MEDICAL MARIJUANA: COMPASSION ON TRIAL

If you want to watch a trial where the defendant has no moral
culpability, is prevented from testifying truthfully and where the
prosecution distorts an otherwise reasonable law beyond all
rationality, you can see one this month right in Somerville. John
Wilson, a multiple sclerosis patient treating himself with home-grown
marijuana, is charged with operating a drug manufacturing facility.
There is no charge, nor any evidence whatsoever, that he supplied or
intended to supply marijuana to anyone but himself.

An individual with no prior record growing marijuana plants for home
use should be eligible for pre-trial intervention; but this case is
being handled by the state's Organized Crime/Gangs Unit. Wilson
refused to plead guilty and accept several years in prison (a
potential death sentence), so the state is seeking the maximum 20-year
sentence. To justify its "manufacturing" charge, the state determined
that every day a plant grew constituted a separate offense. It matters
not a whit that the statute (N.J.S.A.2C:35-1.1 et seq.) is intended to
combat drug distribution chains and those who pose the greatest danger
to society. It ignores a statutory intent focused on harm to victims
and the actor's role in a drug distribution network. Section 4 of the
statute even excludes coverage where an individual is compounding or
preparing the substance for his own use.

The state senators who sponsored our long-overdue and aptly named
Compassionate Use Act passionately expressed their dismay over this
prosecution, calling it "a severe, inappropriate, discompassionate and
inhumane application of the letter of the law." Sen. Scutari went on
to label it "cruel and unusual to treat New Jersey's sick and dying as
if they were drug cartel kingpins" and characterized it as a waste of
taxpayer money. Sen. Lesniak observed, "Without compassion and a sense
of moral right and wrong, laws are worth less than the paper they're
printed on."

This brutally honest and on-target criticism has drawn accolades from
around the country. Lawmakers obviously "get" the difference between
drug cartel criminals and suffering people who turn to medical
marijuana out of desperation. Even though the law does not currently
recognize medical marijuana use as a defense, it does not require that
the figurative book be thrown at a patient.

To compound the cruel absurdity of this prosecution, it is being
conducted with full awareness of legislative action that would protect
Wilson from a prison sentence. New Jersey's Senate passed the
Compassionate Use Act, and it has been favorably voted out of the
Assembly Health Committee. Once technical revisions are completed, it
is expected to pass the full Legislature, and Gov. Corzine has stated
publicly that he would sign it. Informed and enlightened people accept
the voluminous scientific evidence of the efficacy of marijuana to
alleviate the nightmare of multiple sclerosis and many other conditions.

Outrageously, but understandably, the prosecution desperately wants
jurors to be denied all the truly relevant facts. It has fought to
forbid Wilson from mentioning his disease, that marijuana has been
proven to be an effective palliative for multiple sclerosis, that he
was using it solely for that purpose, that 13 other states have
legalized it for that purpose and that New Jersey is about to. All the
jurors will be allowed to hear is evidence proving Wilson
"manufactured" marijuana. This is the type of injustice one is
accustomed to seeing in a dictatorship -- not in America.

Wilson's plight is additional evidence that our nation's founders were
wise indeed when they recognized the crucial role "jury nullification"
plays in any democratic system of government. Our founders knew that
there are times when, to do actual justice, jurors must refuse to
follow the letter of the law and act on their instincts of what is
right. But if we expect trial by jury to continue to be the final
bulwark against unjust prosecutions, jurors must have the truth. They
will not get it in court in this case.

Instead of seeking justice, the Attorney General's Office wastes
public resources, its power, its credibility and worst of all, its
integrity to inflict inhumane punishment on a suffering patient who
merits no blame, a patient whom legislators are working to protect. It
is execrable that it tortures the law to demand a maximum prison
sentence on a patient suffering a crippling, incurable disease for
conduct that helped him, harmed no one and that will soon be as legal
as it has always been moral.

In the strife of every battle for human rights, someone is the last
one martyred. Despite overwhelming evidence that John Wilson is a
patient and not a drug kingpin, it is shameful that the state Attorney
General's Office knowingly and aggressively seeks to sacrifice him. Is
this to be what is allowed to pass for justice in New Jersey?

Edward R. Hannaman, an attorney from Ewing, is a member of the board
of the Coalition for Medical Marijuana New Jersey (CMMNJ).