RARE RULE APPLIED IN MEDICAL MARIJUANA CASE

A federal judge on Tuesday invoked a rarely used rule when giving
reduced sentences to a Ventura County, Calif., couple charged with
growing marijuana for a West Hollywood medical marijuana club, the Los
Angeles Times reports. U.S. district judge A. Howard Matz relied on
the "lesser harm" rule--that a defendant may commit a crime to avoid a
perceived greater harm--in sentencing Judy Osburn, 50, to one year of
probation. She could have received a prison sentence of up to 37
months. Osburn's husband, Lynn, 54, received a one-year prison
sentence stemming from weapons charges and one year of probation for
the marijuana charge. "You are a principled person," Matz told Judy
Osburn at the sentencing hearing. "I don't consider you to be a threat
or menace to society. But however salutary your purpose," he added,
"the ends do not justify the means."

The couple pleaded guilty in October after the judge ruled that they
could not tell a jury during a trial that they were growing marijuana
for medicinal purposes and with the support of West Hollywood city
officials and the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department. California
voters approved a ballot measure legalizing the medicinal use of
marijuana in 1996.

Judy Osburn was a director of the Los Angeles Cannabis Resource
Center, which dispensed marijuana to about 960 people, who used the
drug to treat symptoms of AIDS or cancer or to counter nausea caused
by medications to treat the diseases. Agents from the federal Drug
Enforcement Administration in October 2001 raided the club and shut it
down. Federal officials plan to appeal the probation sentences given
to the Osburns.