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Current Affairs 2007 - Legal (153 items)
| Mar 31, 2007 | Pot Crusader Upset At Crown There was no joy for medicinal marijuana activist Grant Krieger on Friday when the Crown stayed a trafficking charge dating back to 1999, for which the Supreme Court had granted Krieger a new trial.
"That's disappointing," Krieger said when advised the stay was officially entered by Court of Queen's Bench Associate Chief Justice Neil Wittmann at the behest of the federal Crown.
"But that's the way the system works. . . . The only way I can get it fixed is in front of a jury, so the jury can nullify this nonsense.
"They ( the Crown ) know that's what I want to do. They don't want the laws changed."
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| Mar 30, 2007 | Marijuana Advocate Pleads Guilty to Pot Possession Driving a car plastered with marijuana leaf logos and stickers is bound to catch the eye of police -- particularly if you're on the way to the annual Hempfest celebration.
That's what happened to a Montreal man nearly seven years ago, a Sault Ste. Marie judge heard Thursday.
Marc Boris St-Maurice was leader of the Marijuana Party at the time of the July 21, 2000 stop. Since then he has joined the Liberal Party and plans to seek the nomination in a Montreal riding, he says.
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| Mar 28, 2007 | A Fine Can Be Fine For The Crime On Jan. 19, the B.C. Court of Appeal overturned a sentence imposed in a marijuana grow-op case.
A provincial court judge had found that a $20,000 fine would best address the root of the offence: the prospect of huge profits in a black market. The Court of Appeal thought differently and sentenced the accused to a year in jail.
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| Mar 19, 2007 | RCMP Entrapped Accused, Visiting Judge Concludes Crown prosecutors have dropped drug charges against 15 people who were arrested following a two-month undercover RCMP investigation throughout the territory last fall.
Crown prosecutor Ludovic Gouallier said this morning visiting Justice Rene Foisy of Alberta sided with the entrapment argument presented in a Faro resident's case in February.
[Hooray] |
| Mar 17, 2007 | Number Of Criminal Groups Growing The number of organized crime groups in B.C. grew for the third year in a row in 2006 -- to 124, up from 108 identified the previous year, says a 2006 RCMP report obtained by The Vancouver Sun....The graph in the report looks alarming, starting in 2003 with just 52 groups and rising in each of the last three years. But the report also says better record-keeping and analysis of crime groups accounts for some of the increase...
[Duh... when the government abdicates responsibility to regulate and tax this plant like everything else from liquor to pet food, or allow individuals to grow it like tomatoes and petunias, then the only group left to grow and distribute it is the criminals, so why is this news not surprising or unpredictable? Until citizens demand the government create an alternative to the current system by using the existing wine, tobacco or liquor model or creating a new model, things will get MUCH worse before they get better.] |
| Mar 15, 2007 | Holy Smoke Owners Enter Plea Holy Smoke Culture Shop co-owners Paul De Felice and Alan Middlemiss as well as associates Kelsey Stratas and Akka Annis entered not-guilty pleas in Nelson court last week and are now waiting for a trial date to be set.
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| Mar 9, 2007 | Toking Up To Feel Better Not Accepted As Medical Need A group of 1,492 Canadians -- 21 per cent of them in B.C. -- are allowed to get high every day for medical reasons.
But as much as Brian Riches might like to be, the inmate isn't among them.
The offender's toking finally caught up with him yesterday when members of the National Parole Board rejected his pitch that marijuana helped him chill out and actually cut the chances he might commit more violent assaults.
[Ignorance about cannabis and societal stupidity ruin lives] |
| Mar 9, 2007 | Toking Up To Feel Better Not Accepted As The offender's toking finally caught up with him yesterday when members of the National Parole Board rejected his pitch that marijuana helped him chill out and actually cut the chances he might commit more violent assaults.
[A classic case of stupidity and ignorance winning out over common sense. Cannabis reduces rage, and society in general would be more peaceful if we were rid of pot prohibition.] |
| Mar 5, 2007 | Put Pot Growers Behind Bars, Court Of Appeal Tells Judge The B.C. Court of Appeal has told lower court judges that pot growers should be jailed to buttress the anti-marijuana law.
In a significant unanimous ruling that tries to address vexing questions raised by judges dealing with pot offenders, a three-judge panel unanimously ordered a 12-month jail term for a Courtenay man with no criminal record who was caught growing dope for profit.
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| Feb 21, 2007 | Officers Abused Lawyer's Son: Lawsuit Claims Edmonton police officers detained and strip-searched the son of Edmonton defence lawyer Tom Engel after they threw away the evidence -- a marijuana cigarette -- of his alleged crime, according to a lawsuit filed Tuesday.
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| Feb 17, 2007 | Appeal Court Takes Away Pot Trafficker's House He lost his weed and his freedom, and now a Grand Lake property owner has lost his home.
The Nova Scotia Court of Appeal ruled Friday that a judge erred when he decided not to forfeit Rady Siek's home to the Crown in a marijuana cultivation case.
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| Feb 17, 2007 | Home Owner Disputes Inspection Bill The City of Pitt Meadows has now inspected seven homes in the past two weeks for abnormally high hydro consumption.
The inspections are part of a three-month pilot project to eliminate residential marijuana grow operations through safety inspections.
No marijuana operations were found at any of the seven homes in Pitt Meadows.
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| Feb 17, 2007 | Bill Would Force Landlords To Evict Suspected Criminals A Calgary MLA plans to introduce a private member's bill that, without using the Criminal Code, would force landlords to evict tenants from homes where drug use or prostitution is alleged.
[Why worry about things like due process and rights] |
| Jan 31, 2007 | Police Say Smoking Pot Endangered Kids NWT: Four people have been charged with endangering children after police say they were found smoking pot in the same room as five kids....
The adults were released after giving statements to RCMP, and promising they would have no contact with the children until the charges have been dealt with in court.
Until that time, the children will remain in the hands of Health and Social Services, said Dreilich.
When it comes to the irrationality surrounding parents using illegal substances, we get the best perspective by looking at whether using legal substances would have the same outcome in any family situation. If not, then allowing prohibition related, not drug related problems to tear families apart in Canada, will eventually be as common as it is in the US, and just as detrimental. |
| Jan 30, 2007 | Knock The Law Not The Cops For Making Pot What was James Breau thinking when he decided to run the Mid Island Compassion Club and distribute marijuana without a proper licence? Did he think the police wouldn't find out that he was supplying 85 people with highly priced weed?
Despite the fact that a 2006 Maclean's Magazine poll concluded 93 per cent of Canadians support the legal use of marijuana for medical purposes, it's still illegal to distribute the drug without a licence.
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| Jan 25, 2007 | Four Kids Seized In Grow Op Bust AB: Police arrested a pregnant mother and seized her four young children after a drug raid on a home in the northeast Calgary community of Temple.
The search of the marijuana grow operation marks the third time children have been taken into custody since Alberta's Drug-endangered Children Act came into effect in November.
Two of the children, who range in age from two to nine, were taken from the home on Templeton Circle N.E. The two older children were in school at the time of the raid, but were picked up later by Child and Family Services officials.
[This trend of seizing children of people busted with illegal substances is deeply disturbing at many levels.
While many parents have the gut feeling that this makes a bad situation much, much worse, there is no evidence or data they can look at to support or dispute that families are hurt far worse by the state mandated separation than any other factor. At the very least, can society not demand some accountability in this matter?
We know from our history that removing children from their homes has gone on since the beginning, for very despicable reasons, usually racial in nature. Could that happen against a backdrop of voter disapproval? No, society as a whole is complicit in these crimes against humanity.] |
| Jan 24, 2007 | Family Sues Door-Busting Cops ON: Henry George McCool Sr. accuses Toronto Police of being negligent for barging into his home on Sept. 15, 2005 in search of his son, who did not live with his father at the time of the arrests, in a gang crackdown dubbed Project Flicker, a statement of claim filed yesterday said.
The family wants $2.75 million in damages for the incident, which they say has left the mother and father coping with depression and their 8-year-old granddaughter with a "continuing fear and distrust" of police officers that has led to frequent nightmares.
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| Jan 24, 2007 | Drug-Endangered Children Will Get Help AB: Twenty-five police officers from the Capital Region are being trained in a course on investigating drug-endangered children....
The program focused on how to deal with the children that police sometimes find living in the drug houses and marijuana grow operations they've raided.
[The trend of removing children from homes will be monitored throughout the year as it violates logic, reason and basic human rights] |
| Jan 20, 2007 | Marijuana Growers Lose Houses A court decision this week doubled the number of marijuana growers forced to turn over their homes since local authorities began taking an aggressive approach to the problem five years ago.
Eight houses in Waterloo Region have now been ordered forfeited following changes in the law to make it easier in 2001, with another case scheduled for a hearing in March.
That puts local police and prosecutors on the leading edge in Ontario as they go after lucrative marijuana grow houses.
[The more drug warriors profit from prohibition, the more entrenched it becomes] |
| Jan 19, 2007 | Pot Grower Dodges Jail Term Growing pot for medical marijuana crusader Grant Krieger won't mean jail for a former Calgary man, a judge ruled yesterday.
Justice Beth Hughes agreed with defence lawyer Adriano Iovinelli that jail time wasn't necessary for Mark James Maki's involvement with the Compassion Club.
"Mr. Maki's motivation for these offences, while certainly against the law and misguided, were to assist the Compassion Club and it's members," Hughes said.
The 577 plants seized in October 2001 and February 2002 had a value of about $600,000 to $800,000, and a loaded sawed-off shotgun was found in Maki's home.
Maki, 43, of Coquitlam, B.C., pleaded guilty to two charges of cultivating marijuana and one of careless storage of a firearm.
Hughes placed him in on house arrest for a year, followed by a curfew for another 12 months.
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