POT CRUSADER UPSET AT CROWN

There was no joy for medicinal marijuana activist Grant Krieger on
Friday when the Crown stayed a trafficking charge dating back to 1999,
for which the Supreme Court had granted Krieger a new trial.

"That's disappointing," Krieger said when advised the stay was
officially entered by Court of Queen's Bench Associate Chief Justice
Neil Wittmann at the behest of the federal Crown.

"But that's the way the system works. . . . The only way I can get it
fixed is in front of a jury, so the jury can nullify this nonsense.

"They (the Crown) know that's what I want to do. They don't want the
laws changed."

Canada's highest court unanimously struck down Krieger's 2003
trafficking conviction on Oct. 26.

The seven Supreme Court justices said in a 15-page ruling that Court
of Queen's Bench Justice Paul Chrumka ordered jurors to find Krieger
guilty because he had admitted distributing marijuana.

"In a trial by judge and jury, the verdict must be that of the jury,
not the judge," the top court said.

Krieger, who smokes pot to ease his multiple sclerosis symptoms, has
repeatedly distributed it to others suffering painful medical conditions.

He was diagnosed with MS in 1978 and first charged in 1999 after
police seized 29 marijuana plants in a grow operation he admitted to
maintaining at his Calgary home.

A judge gave him a constitutional exemption in 2000 to permit him to
grow his own pot and smoke it for his illness, but not to distribute
it to others.