Judge Finds Medical Marijuana Patient Guilty in Pot-Growing Case :
Top Stories : Kitsap Sun
A Kitsap County Superior Court judge Friday found a card-carrying medical marijuana patient guilty of growing pot, saying that under the law, the Bremerton man was “not a qualifying patient.”Judge Anna M. Laurie ruled that Robert Dalton’s use of marijuana for chronic lower back pain didn’t meet the conditions of the citizen’s initiative passed by voters in 1998, or any subsequent amendment to it by the Legislature.
His lawyers, Jeanette Dalton and Douglas Hiatt, had “failed to sustain his burden” on the point that his pain couldn’t be “unrelieved by standard medical treatments and medications,” such as opiate-based painkillers, she said, adding that marijuana for medicinal purposes should be a “drug of last resort.”
Hiatt was “very disappointed” with Laurie’s verdict, reiterating what he’d argued in court: that Laurie was “second guessing” physician Thomas Orvald, who recommended Robert Dalton use marijuana.
“If Judge Laurie wants to be a doctor, she should go to medical school,” Hiatt said. “No patient in this state is safe if she’s right.”
However, Kitsap County Deputy Prosecutor Cami Lewis called the decision “the correct result.” During closing arguments, deputy prosecutor Coreen Schnepf had argued that opiate medications were relieving his pain, and that he needed to have incurable pain by other medicines to use cannabis.
Hiatt had argued that those opiates made Dalton sick and weren’t effective at quelling his pain.
Dalton faces zero to six months in jail for the felony conviction. His lawyers will ask the judge at an Oct. 17 hearing to suspend any sentence pending their appeal.
With the conviction, Robert Dalton’s medical marijuana card is nullified, he said following the verdict. He said he’s not happy with the idea of going to opiates for pain control because of their addictive properties.
“I don’t want to be a drug addict,” he said. “That’s why I chose medical marijuana.”
When we have a system where only medical use of marijuana is legal, we end up with these crazy situations where judges get to play doctor and police get to play botanist. Dalton was arrested for growing 88 marijuana plants. Police decided that was more than a “60-day supply” as Washington’s law requires. The cops were able to make that determination by using their ESP to determine just how much pain Dalton is feeling; their medical training to determine how much pain relief is required; their botany expertise to know how much medicine at certain potency will be produced by the strains Dalton was growing; and their crystal ball to determine how much medicine the future harvest would yield.
Then, after arrest, Judge Laurie used her magical laying-on of hands to sense Dalton’s pain to determine that the pain relief Dalton receives from marijuana is inferior to the pain-relief from opiates, despite Dalton telling her the opposite. And with her superior medical training, the judge determined that the side effects of addiction, constipation, impotence, lethargy, and inability to work or drive are not too high a price to pay for pain relief, just so long as we keep Dalton away from that deadly dangerous “drug of last resort” that is non-addictive and makes you relax and feel better.
This is why marijuana must be made legal for all adults – healthy or sick. As long as there is “criminal” marijuana, police and judges will constantly get between doctors and patients.
The reason nobody has done anything to remove or change this verbage is they are all stoned. Hard to get stoned people motivated. I believe the courts are scewed up and believe in the right to use medicinal marijuana but com’on, most of the users I know have a hard time getting motivated to do anything including getting their cards to be legit. I know of a couple who could easily but they are too unmotivated to pick up the phone and make the call.
I hope the law is changed but until we can get someone to actually put some thought into the law and follow through, we will continue to see the same results.
I hope this comes to the attention of Eric Holder, his “boss” and the new drug czar.
While a tragedy the law as written was upheld. The guy should never admitted that opiates killed his pain. As soon as he did he was sunk. But the Judge was fishing for any reason as her decision shows what her more personal opinion is. What this guy should have said is I’ve tried all the other things and they don’t work for all my pains, I couldn’t take enough of all that other stuff to get the relief I must have to function.
The medical pot law in Washington State was badly written of that there is little doubt. It does not let a Doctor simply prescribe pot instead of something else because he thinks it might help better, nope it says that he can prescribe only when there is nothing else that works. A really stupid qualifying condition if you ask many of us that still wonder if maybe we should have voted no and waited until that wasn’t in it. What we got for being in a hurry. And why it hasn’t been taken out I am still wondering. But it hasn’t and nobody seems to be working on removing that clause either, it is going to continue to be a huge problem until it gets written out.
They had a chance again this year to fix this problem and didn’t, but at least now we know what a 60 supply is, 24 ounces and 15 plants I read from one source. One part settled and several more to go.
Do yourself a favor; If you ever end up in court do not wave the reading of the charges, get them and a copy of the actual law cited in print, and read it 25 times, and please pay attention to the punctuation. Know what it says and prepare yourself to never give an answer that admits violating it, there is no well I maybe kinda did But escape clause. One question and the wrong answer like this guy gave and it’s all over but sentencing which is where they do listen to buts and excuses all day long.