TRANSCRIPT: HIGH CRIMES? MARIJUANA CASE PITS LOCAL COMMUNITY AGAINST FEDERAL LAW

Stone Phillips: He's a best-selling author who's caught in a real-life
cliffhanger. Arrested, accused and convicted of high crimes, he may be
writing his next chapters in prison. But the jurors who found him guilty
are now feeling guilty themselves. It all centers on a growing controversy
that could be headed to your state, about the law of the land, the will of
the people, and what can happen when they clash. Over the years "Dateline"
has interviewed many juries, but what these jurors had to say was truly
remarkable.

Stone Phillips: THE MAN JURORS are calling a hero, is the very man they
just convicted for violating federal anti-drug laws.

Marney: I don't think there's anything we can do to ever make up for the
mistake that we made.

Stone Phillips: A mistake? What happened that led these jurors to recant
their own verdict, and hold a press conference to apologize for what they'd
done?

Welcome to the very unusual case of the United States versus Ed Rosenthal.

Ed Rosenthal is a 58-year-old family man, avid gardener, best-selling author

Rosenthal: "No clothes on, and I was greeted by the FBI and the DEA. So, I
opened up the door."

Stone Phillips: He was busted on marijuana charges, which might not come as
much of a surprise, given that Ed Rosenthal's gardening expertise and the
subject of his numerous books _ is pot.

He's Ed, of the "Ask Ed" column in High Times Magazine, and he's the star
of a movie that probably never made it to your local cineplex, "Cannabis
Rising," an inside look at Holland's robust marijuana industry.

For more than 20 years, he's been one of this country's most vocal
pro-marijuana advocates.

Rosenthal: "I think that marijuana should be under civil regulation, rather
than be illegal. I think it's a terrible crime against society that
marijuana remains in the criminal state that it's in."

Stone Phillips: But what got Ed Rosenthal into trouble wasn't his books, or
his beliefs...it was his green thumb. Inside a warehouse, he was growing
marijuana plants, lots of them, as a tape shot by the DEA clearly shows.

Phillips: "Are we talking about hundreds of plants, in your case?"

Rosenthal: "Well, well, in my case, yes, it was hundreds of plants, and at
times, it could have been thousands of plants."

Stone Phillips: And everyone knows, growing even a single marijuana plant
is against the law. Isn't it?

Well it is, and it isn't. Under federal law, growing marijuana is a crime,
period. But Ed Rosenthal was growing his marijuana in Oakland, Calif., for
a program authorized in this very room by the city council to distribute
marijuana to seriously ill people. California is one of nine states where
voters have approved the use of marijuana for medical purposes - that's a
direct conflict with federal anti-drug laws.

And Ed Rosenthal got caught right in the middle.

"This was a man trying to implement California's compassionate use law,"
says Bill Lockyer, California's attorney general.

The state's top cop says if it were up to him, Rosenthal would still be
growing marijuana.

Lockyer: "He wasn't the drug dealer that we're chasing all the time and
trying to stop peddling drugs to kids. He was trying to help cancer patients."

Phillips: "And doing so under a city-sanctioned program?"

Lockyer: "Correct."

Stone Phillips: California's medical marijuana law, called proposition 215,
was approved by voters in a 1996 statewide referendum. It left it up to the
cities to figure out how to distribute pot to people who need it.

Oakland designated a "cannabis club" as its authorized dispensary. There,
people whose doctors had prescribed it for them, could obtain medical
marijuana.

"It's used for AIDS, it's used for multiple sclerosis, for cancer, chemo
and nuclear therapy," says Rosenthal.

"It's like going in and getting any prescription," says 35-year-old Kary
McElroy, a former athlete whose body can no longer tolerate
anti-inflammatory drugs.

She found relief for her osteoarthrits and ligament damage in a clean, safe
dispensary near her home.

McElroy: "They fill the prescription, they give it to you, you go home and
utilize your medication to relieve the pain you're suffering from."

Phillips: "But somebody's got to provide it. Somebody's got to grow it and
supply it."

Rosenthal: "That's right."

Phillips: "And that's where you came in."

Rosenthal: "That's right... What I provided was starter plants so that
patients could grow their own and become self sufficient and grow their own
medicine."

Stone Phillips: For three years, from 1999 until his arrest in February
2002, Rosenthal supplied marijuana plants to the dispensary in Oakland and
to others in the San Francisco area.

Phillips: "Was this a money making proposition for you?"

Rosenthal: "Not for me. No, it wasn't."

Phillips: "Were you concerned about your legal liability doing this,
becoming involved in this program?"

Rosenthal: "No, because I was assured that I had immunity from federal
prosecution and I knew that the state and city were on my side."

Stone Phillips: The author of "Don't Get Busted" knew that state and city
laws could not override the federal marijuana law. But Rosenthal had a
letter from the Oakland dispensary stating that he was "immune from civil
and criminal liability."

How could that be? Well, the city of Oakland claimed that people working
for the dispensary were "officers of the city" and therefore immune from
federal prosecution, the same as police who handle drugs for undercover
sting operations.

It was a novel legal strategy, that even the city attorney's office
described as "legally questionable."

And they were right. When Ed Rosenthal went on trial, a federal judge ruled
that nothing about that immunity claim, his letter, or his status as a city
officer would protect him from prosecution.

In fact, the jury would never hear why Ed Rosenthal was growing his
marijuana plants - and the defense wasn't even allowed to mention the term,
medical marijuana.

Under federal law, the questions were simply, had Ed Rosenthal conspired to
grow marijuana, and had he, in fact, grown it in that Oakland warehouse?

Phillips: "How did the prosecutors portray you in court?"

Rosenthal: "Oh, I was a big drug king pin."

Stone Phillips: After five days of prosecution testimony, and only two
hours from a defense limited by the judge's rulings, the jury returned a
verdict.

Rosenthal: "I knew that before the verdict was read, I knew that the
verdict was guilty because when I saw those jurors come back into the
courtroom, they didn't look happy."

Stone Phillips: These jurors were far from happy once the case was over and
they learned that Rosenthal had been helping to implement proposition 215 -
the medical marijuana law that many of them had voted for.

Marney Craig (juror): "When we find out what we did, we were devastated. I
couldn't believe that I had been part of such a travesty of justice... He
was growing medical marijuana to give to sick people, and losing money on
the whole proposition and we convicted him as a criminal."

Phillips: "You didn't hear any of that?"

Craig: "We heard none of it. The defense was never allowed to present its
case."

Charles Sackett (juror): "After I found out that we, as jurors, weren't
given all of the evidence, I felt conned."

Pamela Klarkowski (juror): "I felt like a pawn in the middle of this big game."

Kevin Schmidt (juror): "I felt like I couldn't even walk down the street,
among, you know other Americans, without feeling like, you know, I had just
wronged everyone, just in California, in San Francisco. It was very difficult."

Stone Phillips: Within days of their verdict, these jurors decided to go
public with their discontent.

Phillips: "What was your reaction when after having convicted you _ they
apologized?"

Rosenthal: "It was very emotional. It was very emotional. I think they're
really good people. They're very brave people."

Stone Phillips: Attorney Robert Eye represents Ed Rosenthal. He says, put
the law on trial, not the man.

Eye: "If the federal government really believes that proposition 215 is
wrong, they can challenge it the same way they did Oregon's right-to-die
law, the same way that Colorado's, provision on homosexual rights was
challenged."

Phillips: "So, go to court and try to get the law repealed?"

Eye: "They challenge the law. They don't challenge the individuals who are
out there doing a good faith effort to implement it."

Stone Phillips: John Walters heads the White House Office of National Drug
Control Policy; he's America's drug czar.

"Our goal here is not to persecute people - our goal is to enforce laws
that are important to protect the health and welfare of our people," says
Walters.

While he couldn't comment on the Ed Rosenthal case, he did clearly state
the government's position: that smoking marijuana is not medicine, and
state laws approving it are simply smokescreens.

Phillips: "Are people being fooled about medical marijuana?"

Walters: "I think they have been sold a bill of goods by people whose real
agenda and the real monies come from people who want to legalize drugs."

Phillips: "This is snake oil?"

Walters: "I think it is the modern equivalent of snake oil, yes."

Phillips: "California, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Maine, Nevada, Oregon,
Washington, Hawaii. All have approved medical marijuana laws. Will growers
and users in those states be prosecuted?"

Walters: "If they violate the federal law, we will enforce the federal law."

Phillips: "But you appreciate the conflict. I mean, on the one hand, a
state says it's okay and then suddenly you're arrested on federal charges?"

Walters: "Well, no one's, I think, unaware of the federal law here. And in
fact there has been an intention to say we are thumbing our nose at the
federal law. We believe the federal law is wrong."

Stone Phillips: But California's attorney general believes voters there
were simply trying to do what they thought was right when they approved
medical marijuana. And while prosecuting someone like Rosenthal may be the
law of the land, it's not necessarily the will of the people.

Phillips: "What's your bottom line take on this case?"

Bill Lockyer: "Well, it just seems to me to be terribly unjust. It's unjust
to this guy. It's unjust to people that were relying on the medicine. It's
unjust to California voters."

Stone Phillips: And with voters in more and more states contemplating
medical marijuana laws like California's, the conflict between states'
rights and federal law may grow even sharper.

Phillips: "So who's going to blink first?"

Lockyer: "Well, the federal agents have the larger club. I mean, federal
law is superior to state law if they try to run over us. And what they've
done, basically, is run over us."

Stone Phillips: "What's the problem with the federal government that it has
to go bullying the state governments over this, in a court trial that is
unfair," says juror Charles Sackett. "And we're supposed to participate in
that."

As for Ed Rosenthal, he's facing a minimum of five years in federal prison,
and as many as 20. Whatever happens, he says he'll continue to speak out
about this growing controversy, from the warehouse to the big house.

While Ed Rosenthal has many supporters in Oakland, he also has his critics,
including the current head of the City Council, who told "Dateline" he
believes that by growing a warehouse full of marijuana, Rosenthal pushed
the envelope and has now made it harder for the city to carry out its
medical marijuana distribution program. Rosenthal is scheduled to be
sentenced in June. But he says he will appeal.