Home | Community | Message Board

Out-Grow.com - Mushroom Growing Kits & Supplies
This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals   North Spore North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies   Original Sensible Seeds Autoflowering Cannabis Seeds

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1
InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Chong to raise funds for 'Ganja Guru' Rosenthal
    #6599148 - 02/22/07 07:25 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

February 22, 2007 - insidebayarea.com

Chong to raise funds for 'Ganja Guru' Rosenthal

"Guru of Ganja" Ed Rosenthal is bringing in another martyr of the marijuana movement to help him raise funds for his upcoming federal trial.

Tommy Chong -- half of of the Cheech and Chong comedy duo renowned for stoner movie classics such as "Up in Smoke" and "Nice Dreams" -- will appear a $125-per-head event March 4 at Rosenthal's Lake Avenue home in Piedmont. Some advance tickets are available for only $100 at Rosenthal's legal defense fund's Web site, www.green-aid.com.

"The party will celebrate how far we've come in legalizing medical marijuana as well as provide me with the money I need to fund my current trial that is defending all of our rights," Rosenthal, 62, said in an e-mail Thursday. He's scheduled to appear in federal court March 19, and he estimates his trial and related expenses could cost more than $300,000.

Chong was prosecuted, convicted and served nine months in federal prison a few years ago as part of a federal crackdown on purveyors of drug paraphernalia; he'd financed and promoted a line of glass water pipes often used for smoking marijuana, and he said he pleaded guilty to prevent charges from being filed against his wife and son. The case made Chong, already beloved for his comedy act, a poster boy among marijuana advocates.

Famed for his marijuana cultivation books and the "Ask Ed" column he wrote for High Times magazine, Rosenthal was convicted of three marijuana-growing felonies in 2003, more than a year after federal agents raided sites including his Oakland home, an Oakland warehouse in which he was growing marijuana, and a San Francisco medical marijuana club he supplied.

Medical use of marijuana on a doctor's recommendation is legal under state law but prohibited by federal law, so Rosenthal was barred from mounting a medical defense at trial. A judge sentenced him to one day behind bars -- time he'd already served.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his convictions in April 2006, finding juror misconduct -- a juror's conversation with an attorney-friend during deliberations -- compromised Rosenthal's right to a fair verdict and so warranted a new trial. But the court also rejected Rosenthal's claim of immunity from prosecution as an officer of Oakland who grew the drug under the city's medical marijuana ordinance.

Federal prosecutors filed a new indictment with additional charges in October, essentially claiming Rosenthal from October 2001 through February 2002 conspired with Kenneth Hayes and Richard Watts to grow marijuana at sites on Sixth Street in San Francisco and on Mandela Parkway in Oakland; laundered marijuana proceeds by buying four money orders totaling $1,854 during that time; and falsified tax returns for 1999, 2000 and 2001 by omitting income from his marijuana distribution.

Hayes and Watts face similar, related charges. Both were charged after the same 2002 raids that nabbed Rosenthal, but injuries sustained in a car accident have kept Watts from trial until now and Hayes fled to Canada just before he was indicted.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineKaptKid
Spaced Pirate
Male User Gallery

Registered: 12/11/03
Posts: 6,252
Loc: Bright Side of the Sun
Last seen: 4 years, 1 month
Re: Chong to raise funds for 'Ganja Guru' Rosenthal [Re: veggie]
    #6599632 - 02/22/07 09:22 PM (17 years, 1 month ago)

How much of our tax's are being spent here?

This is some real Bullshit.


  :sun:


--------------------
Child of the 60's, Tripping ever since.


:sun:

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisibleveggieM

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
Re: Chong to raise funds for 'Ganja Guru' Rosenthal [Re: veggie]
    #6669878 - 03/14/07 06:14 PM (17 years, 18 days ago)

March 14, 2007 - sfgate.com
Criminal charges against 'Guru of Ganja' tossed

SAN FRANCISCO -- A federal judge threw out criminal charges today against an Oakland man accused of growing medical marijuana, ruling that authorities had vindictively prosecuted him because of remarks he made after he successfully appealed an earlier conviction.

U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco dismissed charges of tax evasion and money laundering against Ed Rosenthal, 62, an author and activist who has been dubbed the "Guru of Ganja."

Breyer declared that the government had improperly refiled the tax-evasion and money-laundering case last fall after Rosenthal successfully appealed his 2003 conviction for marijuana cultivation.

"The reasonable observer will interpret the government's conduct as demonstrating that if defendants successfully appeal, the government will ensure that they face more severe charges and more prison time the next time around," Breyer said.

"The government's deeds -- and words -- create the perception that it added the new charges to make Rosenthal look like a common criminal and thus dissipate the criticism heaped on the government after the first trial," Breyer said.

The judge said he based his decision in part on the comments by prosecutor George Bevan during a hearing on the case. Bevan, according to transcripts, explained the decision to re-file charges, saying, "The purpose is this: Mr. Rosenthal, after the verdict, took to the microphone and said, 'I didn't get a fair trial.' ... So I'm saying, this time around, he wants the financial side reflected, fine, let's air this thing out. Let's have the whole conduct before the jury: Tax, money laundering, marijuana."

Breyer's ruling is the latest twist in the five-year legal saga of Rosenthal, a former columnist for High Times magazine who has written more than a dozen books about growing cannabis.

He was first arrested after a federal raid in February 2002 at a West Oakland warehouse where Rosenthal was growing marijuana for what he said was medical use, with the support of Alameda County and Oakland officials. At trial in 2003, Breyer refused to let jurors learn about the intended medical use of the plants and excluded evidence about Proposition 215, California's 1996 medical marijuana initiative.

Rosenthal was convicted of violating federal drug laws, but seven of the 12 jurors said afterward that their verdict would have been different if they had been allowed to consider evidence about the medical use of the marijuana and Rosenthal's status as an agent in the Oakland program. They requested leniency for Rosenthal.

Breyer sentenced him to just the one day in jail he had already served, saying Rosenthal had believed he was acting legally at a time when the law was unsettled.

Despite the one-day sentence, Rosenthal appealed the conviction. Last April, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 3-0 ruling that Rosenthal was entitled to a new trial because one of the jurors improperly sought outside advice about the case.

In October, a new federal grand jury indicted Rosenthal again on 14 felonies, including conspiracy to manufacture marijuana at his Oakland warehouse and distribute it to the Harm Reduction Center, a San Francisco dispensary, between 2000 and 2002.

Those were similar to the charges in a 2002 indictment. But the new indictment also included four counts alleging that Rosenthal had laundered money -- four transactions totaling about $1,850 -- to conceal its source as the proceeds of marijuana sales, and five counts alleging that he had filed tax returns that failed to list his marijuana income.

"The government responded to the reversal by re-indicting Rosenthal on essentially the same charges and adding four counts of tax evasion and one count of money laundering," Beyer wrote in today's ruling. "These circumstances -- upping the ante as a result of Rosenthal's successful appeal -- raise a presumption of vindictiveness."

Breyer did not throw out the drug charges, but noted that "the government agreed at oral argument" that it will not seek more than the one-day sentence on those counts.

Rosenthal, his lawyers and his supporters in the medical marijuana movements celebrated the court victory.

"The government was clearly out of line to bring this case forward against me," Rosenthal said in a statement. "The court's ruling is reassuring, but my continued prosecution on the marijuana charges is still malicious. To make me and my family go through a second prosecution to obtain, at most, a one-day time served jail sentence seems personally motivated."

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office in San Francisco said prosecutors were evaluating their options.

Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1

Shop: MagicBag.co All-In-One Bags That Don't Suck   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Bridgetown Botanicals Bridgetown Botanicals   North Spore North Spore Mushroom Grow Kits & Cultivation Supplies   Original Sensible Seeds Autoflowering Cannabis Seeds


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* 'Ganja Guru' appeal set after delay [CA] veggieM 860 1 09/15/05 01:09 AM
by veggie
* Federal prosecutors will retry 'guru of ganja' veggieM 3,461 10 05/31/07 11:09 AM
by DNKYD
* Federal judge denies convicted pot guru new trial motamanM 2,939 1 05/17/03 06:09 AM
by Seuss
* Ed Rosenthal Going to JAIL!! For 1 day :) Mojo_Risin 2,017 2 06/05/03 08:53 AM
by aeonblue
* Ed Rosenthal (Marijuana Guru) Trial Update bowling-name 7,380 12 03/27/03 11:15 AM
by Middleman
* Pot guru Indicted Again on Cultivation Charges Le_Canard 2,447 10 10/23/06 02:28 AM
by rross
* 'Guru Of Ganja' Heads Back To Court [CA] veggieM 1,009 4 01/15/09 01:11 AM
by durian_2008
* ed rosenthal gets pot conviction overturned CaptainKirk 1,805 4 04/28/06 03:04 AM
by Seuss

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: motaman, veggie, Alan Rockefeller, Mostly_Harmless
1,649 topic views. 0 members, 6 guests and 5 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.022 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 14 queries.