Judge Reduces Charges Against Medical Marijuana Offenders
Saying that jail "would not be an appropriate place" for marijuana "activist" Steve Kubby, a Superior Court judge in Placer County reduced Kubby's felony drug convictions for use of medical marijuana to misdemeanors and dismissed all remaining marijuana-related charges against him, the Sacramento Bee reports. Judge John Cosgrove fined Kubby $2,700, ordered him to serve 120 days of alternative sentencing and placed him on three years' "formal" probation, during which time he will be subject to search and seizure. Cosgrove's action came in response to a request by District Attorney Bradford Fenocchio to drop the case against Kubby. Fenocchio also filed a motion to halt the pending retrial of Roseville dentist Michael Baldwin, who faces similar charges in a separate case. Kubby and Baldwin were arrested after raids on their homes uncovered marijuana plants "in various stages of cultivation," and in their defense, both couples cited doctors' recommendations that they use the marijuana to treat physical "ailments." In the motion to dismiss the remaining counts against Kubby, Deputy District Attorney Christopher Cattran said that his office's action was "not a comment on guilt or innocence, but rather an indictment of the vagueness, whether intentional or unintentional," of anti-marijuana laws. Cattran asked the state Legislature "to establish specific guidelines with respect to the amount of marijuana appropriate for medical use" (Wilson, Sacramento Bee, 3/3).
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