Sweet Home Alabama:

MARIJUANA LEGALIZATION ADVOCATE CONVICTED ON POT CHARGE IN KAFKAESQUE TRIAL

Appeal Filed Immediately

Redneck justice in red dirt Alabama has Loretta Nall seeing red. Nall,
a housewife from rural Alexandria City, was convicted Tuesday of
possession of .87 of a gram of marijuana and possession of drug
paraphernalia some 15 months after the Tallapoosa County Narcotics
Task Force raided her home -- and 15 months and one week after Nall
published a letter in the state's largest newspaper calling for the
reform of the state's marijuana laws.

She told DRCNet she would immediately appeal the decision.

Nall, who is now president of the US Marijuana Party
(http://www.usmjparty.org), began her career as a marijuana activist
after her home was targeted by anti-drug helicopters in September
2002, two months before her arrest. That her arrest was at least in
part politically motivated is evident in the fact that the search
warrant leading to the bust cited as evidence her letter to the
Birmingham News, where she wrote that "it is time to end cannabis
prohibition." The only other evidence cited in the warrant was remarks
Nall's five-year-old daughter was alleged to have made to either a
teacher or a police officer assigned to her school and a supposed
report from a "confidential informant" that unnamed persons were
complaining of Nall's drug activity.

Nall's trial before Tallapoosa County District Court Judge Kim Taylor
was a journey into Alice in Wonderland justice, Nall said. The search
warrant was illegal and should never have been issued, she and her
attorney argued, in a strong but ultimately futile effort to get the
warrant thrown out and the charges dismissed. Judge Taylor, who issued
the warrant in question, upheld himself, but testimony from the trial
suggests that his ruling had little to do with the law.

Under the Constitution, which applies even in rural Alabama, police
must present a judge with evidence they have probable cause to believe
a crime has been committed in order to secure a valid search warrant.
But under cross-examination by Nall's attorney, that probable cause
seemingly melted into air. Officer Eric McCain, the school resource
officer who claimed that Nall's daughter ratted her out, offered
varying versions of what the girl said, who she said it to, and who
was present. First, McCain said that five-year-old Bell Nall
spontaneously told him about green plants hanging from her ceiling.
Then he testified that Bell's teacher approached him with the
information. He also testified that he questioned Bell outside the
classroom with no other adults present. Then he testified that her
teacher was there. Then he testified that he might have questioned her
in the classroom.

In the affidavit McCain submitted to support the search warrant, he
said nothing about green plants hanging from the ceiling. Rather, he
said that Bell told him some of the leaves she had brought from home
for a school project were "illegal." Under cross-examination, McCain
could not recall how many times he had obtained search warrants based
on the testimony of a five-year-old, although he did concede that
young children have vivid imaginations and have been known to make
things up.

Officer McCain also testified that he included the letter to the
editor Nall had published in the Birmingham News a week earlier as
part of the affidavit supporting the issuance of a search warrant. But
McCain contradicted himself moments later, saying that he didn't find
the letter until the raid, which left hanging the question of how he
could include it in the affidavit if he wasn't aware it existed until
a week later. And in yet another bizarre twist, he could not produce
the letter, which was Exhibit A in the case.

As for the "confidential informant" report on Nall, under
cross-examination McCain conceded that local police had received no
prior complaints about Nall or her residence, where she lives with her
horticulturist husband and two children. McCain then said he had
received complaints from concerned citizens, but under continued
questioning admitted that he did not document the alleged complaints
and that no list of such complaints existed.

Testimony showed that the search warrant was based on protected
political speech (Nall's letter to the editor), a very hazy allegation
about what a five-year-old said, and an even hazier set of anonymous
complaints whose existence could not even be proven. It appeared an
open and shut case of a bad search warrant. But not in the court of
the judge who issued it. After hearing the evidence, Judge Kim Taylor
upheld the warrant, virtually ensuring Nall's conviction on the
marijuana and paraphernalia charges.

That happened later in the day, after more bizarre testimony from
police and strange evidentiary decisions from Judge Taylor. Police
misidentified the oversize envelope in which they found the leftover
roach that constituted their drug seizure, repeatedly referring to it
as a Fedex envelope even as courtroom spectators could see it was a
USPS envelope. Taylor allowed prosecutors to enter into evidence a
police videotape of the raid that did not show marijuana being seized,
but did, Nall notes, "show some lovely pictures of the inside of my
toilet bowls."

Officer Josh McCallister testified that he found rolling papers in a
bedroom not near to where the pot was found. McCallister conceded that
rolling papers could be used to roll tobacco cigarettes. He also
testified that he found scales in the kitchen, but that there was no
evidence of drug residue on them, they had not been tested, and yes,
scales have many common uses. Nall, who makes candles, said she used
them in her work.

Police did not find any evidence of a marijuana grow, nor did they
find any large quantities of marijuana. But the half-smoked roach, the
rolling papers, and the scales were enough to convict her on the two
charges. She faces a suspended 30-day jail sentence, has to go to a
court referral, and must pay court costs for the possession charge,
but not for the paraphernalia charge.

None of that matters because the case will be overturned on appeal,
Nall believes. "The judge's rulings and his conduct were deplorable,"
she added. "He flirted with women during the proceedings, he laid his
head back and closed his eyes for minutes at a time, and he did not
appear to even pay attention to anything our side said. He cared
nothing for the fact that he held my very life in his hands. It didn't
matter to him that the cops were obviously lying and contradicting
themselves time and time again."

Some 700,000 people are arrested on marijuana charges in the United
States each year. The proceedings in the Nall case lead one to wonder
just how crappy are the charges in the rest of these cases. In most
cases, the police evidence is never put to the test because defendants
opt to plead guilty, but perhaps more should fight. While the judge's
rulings in the Nall trial are not encouraging, they do have a good
chance of being overturned on appeal, and if police and prosecutors
are forced to actually present real cases instead of merely
intimidating their victims to cop a plea, perhaps their enthusiasm for
persecuting drug users will diminish.

"This kind of thing is an education for the public," Nall said. "I
hired a court reporter so I could post the complete trial transcripts
- -- they should be on the web site in a couple of weeks -- and she
asked me after the trial if she really sat there and heard them say
they things they had said and if they were really pursuing me for
allegedly possessing 0.87 grams of marijuana. She was appalled and
said she had never witnessed anything like it in her life."

Nall's enthusiasm for taking the war to the drug warriors has
certainly not diminished, and she, too, is appalled. "I am appalled at
what I witnessed yesterday. I sit here now and wonder just how many
innocent people are in jail because of judges like this one? How many
lives have been destroyed because people did not have the resources to
fight on?"