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CA: U.S. Says To Retry "Ganja Guru" Ed Rosenthal
04.13.07|Reuters

The U.S. government said on Friday it would retry marijuana advocate Ed Rosenthal after a judge last month ruled its tax evasion and money laundering case against him was vindictive and dismissed the charges.

Rosenthal, dubbed the "ganja guru" for his books on marijuana, will once again face charges for growing and distributing marijuana, though prosecutors will not seek time behind bars beyond a one-day sentence he has already served, said Natalya LaBauve, a spokeswoman for the interim U.S. attorney in San Francisco, Scott Schools.

LaBauve said the U.S. Attorney's Office had no further comment.

Rosenthal, of Oakland, California, said he is looking forward to another trial, scheduled to start on May 14.

"I welcome this, I welcome this," Rosenthal, 62, told Reuters. "This is a tipping-point case because this is about federal medical marijuana policy."

Rosenthal, author of "Why Marijuana Should Be Legal," was the first prominent marijuana activist brought to trial by federal prosecutors for growing and providing marijuana for medical purposes after California voters in 1996 approved that use of the drug.

In 2003, he was convicted on charges of growing marijuana and sentenced to a day in jail. The conviction was overturned on appeal and a new trial ordered. With the case renewed, prosecutors added tax evasion and money laundering charges.

U.S. District Court Judge Charles Breyer held on March 14 that prosecutors had added those charges vindictively. But the judge denied Rosenthal's request to dismiss the original cultivation charges.

That same day, a majority of a three-judge panel of the San Francisco-based U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held the U.S. government may ban marijuana use despite California's law allowing its use for medical purposes.

The majority, agreeing with a 2005 U.S. Supreme Court opinion, found there is no fundamental right to use marijuana for medical purposes as plaintiff Angel Raich had argued. The Oakland woman uses marijuana to ease pain from an inoperable brain tumor and other ailments.

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