[The following has already been posted on usenet/google groups at alt.community]

I am advised that if I try to email the jury pool to inform them about medical marijuana, I'll be charged with jury tampering.

The first time my home was searched was during a joint housewarming party in 1969, when my friend Bill McMurry moved in next door. They didnt find anything in my house, but we didnt know the previous tenant was a drug dealer, and left drugs behind that Bill was charged with.

Which got his name and photo in the Tampa Tribune. He was a middle school teacher. The sensationalism was obvious. But when I wrote the editor about the true facts, they refused to print the truth. So, I went to the USF underground antiwar college newspaper, which did. The next thing we know, that newspaper office was searched for drugs. None was found, but it took days to clean up the mess.

After graduation in 71, I moved to New Orleans, and began writing in the underground newspaper there about what was going on. I worked in the local head clinic, manned the suicide hotline, did case management, and had first hand on the street knowledge. But LEO didnt like it, and searched that newspaper office also. In fact did so twice, and also searched my various residences 5 times in the five years I lived there.

One time they came in during a Halloween party and arrested me for the drugs guests dropped on the floor during the confusion. The judge threw that case out of court. The other four times they found NOTHING.

I had health problems also, and moved to the Ozarks to live in peace. But two years after my house burned, LEO searched my barn (unaffected by the housefire) where I stored lab equipment & chemicals for processing legal herbs. Which made for lotsa sensational photos on the front page of the Marshall Mountain Wave of guys in hazmat suits in what the paper said was "The Biggest Meth Lab Ever Found in NW Arkansas". Nothing illegal was found, and I was not charged. Neither would they return any seized property.

But, the newspaper would not present the truth when I brought it to them. It seems they did not want to embarrass local law enforcement and the State Drug control officers. So, I used my PC printer to run off a few hundred copies I distributed to country stores and church parking lots. The pattern of blindsidedness here on the part of local media in all these searches is clear- wanting the sensationalism of the drugwar, but not wanting to expose the inept, and even illegal way it was run... like a speed trap.

Moreover, never in all these searches, was I able to interview any of the "confidential informants" about what was told to a judge to get a search warrant. Which is egzactly the way the Soviet KGB and German Stasi intelligence services operated- with networks of "informants", who have their own personal agendas that are never looked into. But now, http://www.zoominfo.com/people/Kelley_Michael_429299445.aspx looks into another case, and I know of more.

The testimony on my pretrial hearing Monday 1/11/2010 didnt include the name of the informant wasnt offered. But while I was in jail, (not having the bond money) the fact that the neighboring land owner began cutting trees and bulldozing them and a new road thru this property is a significant clue. He had already 'accidentally' used his earthmoving equipment to cut my water line. Twice. Fortunately, I found a spring on this property to develop.

Given the repressive influence of Law Enforcement on media, it begs the question of just who has been tampering with Juries.

I've been growing medical marijuana for years. Look up cannabidiol for a clue on one of the diffs. ( eg: http://www.druglibrary.org/schaffer/hemp/medical/cannabid.htm ) I had two patches to test a new dwarf variety; one under the canopy hidden in the woods, another in full sun close to the house. In the first week of October 2008, a tresspasser came on the property, stole the pot growing in the woods, then called the cops to bust me for the patch that was too close to the house to steal.

Which made the search illegal, because nobody had the right to tresspass to see what I was growing on the property. Because it was a dwarf strain, it was not visible from the road. None of it was even 6 foot, mostly about 3, some not even 2 ft tall.

A chopper was sent over 1st, and it flew over the house 7 times, but had to get so low to see the pot that the propwash blew leaves down off the tree over the patch, and knocked down my Jerusalem artichokes, which grew over 6 foot tall, further obscuring the view, and blocking it from the road. This was, in effect, a footprint on the property without a search warrant. An officer testified he could smell marijuana, but this was because of the same propwash.

When the search warrant did arrive, it had only the address. They had not done, as you'd think, any investigation of me, which you'd want to do in order to bust a commercial pot growing opertion. They did not know who I was. Had I been running a commercial pot operation, surveillance would have revealed an entire dealer network. But, they were only interested in seizing the property rather than breaking up drug distribution rings.

I was more familiar than most with proper procedure since this was the 8th time in my life since 1968 that my home was searched, and the 4th that they did not know who I was. If you've seen the German film, "The Lives of Others, you may recall how some within the Stasi realized how the system was corrupted, and therefore worked in hidden ways to make it less effective. That may be part of the reason this time proper procedures were not followed. Further, almost all the officers involved were very polite, and seemed to understand this all came down in order that the informer mite profit from the seized property coming up at auction. As was done under Communism.

Is this string of searches just some kind of statistical fluke, or is this an indication of a lack of due process? I've never been able to ask whoever it was who testified to a judge about why my home should be searched. Which again we see under Communism.

The 1998 search resulted when a game & fish agent snooped in my barn when nobody was around and saw all the lab equipment and chemicals stored there.

Moreover, marijuana is just one of an increasingly wide variety of important medicinal herbs I've been growing & drying over the years and then often processing for salves & tinctures. On October 10, they took all my solvents, scales, filters, and other lab equipment. As in the 1998 search, none of it was illegal.

On seeing the report in the Aug 8, 1998 Marshall Mountain Wave, I went to the editor to ask her to print a correct report of my property, which she had labeled as The biggest meth lab ever found in NW Arkansas. Since she would not print a true report, I used my PC printer to run off 200 copies of what was really taken and distributed them to country stores around Searcy County. Sheriff Sutterfield, who was prominently displayed in the newspaper as having organized the bust withdrew his re-election campaign. The Van Buren County Sheriff may be just a nice guy, but he also may know of what happened to Sheriff Sutterfield. What you see here, is just a small part of what has been posted online about what's been going on in Van Buren County and elsewhere.

Since I've had personal property seized by law enforcement in Florida, Louisianna, and now Arkansas, I cant say that the personnel in Van Buren county are less professional, altho not as diligent as the FBI; they were, in all my personal interactions with them, always polite. Like Stasi agents, they may sense the coming change.

But besides being uninformed of the medicinal uses of marijuana, they are not up on several well known new dwarf strains of marijuana. The seeds can be ordered online. This presents real problems for landowners since their land can be seized because of pot growing along a fence line that does not reach the top of the fence. While choppers wont be able to spot it, anyone driving by mite. And of course, anyone wanting to make trouble has merely to sow some seed and then wait a couple months for it to appear and then call the cops.

The new lines were also developed to grow indoors under less light, so it also does very well under the forest canopy in the woods, where again, choppers cant see it, but growers wanting to use your property would know where to look at harvest time. This requires great diligence by landowners to be sure pot is not grown on their land, and then, if there, to prove all the money and assets owners had were acquired from legal sources. In this case, you are guilty til proven innocent.

Then too, ongoing genetic engineering has resulted in reports of DNA code to produce psychoactive compounds being spliced into other plants just as is done for other purposes. So- weeds that dont even look like pot will be propagated, again possibly on your land. The legality remains in doubt, but for sure lots of lawyers will make lots of money off landowners as a result.

Surf Dutch & other foreign seed sources shows us varieties that are 15 or more times more potent, or other lines that have greater medicinal value. Also, with just a single seed that produced one desired plant, hundreds of clones can be made that will have all the same properties, and also the very same DNA. This means that the medicinal marijuana market can be separated out from the recreational.

It would also offer consumers a product that offered more effective therapies at far lower costs than from transnational pharmaceuticals- who however, have corrupted the FDA, so that there is no testing, and no information given to the public. The FDA has only tested smoking marijuana, which may indeed be as bad as they say. However, there are now vaporizers that do not burn the herb, but like a Vicks Vaporizer, drive off the therapeutic elements. Which are so mild that even those with impaired lung function can get relief. The legal system seems totally unaware of these therapeutic applications.

Moreover, cannabis compounds are only one of a wide variety of powerful psychoactive substances being reported on the net. Anthropologists in recent years have gone with shamen and witches into rituals and used their sacred potions- which derive from a variety of previously unknown sources. And these are now being sold on the net, every bit as powerful as other illegal drugs, but- completely legal.

I myself have sampled several of them as part of my professional herbalism. And as a result, the nite of Oct 10, they sent a squad car to get me from the jail because the chemist with the search party did not know what he was dealing with. This is indicative of how the legal system has not kept up with the science, as called for in the laws on controlled substances. I had a couple dozen different herbs growing, dried, in tinctures, or undergoing some kind of processing, and nobody else knew what it all was.

But for sure, what it was, was expensive. The chopper arrived in the morning, and at midnite, when I was brought back from the jail, the team was still there trying to figure out what they all had. The chopper, pilots, several squadcars, Arkansas State Drug control agents, Van Buren County deputies, the chemist & his chem lab van were all there at taxpayer expense for an operation that had nothing to do with the illegal recreational drug market. This kind of thing is also overloading the crime labs. They no longer have the time to do all the tests they need, even if they knew how. Tests dont even exist for some of the compounds that are available online.

Had they simply sent out an agent, I could have supplied samples for DNA analysis, so they could satisfy themselves that none of what I produced was available in the local marijuana market. Individual marijuana plants are just as unique in their sets of DNA markets as individual people are. So, from my arrest, it was over six months before there was a pretrial hearing at which I was supposed to be presented with the crime lab evidence against me. And it'll be several more months before there is a trail. Which is clearly in violation of the US constitional mandate for a speedy trial. As the variety of compounds available online increases, this is only going to get worse.

This has never been done. By the time the legal system is done seizing assets, charging fines & court costs, and the dealer has paid his defense attorney, there are no significant assets left for families, child protection services, or welfare agencies to sue for. As it is now, the families and taxpayers pick up the tab for trying to deal with the effects of drug abuse.

Were these substances legal, the state could require vendors to be bonded just as pharmacists are, and the insurance money would be quickly available to deal with these chronic social problems. Moreover, a legal distribution chain, from the producers to the wholesalers would have even more assets to sue for. Now that we have DNA analysis, we can tell where any given sample taken from a user comes from; and as soon as any user resulted in civil action, the vendors would no longer sell to him so addiction would be nipped in the bud.

As with other recreational drugs, there are regular and moderate adult users who manage their consumption without damage to their ability to keep a job and meet their family or social responsibilities. This customer base provides the assets drug dealers now use to expand their business in other areas and substances that have had more serious social consequences. Like drug wars and streetgangs. In a legal recreational drug market, the dangerous sociopaths would not be able to get the insurance or bonding, nor would weapons be an effective method of trying to expand a share of the drug market.

With computers now, it'd be simple for every vendor to access a database to be sure no customer was unable to meet his responsibilities or maintain his health or that of his family. Civil lawsuits could do what criminal courts could not. Moreover, with a legal recreational drug market, it'd be easy to collect data on the effects of drug use, which is now hidden from the public eye. With the data in hand, it'd be reasonable to setup a taxation system to recover the social damages of drug use. It'd be logically consistent to include alcohol; the user with a DUI or DWI would be banned from purchasing. Since alcohol is also an organic product, traces of the DNA of the original source could be identified, and those sources who were not diligent in distribution could be sued.

DNA could be used to sort out recreational pot from hemp; as a result, farmers would regain what was once a very profitable fibre crop. It turns out that hemp still has very valuable medicinal uses, and that the pollen from hemp would so permeate an area that it'd become difficult to propagate recreational pot. Seed from previous years would have so much hemp DNA it'd be useless to smoke.

In April, I emailed the prosecuting attorney's office about some problems he has with the way the search was carried out and some of the evidence (photos of the scene) missing from the discovery. But regardless, I also outlined the problems he'll have with a jury when they realize the risk to rural property rights posed by the new dwarf marijuana lines. <>/P>

I had hoped for some response by now, but his office is a busy place, so I'm not surprised nobody has had time to email a response. That may be why they tried to combine my case with that of my X-wife, as if we were conspirators, even tho she hasnt lived with me for a few years and has remarried. He's making a bad case worse; she has the documentation to prove she was in TN & MO last year.

If we consider how the prisons are full, its reasonable to assume the court dockets are also, and the lawyers just do not have time any more to carefully look over the case documentation. Its all like a Kibuki play; all the players have their moves all planned out, blissfully unaware the times have changed, and they look so unreal now.

I read someone died from trying Salvia. So, there's an effort now to make Salvia also illegal. And every year, more anthopology reports come out about some tribe using some sacred herbal compound that then is available online. The Shamen and witches have been using sacred potions for millennia, so they know what it does- that is to their people. But conversely, some people have severe adverse reactions to a host of more common substances. We dont ban peanuts, and there are some tribes that are lactose intolerant. The list of controlled substances is getting so long that nobody can keep up with it all any more. Nor, should we expect lawyers, judges, and Juries to be up on all the scientific data or bio-chemistry of all these substances.

Confusing also is that some states ban some substances others dont. We cant expect travelers to know some herb in the car is illegal when passing thru. This has all the markings of draconian law that will be capriciously applied to make money for lawyers, and that in turn will create a movement to abolish all of it. We'd do well to consider a new, more rational system that can be uniformly applied. That'll be lots easier to do in civil court damage suits.

It wont be necessary to trot out all the scientific studies full of obscure jargon about chemical properties that pose a public health problem, only that in a particular case it caused harm.

I mean, I'm not at all surprised. This is, after all, the 8TH time in the last 40 years my property has been searched, and while most would not notice, I've been paying attention, and by now know how search warrants should be issued and how searches should be carried out. The officers doing the search were polite and professional, but they just cant handle the paperwork properly. The judge at my hearing was patient with me, but now, on reflection, I think he knows what kind of bufoons he has working for him.

The day after the search, I was interviewed in the jail. The officer begins by stating the date and time. 2:39pm, October 10. The problem here is, that the search was on October 9, but the search warrant copy I have from the Prosecutor's office is for October 10, 2008. Does anyone else see a problem here in haing a search warrant signed by a judge the day after the search had already been done? Hello? I dunno; maybe they really dont want this case to go to court. Maybe they realize how badly I would embarrass law enforcement. Mite be why Judge Clawson set the dated for the next hearing so far ahead: First Jan 6, then March, then April, then June, then October, then Dec 7, and now finally, 1/11/2010 with the trial set for 1/12-13/2010. As one lawyer on the phone told me, "They'll just keep kicking it down the road."