by Medical marijuana grower gets a day in jail. The two ironies of this case are that the dude was doing his job for the city of Oakland and that when charged, the judge’s withholding of this and other facts from jurors spawned a rebellion among the jurors after they convicted him.
The problem with all this, beyond the fact that jailing potheads is a waste of time and resources, the real problem is that this judge, and every judge whose courtroom I’ve sat in, took the power of judgement out of the jury’s hands by withholding information that would have led them to make the correct decision.
Like politicians and bureaucrats the world over, judges seem to think that they are the ultimate authority over the domain that they oversee, rather than as the administrators of the system that they were intended to be.
Juries should be given all of the facts of the case before them, not be hamstrung by the very judge who’s duty it is to see that justice is done.
