CUSTODY BATTLES CONCERN MARIN COUNTY RESIDENTS

CONTRA COSTA - An alliance of medical marijuana advocates and divorced
parents angry with the court system filed a petition yesterday asking for a
recall of Marin County District Attorney Paula Kamena.

The eclectic group gathered 20,671 signatures demanding a vote to remove
Kamena from office. That's 6,915 more signatures than they need to have
certified to qualify for a recall election.

"This shows that the Constitution and the American way works, that the
little people can get together and make change," said Lynnette Shaw, the
founding director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana. "We're
talking about elderly people who are dying whose only relief is medical
marijuana."

Although Kamena's hard line on marijuana use is supposedly a focus of the
recall, the petition itself doesn't even mention that issue. Instead, it
castigates Kamena for the prosecution of Carol Mardeusz, a woman who was
convicted in July of falsifying a court order in an attempt to gain custody
of her daughter from the father.

Kamena points out that Mardeusz, who was declared a "vexatious litigant" in
Sonoma County for her repeated "frivolous legal tactics," was indicted by a
Marin County grand jury after trying to steal her child and was finally
convicted by a jury.

"It is unfortunate that many good citizens have been misled into signing
the petition to recall me," Kamena said in a written statement. "False
information and outright lies have been told to people with regard to the
document they were asked to sign. When the citizens recognize the many
accomplishments that have occurred since I have taken office, I firmly
believe that I will be retained as the district attorney."

The imbroglio began as an effort to recall three family court judges by a
group of divorced parents unhappy with the outcome of their child custody
cases.

That group and Shaw's group joined forces. In the end, the signature-
gathering campaign against the judges fizzled and the group focused only on
the district attorney. Shaw explained that medical marijuana advocates did
not have any beef with the judges, and they were the ones who delivered the
most signatures.

The petition accuses Kamena of being in charge of a conspiracy by
prosecutors to elicit false testimony in the prosecution of Mardeusz while
protecting the allegedly child-molesting father.

Mardeusz lost custody of her child to her former boyfriend in 1995 and was
denied visitation rights. Her own lawyer, Patricia Barry, acknowledged in
court that two psychiatrists recently found her to be "delusional."

Mardeusz has, nonetheless, become the focus of several family law critics,
who point to a voluminous report prepared by New York divorce court reform
advocate Karen Winner as proof of their charges. That report, which the
critics paid $10,000 for, outlined what Winner alleged was a pattern of
abuse in Marin County divorce and custody cases.

The Marin County registrar of voters now has 30 days to sort through the
signatures, eliminate duplicates and those from unregistered voters and
certify the petition.

If the petition is certified, an election would be held next spring.