NEWS IN BRIEF FROM NORTHERN CALIFORNIA

OROVILLE, Calif. (AP) - Butte County's only guilty verdict to be returned so
far in a medical marijuana case has been thrown out of court.

Michael Kelly, 22, who was acquitted last spring of felony cultivation and
sales charges but convicted for misdemeanor drug possession, asked a Butte
County Superior Court judge Monday to grant him a new trial.

Judge Robert Glusman instead threw out the conviction, which could have
carried up to six months in jail, saying there wasn't enough evidence.

Sheriff's deputies raided Kelly's rural property February 2001, seizing a
small amount of dried and processed marijuana. At his trial, a Berkeley
psychiatrist told jurors he had prescribed marijuana to help alleviate
Kelly's obsessive compulsive disorder.

The jury ruled that he had the right under California's medical marijuana
law to grow and smoke the drug. But they said afterward that a confusing
legal instruction led them to convict him for possession for having more
than an ounce of marijuana.

On Monday, defense attorney Jodea Foster argued that the amount of marijuana
"fell within permissible limits for personal use."

Glusman threw out the misdemeanor drug conviction, agreeing with the defense
that the jury verdict was "contrary to evidence."

The medical marijuana case is one of only two to go to trial in Butte
County. In 2001, Cohasset resident Michael Rogers, who had 21 marijuana
plants at his house, was also acquitted.