PROP. 215 DELAYS MARIJUANA TRIAL

SAN ANDREAS -- A marijuana-cultivation trial was delayed by at least a week
and maybe for several months Wednesday over issues related to Proposition
215, the medical-marijuana law, and a common-law concept of "a defense of
necessity."

Robert Galambos, arrested in a raid last summer when officers said they
found him tending a garden with more than 300 pot plants, is charged with
felony cultivation. He claims he has a doctor's permission to use marijuana
but that most of his plantation was intended for use at Bay Area cannabis
clubs that sell to patients who can't grow it themselves.

Judge John Martin made several pretrial rulings Wednesday, and two of them
limited the Proposition 215 defense and disallowed the necessity defense.
But he agreed to a continuance to allow Tony Serra, Galambos' San Francisco
attorney, to challenge the rulings in a writ to the state Court of Appeal in
Sacramento.

In a press conference two weeks ago, Serra said the necessity defense was a
principle that could apply to medical marijuana users even without regard to
Proposition 215.

It is the concept that a crime should be excused if it was done to avoid a
greater evil. Example: Trespassing into a private lake to save a child from
drowning.

Serra said Galambos had an "oral contract" with the cannabis clubs, and that
it was later put into writing. A prewritten contract obviously would be
easier to sell to a jury under Proposition 215, but a necessity defense
could argue that if cancer or AIDS patients were going to get the marijuana,
then alleviating their suffering avoids a greater evil than the crime of
growing pot.