PETALUMA DUO ACQUITTED IN POT GROWING CASE

For the second time this year, a Sonoma County jury has done what the
state Legislature has failed to do for the last three years: interpreted
the California Medical Marijuana law.

A jury last week found Ken Hayes and Michael Foley not guilty on several
counts connected to the cultivation of 899 marijuana plants for
distribution through a medical marijuana club in San Francisco.

Hayes and Foley were arrested at their home on King Road in Petaluma in
May of 1999. Police seized 899 plants, 15 pounds of dried marijuana, a
pound of hashish, scales, receipts and a shotgun. At the time, Hayes was
executive director of Cannabis Helping Alleviate Medical Problems, a San
Francisco medical marijuana dispensary which had been honored by the San
Francisco Board of Supervisors.

Sonoma County District Attorney Mike Mullins contended that Hayes and
Foley could not be defined as "caregivers" under the Compassionate Use
Act, because they did not have a one-to-one relationship with all the
people to whom they provided marijuana. The act exempts caregivers and
patients from prosecution, but does not define caregiver, quantify legal
doses of marijuana, or detail how physicians can recommend marijuana
use.

Hayes was represented by William Panzer, co-author of the successful
1996 ballot measure which put medical marijuana on the books. Charges
against Hayes' girlfriend Cheryl Sequeira were dropped during jury
selection. Sequeira was being represented by Santa Rosa attorney Chris
Andrian.

Carla Claeys, who prosecuted the trial, attempted to convince the jury
that Hayes was growing marijuana for profit, and questioned him minutely
about his accounting systems and his knowledge of the over 1,000 people
to whom he claimed to be giving care.

San Francisco District Attorney Terrence Hallinan testified in Hayes'
defense.

After seven weeks of testimony, the jury deliberated for a little less
than five hours before delivering its verdict.

Earlier this year, a jury found Santa Rosa resident Allan McFarlane not
guilty of criminal drug cultivation for his medical marijuana plants.

State Sen. John Vasconcellos has introduced legislation to clarify the
medical marijuana laws. Last week, his bill, SB 187, passed in the
Health and Human Services Committee. It moves next to the appropriations
committee.

SB 187 contains most of the provisions of an earlier bill -- SB 848 --
which was drafted in 1999 by the Medical Marijuana Task Force, convened
by Attorney General Bill Lockyer, and co-chaired by Vasconcellos.
Mullins was a regular task force participant, and was "very much
committed to working out a solution," Vasconcellos said Monday.

"We had DAs, sheriffs, cops, narcs, patients, doctors and lawyers in the
room," said Vasconcellos. "We worked for seven or eight months and came
up with a plan that was elegant and balanced."

Work on that earlier bill died when Governor Gray Davis let it be known
that he would veto it. Mullins said Monday that Davis did not have
unequivocal support for the 1999 bill from law enforcement
organizations.

"The big difference this year is that law enforcement were the ones
pushing for a renewed effort," Vasconcellos said about the new bill.

Mullins said that he met with representatives from the Police Chiefs and
Sheriffs associations in Sacramento last month "to get some clarity and
to iron out our differences." After their meeting, they asked
Vasconcellos to resubmit the bill. Mullins said he was hopeful that the
governor would sign it.

The new bill would define "caregiver" more narrowly than the jury did,
and it would prevent large growers in one county to provide for sick
people in another county. It would also establish a medical marijuana
registry and identification card system.

"The public clearly wants people left alone who are sick and want to use
medical marijuana," Vasconcellos said. "The law enforcement community
has been surprisingly open to working things out."

Mullins is meeting Thursday with representatives from all the law
enforcement agencies in the county to review current practices in cases
where marijuana may be being used or grown for medicinal purposes.

Petaluma Police Chief Pat Parks said Monday that he is looking forward
to the meeting. "It's very difficult right now for a police officer to
enforce the law because the standards aren't very clear. Getting some
concrete guidelines would be extremely beneficial to us."

Despite Mullins' participation in the task force, Panzer said that he
doubts that his work in Sonoma County is over. "Mullins is Captain Ahab
trying to take down the great white whale of medical marijuana. He's
going to go down with it," Panzer said, predicting defeat for Mullins in
the next election.

Panzer said that he would be applying to Lockyer for an investigation
into an incident involving Claeys which occurred during the trial. At a
shooting range, Claeys shot at two human-shaped targets on which her
friends had scrawled Panzer's name and the name of Foley's attorney,
Nicole DeFever.

"She was showing off the paper targets to anyone who would look," said
Panzer, who said that he felt threatened by Claeys' actions and viewed
them as terrorist threats. Panzer objected to the fact that Claeys was
recently promoted.

Mullins confirmed that the target practice had occurred but said that he
could not comment on a personnel matter. The promotion occurred before
the verdict and had been in the works for several months, Mullins said.

The district attorney said that he did not believe that his staff was
currently preparing to bring any medical marijuana cases to trial.