DA KEEPING HEAT ON POT DISTRIBUTORS

Prosecutors Pressing On Despite Recent Acquittals

SAN DIEGO COURTS -- Medical marijuana activists may feel momentum is
on their side with two recent acquittals by San Diego juries of
cannabis providers, but the county District Attorney's Office is not
slowing down.

On Friday, Donna Lambert, an outspoken advocate who is part of a
medical marijuana collective in San Diego, pleaded not guilty to new
allegations filed against her -- 13 months after she was charged with
seven counts of illegal drug sales, and one week after marijuana
collective operator Eugene Davidovich was cleared of four drug sales
and possession charges by a jury that deliberated for less than four
hours.

That swift verdict came four months after another jury acquitted
Kearny Mesa medical marijuana dispensary manager Jovan Jackson of
illegally selling the drug.

Lambert now faces a charge that she possessed a firearm during the
commission of a felony. When police raided her San Diego home in
February 2009, they found two guns, both registered and legal.

Outside court, Lambert seethed at the timing of the new
charge.

"This is a direct response to the two losses they've had," she said.
"It's an attempt to intimidate me."

Deputy District Attorney Steve Walter, chief of the office's
narcotics unit, said the timing of the new charge was simply
coincidental. He said in court that the evidence that Lambert had
guns in her home came out at her preliminary hearing last year, but
was not added to the charge until now because of what he termed an
oversight.

Lambert's trial will be the next big showdown between medical
marijuana supporters and San Diego County prosecutors, who have taken
an aggressive stance under District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis in
charging operators of collectives and dispensaries who they say are
not operating within the law.

Despite the recent setbacks, the office is not reassessing its
position.

"We take everything that happened in those two cases into account and
make whatever adjustments we need to," Walter said outside court
Friday. He added that the two jury verdicts should not be interpreted
as a widespread rejection of the office's approach to prosecuting
medical marijuana cases.

"It's just too early to say," Walter said. He added that while the
verdicts are disappointing, prosecutors do not stop filing charges in
a specific type of case based on one or two verdicts.

And that is distressing to advocates, lawyers and some legal
experts.

"I know defendants and their lawyers who have been trying to persuade
the DA's office to consider dismissing their charges, and they have
not dismissed any of them yet," said Lance Rogers, i;?a San Diego
defense lawyer who represented Jackson at his trial.

California voters approved the use of medical marijuana under
Proposition 215 in 1996. But the law is vague on a number of points,
such as how patients can obtain or transport the drug. It also is
unclear what the precise meaning of a marijuana collective or
cooperative is. Jurors in both recent trials said that vague aspect
of the law played a key role in their decision.

In 2008, the state Attorney General's Office issued a set of
guidelines on how patients could legally grow and distribute the
drug, but the interpretation and enforcement of those guidelines vary
widely around the state.

In San Diego County, Dumanis has taken a very narrow interpretation
of the medical marijuana law, said Alex Kreit, a law professor at
Thomas Jefferson School of Law and chairman of the Medical Marijuana
Task Force in the city of San Diego.

He said local prosecutors have a "very narrow view" of what
constitutes a collective or cooperative. Under their theory, every
member of the collective must contribute labor toward growing the
crop in order to use it, Kreit said.

That interpretation is not shared by most other counties in the
state, he said. Moreover, juries do not seem to accept it.

"They've taken this really unusual, restrictive view of what the
state law allows for, and both times that they've gone into court
with this unusual interpretation, it's been quickly rejected by
juries," Kreit said. "I'm surprised they're not reassessing their
view."

Lambert is charged with providing marijuana to an undercover police
detective who was posing as a medical marijuana patient as part of a
large investigation dubbed Operation Green Rx.

The detective obtained a state driver's license under a fictitious
name and got a doctor's recommendation for the drug by using a fake
ailment.

Lambert was scheduled to go on trial April 13, but that was postponed
Friday until June. One of her lawyers, Mara Felsen, said that even
with the acquittals of Jackson and Davidovich, medical marijuana
activists are disheartened that they appear not to have influenced
the DA's office.

"They've made it abundantly clear they don't read anything into these
losses at trial," Felsen said. "They continue to say, 'We are
fighting the good fight,' and they are going to keep doing it."