere kicks off the segment by describing the incident that turned her from being just another stand-up to being a committed cannabis crusader - a DEA raid at the first medical marijuana dispensary she ever visited!  Now she works with the Patients Advocacy Network and performs benefits for those who have been victimized by the War on Marijuana.  You can see her next at the Castle Inn in Landers, California, on July 12th (a week from this Saturday).

Then we visit with the Associate Publisher of High Times Magazine (and co-defendent in the Keith Stroup Massachusetts Joint-Smoking trial) Rick Cusick.  Rick remembers his conversations with the late George Carlin and how Carlin was instrumental in getting Cusick his job at High Times.

Light your fireworks tomorrow - light a doobie now and enjoy your NORML Daily Audio Stash…

[The latest upgrade to WordPress 2.5.1 has wiped out my style sheets.  So that’s why the Stash site looks funny today.  I’m working hard on getting it fixed, please be patient.]

The Harvard Crimson :: News :: Law Prof Argues Marijuana Trial
Most marijuana users who get caught smoking a joint summarily pay a fine, but when an undercover police officer detained Richard E. Cusick and R. Keith Stroup, the two chose instead to challenge the constitutionality of Massachusetts laws banning marijuana for the first time in 30 years.

Arrested for sharing a marijuana cigarette at the annual Boston Freedom Rally in September, Cusick and Stroup turned to Harvard Law School professor Charles R. Nesson for legal counsel. Nesson and his clients acknowledged that they had used the illegal drug, and decided upon an unusual defense: they argued that the statute outlawing marijuana in Massachusetts has no “rational basis,” and that the jury has the power of jury nullification, or ruling a defendant innocent while recognizing that he or she had violated a law.

Both co-defendants built their careers around marijuana: Cusick is associate publisher of the well-known marijuana magazine, High Times, and Stroup is the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. They said that they do not believe marijuana to be a social ill.

Nesson said he had hoped that several experts—including Lester S. Grinspoon, an associate professor emeritus at Harvard Medical School, and Jeffrey A. Miron, director of undergraduate studies in economics—would be allowed to testify to the harmlessness of marijuana.

But the defendants were not granted an evidentiary hearing, and the jury found them guilty of marijuana possesion after deliberating briefly. The judge sentenced them to one day in prison, which they had already served the day they were arrested.

“The idea that they were found guilty of a crime was just crushing to me,” Nesson said in an interview yesterday.

Although Nesson plans to file an appeal, it is unlikely that an appellate court will rule to change the verdict.

Be sure to download today’s Daily Audio Stash for my conversation with Keith Stroup about his sentence and conviction.

NORML Blog » Blog Archive » Snapshots from Boston: Update on Commonwealth v. Cusick and Stroup
NORML Founder and Legal Counsel Keith Stroup dishes the latest on his court case, where he and High Times’ Rick Cusick are being prosecuted for smoking a joint on the Boston Common during the 2007 Freedom Rally.

More video from Rick Cusick, Dr. Lester Grinspoon, and Steve Epstein follow after the jump…

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

NORML Blog » Blog Archive » High Times Publisher and NORML Founder Mount Legal Challenge to Massachusetts Pot Laws!
On Saturday, September 15, 2007, NORML Founder Keith Stroup and High Times associate publisher Rick Cusick were arrested for smoking a joint at the 18th annual Boston Freedom Rally on the Boston Common. This is an event held each year to protest the continued arrest of responsible cannabis consumers in that state, and depending on the weather, it attracts from 15,000 to 50,000 supporters to the Common.

Keith and Rick have candidly acknowledged that they were sharing a joint, but they have pleaded not guilty and announced their intentions to challenge the constitutionality of the Massachusetts marijuana laws, and to argue for a jury instruction informing the jurors of their common law power to refuse to convict an individual, if they do not believe the offense should be a criminal matter. This long-held power of jurors is generally called jury nullification.

Read the rest of this entry by clicking here

Marijuana Laws on Trial - NORML
WHAT: A Press Conference on a Constitutional Challenge to Massachusetts’ Marijuana Laws and a Request for a Special Jury Instruction

On March 20, 2008, Keith Stroup, founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), and Rick Cusick, associate publisher of High Times magazine, will discuss the constitutional challenge they are mounting to the marijuana laws of Massachusetts. This challenge is part of their defense against the charge of possessing a joint on Boston Common last fall at a public gathering to protest marijuana’s prohibition. Stroup and Cusick will also discuss their plans to request a special jury instruction on the right to jury nullification.

Their attorneys — Professor Charles Nesson of Harvard Law School, Matthew Feinberg of Feinberg and Kamholtz, and Steven Epstein from Georgetown, Massachusetts — will join Stroup and Cusick at the press conference. Retired Harvard Medical School Professor Lester Grinspoon, M.D., who is providing expert medical testimony in support of the constitutional challenge to the state’s marijuana laws, will also be available to answer questions.

WHEN: Thursday, March 20, 2008 — at the conclusion of the pre-trial motions hearing, which is scheduled to begin at 9:00am in Courtroom #10 at the Boston Municipal Court, 24 New Chardon Street, Boston, MA 02114.

WHERE: The press conference will take place less than a mile from the Courthouse, at the Batterymarch Conference Center, 60 Batterymarch Street (inside the Hilton Financial District Hotel), Second Floor, Boston, MA 02110.