Los Angeles Criminal Lawyer Blog

In a reversal of its previously announced policy, the Obama Justice Department recently fired the first shots in what will likely end up a war on California's medical marijuana law, the Compassionate Use Act.

Supporters and detractors of the Compassionate Use Act must both admit that one thing it has NOT resulted in is an increase in violent crime. However, by re-implementing Prohibition, the U.S. Federal government is making California a literal battleground for law enforcement to fight it out with those suppliers who will step in to replace the businesspeople who currently supply California with cannabis, and who the Feds are now forcing out of the market.

Regardless of the legality of cannabis under whatever law/policy of the moment the government is trying to pursue, the market for the substance will remain strong. This is similar to the market for alcohol prior to Prohibition going into effect in 1920. In California, cannabis became legal for medical use in 1996, and has since grown in legality to the point where now anyone over 18 who wants to consume cannabis can do so legally. This has been due to a number of factors, including the usage patterns of cannabis consumers, which point to cannabis being used in ways less similar to recreational drugs and more similar to medicine. Combine that with the fact that the active ingredient in cannabis, THC, is essentially a harmless substance to the physical structure of the human body and brain (though the debate about the harmlessness of some of the cannabis delivery systems, e.g., smoking, and whether the substance causes collateral nonphysical harm continues), and physicians have realized that their potential liability for recommending cannabis to patients is extremely low. As a result, physicians have become increasingly willing to write recommendations for individuals who may appear "healthy" to detractors of the Compassionate Use Act.

The bottom line is that where a large market exists, economic principles dictate that supply will follow, whether legal or illegal. If legal, then the supplying is done in the open, and subjected to government regulation and taxation. If illegal, it is done by clandestine means, and the money that would be captured by the government through taxation will instead be captured by the suppliers of the product. Whether sacrificing this tax revenue for what is viewed as the greater good of making it more difficult/expensive to obtain THC is a value judgment that is made every time the government makes (or keeps) any product illegal.

In other words, in a Prohibition situation, the government has to choose between allowing the free market to supply and consume THC, or to expend revenue on artificially raising the price on the product, for the purpose of pricing certain users out of the market and/or acquiescing revenue to special interest groups such as law enforcement or pharmaceutical companies who have a financial interest in making THC illegal.

Much of the Mexican drug cartel problem is attributed to corruption in the Mexican government that allows it to happen. As this violence spreads north because of the United States' newly-announced policy of Prohibition, it should be clear that its advance is also attributable to government: in this case the American government allowing it to happen. For America, it is not hidden corruption, but it is a value judgment that is inherent in the publicly announced Prohibition policy. For our Federal government, and the millions of lobbying dollars at stake, the few hundred more dead children, dead parents, dead cops and destroyed families, are a price worth paying to ensure that it is more difficult for Californians to get their hands on a substance that, by any objective standard, is less harmful than alcohol.

On October 18, Jackeline Lopez will appear in court to answer charges related to her practice of witchcraft. This court appearance is not in Salem, Massachusetts, but in L.A.'s own Antelope Valley, at the Michael D. Antonovich Courthouse in Lancaster. Ask any L.A. resident to guess which section of the county a witchcraft-related charge comes from, and the Antelope Valley would probably be their first guess -- or certainly in their top three -- but this case is not your typical Lancaster Witch Trial. Instead, the accusation is that Lopez posed as a witch for the purpose of extorting $10,000 in jewelry.

According to the L.A. County Sheriff, the crime began in August, when a 12-year-old girl started hanging out with a new friend from school along with that new friend's mother, Lopez, who is a self-proclaimed psychic. Lopez's garage, Sheriffs say, was "decorated" with candles, replicas of human skulls, cauldrons, and other staples of witchcraft décor, though there was no mention of broomsticks, cobweb-draped candelabra, or black housecats.

Sheriffs allege that Lopez schemed to have her daughter's new 12 year-old friend steal jewelry from her own family, by telling her the jewelry was necessary for a ritual that would lift a curse from the 12-year-old's family. When the curse could not be lifted by placing the jewelry in one of the cauldrons and chanting the de-cursing spell, Lopez allegedly told the girl more jewelry was needed. Though they did not state this, it is presumed that the Sheriffs are alleging that the 12 year-old's family was not actually cursed, and that the jewelry was not in fact necessary to lift the curse.

In other words, Lopez could defend these charges by claiming to be an actual witch.

How that defense might be proven is a matter for Lopez and her attorney to figure out, but one pictures a courtroom scene in which the Judge's gavel suddenly starts banging by itself, or the lights in the courtroom suddenly turn into rapid-fire strobes when one of the cops is testifying. Then, at the close of evidence, there is power failure and when the lights return, the Judge is shocked when he looks down to see he is now wearing the courtroom Sheriff Deputy's uniform, and the court reporter is wearing the Judge's black robe. Everyone's eyes then turn to the Deputy, who blushes when he realizes he's now sporting the court reporter's miniskirt.

Or something like that.

It would seem that this case is a perfect analogue to the psychics who advertise on TV and charge money to communicate with the dead or, in other cases, simply charge an appearance fee to go on "Dr. Phil" and field questions from a mesmerized audience. These sorts of psychics are never prosecuted, which will be essential for the defense to point out. If handled correctly, this could force the prosecution into the difficult position of drawing the distinction between Lopez and these "pop-psychics" who are allowed to run rampant in our culture.

Or perhaps the case will never go to trial because the prosecution will agree to a plea bargain in which Lopez gets probation . . . in return for her promise to lift the curse from the whole Antelope Valley itself.

In 1994, Felipe Gonzalez Angeles knocked on the door of an apartment/brothel in South Los Angeles, and before the door opened he was robbed outside by two men who ended up shooting and killing him. The key witness in the case was John Jones, who called himself the "apartment manager," but who was actually the pimp. Jones testified that he saw the shooting and picked Obie Anthony and Reggie Cole out of a lineup, identifying them as the two armed robbers.

Anthony, from the beginning, has maintained his innocence, insisting that he wasn't at the scene of the crime. Approximately two years ago, Jones admitted "although I told police and testified at trial that I had seen two of the men well enough to positively identify them, I never clearly focused on their faces, but primarily saw them running away."

Despite this admission by their sole identifying witness, lead LAPD detective Marcella Winn insisted, "this guy did this murder, and there's no doubt in my mind," she said. She went on to say "it was a good case [then], and it's a good case now." The Deputy District Attorney who prosecuted the case echoed these sentiments after finding out that Jones admitted lying to the jury.

Sound familiar? A similar case out of Georgia has gotten a lot of press lately, wherein seven of nine identifying witnesses later recanted their testimony, and the other two were shown to be unreliable. Nonetheless, there too the police and prosecutors insisted that they were sure they had convicted the right guy. The difference is the defendant in that case, Troy Davis, was recently put to death by the State of Georgia.

In Los Angeles on Friday, however, Judge Kelvin Filer ordered that Anthony be released from prison on the grounds that the identification witness recanted his testimony and that, additionally, the jury was not told about the leniency he was given by the prosecution in the sentence on his resulting pimping charges. This, despite the resistance from the prosecution, who have even gone so far as to say they may re-try Anthony for the murder. Responding to the assertion that the jury had not been told about the leniency promised to Jones, the prosecutor explained that the jury had not been mislead, since "this was not a deal in exchange for testimony . . . [i]t was simply a thank-you for cooperating with the LAPD in a homicide investigation."

All of this raises the question of why the prosecution so often clings to their guilty verdicts even when it is later shown that the evidence presented to the jury who rendered that guilty verdict - the same evidence the prosecution themselves relied upon in formulating their belief in the defendant's guilt - is flawed, faulty, or outright recanted? Perhaps it is a deep-seated recognition that they never really know whether the people they are prosecuting are, in truth, guilty, and facing that fact would cause a cognitive dissonance that would call into question their purpose as lawyers, or their image of themselves as the force of good.

Whatever the reason, thankfully Obie Anthony is still alive to walk out of those prison doors when a judge had the guts to right an old injustice.