TRANSPORTING POT IS LEGAL FOR MEDICINAL USERS, COURT RULES

But Conviction of Man With a Pound of Marijuana Upheld

Medical-marijuana patients who take the drug from one place to another
for personal therapeutic use can't be convicted of transporting
narcotics under California law, the state Supreme Court ruled Monday.

A law signed by then-Gov. Gray Davis in 2003 filled a gap in the
state's 1996 medical marijuana initiative, Proposition 215, the court
said in a unanimous ruling. That gap was Prop. 215's failure to
address whether the initiative expressly protected patients or their
caregivers from being prosecuted for transporting marijuana.

The 2003 law applied retroactively to cases that were pending when it
took effect, the justices said. The court nevertheless reinstated an
Orange County man's conviction for transporting more than a pound of
marijuana that Huntington Beach police found in his truck and his
clothing in 2001.

Shaun Eric Wright had his doctor's recommendation to use marijuana for
chronic pain and testified that he needed large amounts because he
preferred to consume the drug in food rather than smoking it. Although
jurors should have been told that Wright was entitled to transport
marijuana for personal use, they made it clear that they would have
rejected that claim when they convicted Wright of possessing the
marijuana for sale, the court said.

Wright has already served his one-year jail sentence, with time off
for good behavior.

Prop. 215 repealed state criminal penalties for possession, use or
cultivation of marijuana by patients and their caregivers, if a doctor
approved the medical use. But the law failed to specify how those who
didn't grow their own marijuana could obtain or transport it without
running afoul of other laws. Lower courts were divided on whether
Prop. 215 provided a defense to those charges.

Some of the problems were addressed in agreements between local
police, prosecutors and the cooperatives and other organizations that
sprang up to supply medical marijuana. Other details were contained in
the 2003 law, which protected patients from being prosecuted for
several other crimes, including transporting marijuana, as long as
they intended to use the drug medicinally.

Although the measure was not in effect when Wright was charged, laws
recognizing new defenses must be applied retroactively to pending
appeals, Justice Carlos Moreno wrote in Monday's ruling.

He also said testimony from Wright and his doctor about Wright's
medical use of marijuana was enough to establish a possible defense to
the transportation charge, even though Wright had not told police he
was a marijuana patient and possessed far more than the
eight-ounce-per-person guideline set by the 2003 law.

But Moreno said jurors would have rejected that defense because they
didn't believe Wright's testimony and found that he had intended to
sell the marijuana.

The case is People vs. Wright, S128442.