Rosenthal's Federal Drug Trial Turns Surreal

They viewed the glossy color photographs of meticulously tended marijuana mother plants flourishing under timed lights inside an Oakland, Calif. warehouse. Then they watched a videotape showing DEA agents uprooting nearby marijuana cuttings to determine which had roots, and could thus be considered "plants" under the federal sentencing guidelines.

It was all in a day's work for jurors in the ongoing, and often surreal, federal drug trial of former High Times advice columnist ''Ask Ed'' Rosenthal, who is facing 20 years in prison for cultivating medical cannabis.

Federal prosecutors have built their case against Rosenthal by barring pre-trial testimony of Oakland city officials who said Rosenthal grew the plants for the city's medical marijuana program. But the government has subpoenaed testimony from an array of people who simply saw the plants, including a fellow grower, the proprietor of a medical cannabis club, Rosenthal's landlord, an electrician and even a fireman. These legal tactics offer a blueprint of the government's strategy to halt the distribution of medical marijuana in California -- and perhaps in the other seven states that have voted for it.

''This is the federal government at war with its own citizens and I like to think that years from now we will look back on this as a dark chapter in our nation's history,'' said California State Assemblymember Mark Leno. ''The thought of a man like Ed Rosenthal being threatened with twenty years of imprisonment is an outrage. The man is not a criminal.''

Federal prosecutors contend that marijuana is illegal and do not recognize California's 1996 Compassionate Use Act (Prop. 215) which permits patients to possess, grow and consume cannabis with a doctor's recommendation. Rosenthal, who has authored a half dozen how-to books on marijuana growing, has been charged with maintaining a place to grow marijuana at the Oakland warehouse and cultivating more than 100 marijuana plants at the site.

He has also been charged with conspiring to grow more than 1,000 plants with Ken Hayes and Rick Watts at the Harm Reduction Center, a San Francisco medical marijuana club. Prosecutors say Hayes fled to Seattle where he chartered a small plane and flew to a remote Canadian airfield with $13,000 hidden in his pants. Watts crashed his car after learning that he too was facing 20 years in prison and his attorney says his injuries prevent him from appearing in court.

Rosenthal's trial has become a cause celeb in Northern California where activists have launched a billboard campaign to condemn the imprisonment of medical cannabis growers. The billboards read: ''Compassion, Not Federal Prison.''

Federal prosecutors made an unsuccessful appeal to the judge to keep Rosenthal and his attorneys from speaking to the press after the San Francisco Examiner published a front page photo of Rosenthal and his daughter with the headline, "My Dad's A Hero.''

The government kicked off its case against Rosenthal by subpoenaing James Halloran, his former marijuana cultivation and racquetball partner, who was arrested in the same DEA sweep last February. Halloran testified that shortly after the passage of Prop. 215, he signed a lease on the 800-square-foot warehouse and brought in lights, fans and growing trays to raise a crop of cloned cannabis plants with Rosenthal. Halloran dissolved the partnership in 1998 and purchased plants from Rosenthal for his own 4,000 plant medical marijuana growing operation.

Halloran, who was facing three life terms for these activities, agreed to cooperate with the government for a reduced sentence of 56 months.

Rosenthal's former landlord, Leslie Wilmer, also testified that he saw Rosenthal's cannabis crop, as did German Sierra, a firefighter with the Oakland Fire Department. Sierra, who conducted a fire safety inspection at the warehouse, noted that Rosenthal had an Oakland business license. Both men were prevented from explaining why it did not occur to them to report the crop to police.