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Man grows pot. Admits it. Jury sends him home (Dublin, GA)
Atlanta Journal-Constitution ^ | 27 July 18 | Bill Torpy

Posted on 07/27/2018 2:59:37 PM PDT by Drew68

Javonnie McCoy was growing marijuana when the cops came to his Middle Georgia home. He was caught red-handed with it. Almost a pound of it, in fact. He admitted it to police, and later he looked jurors in the eye and said, yep, it was mine. I used it as medicine.

The jurors let him go. He was minding his own business and wasn’t hurting anybody, they reasoned. He just doesn’t belong in prison.

The jury’s decision earlier this month in Dublin, Ga., may have been due to a muddled prosecution of a muddy case. Or it may have been jury nullification, another case of citizens saying prosecutions for pot are not worth law enforcement’s time and effort — or the impact on otherwise law-abiding people’s lives.

It was the second such win in the Laurens County circuit for Atlanta attorney Catherine Bernard, a conservative Republican who’s also a staunch civil libertarian. Late last year, another client of hers ‘fessed up to a jury that he had sold a couple of nickel bags to an insistent undercover drug cop. That client was cut loose after just 18 minutes of deliberation.

And this is no liberal soft-on-crime region. Donald Trump won the county 2-1.

Bernard also helped get North Georgia authorities to drop charges against the parents of a 15-year-old whose parents allowed him to smoke pot to help combat severe seizures.

Ultimately, what may have kept McCoy out of an orange jumpsuit was that his lawyer urged the jury to empower themselves. She told them they are not potted plants or an unthinking arm of government. They, in fact, are the government. She read to the jury a section from the Georgia Constitution that says, “The jury shall be the judges of the law and the facts.”

(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...


TOPICS: News/Current Events; US: Georgia
KEYWORDS: addiction; arresteddevelopment; cannabis; cannapiss; cannotsayno; civildependencies; civilliberties; compulsion; crutch4emotionaltard; deaconblues; dependence; drugabuse; drugwhore; easykillforms13; emopotheads; emotivism; emptypothole; exploitpotweaklings; failedcopingskills; failedhuman; failureatlife; fakehappiness; feelings; frailarethepotheads; illindegenerates; irrationalpotheads; liberaltarian; libertarian; limp; lovethatwontstfu; lowenergypotheads; lowscoringhuman; lowtestosterone; marijuana; marriedtotijuana; medicinalweakling; medicine; mjissogay; naturallyunhappy; noselfcontrol; obamabros; paranoidpothead; patheticpotheads; pot; potheads; potheadsarepathetic; potheadscannotcope; pothomos; potisfortheweak; potownshissorryass; potpimps; potslave; potslaveryisfreedom; pottarded; profitofftheweak; psyvhosis; pwndedbypot; reaganisnopothead; safespace4snowflakes; selfabort; slavetopot; sloth; snowflakes; sociopaths; sorosjuanawarriors; soyboy; soyunperdador; substanceabuse; suicidalpotheads; trigglypuff; trumpisnopothead; unfreetosayno; unstable; vulnerable; warondrugs; warondummies; waronselfcontrol; weakarethepotheads; weaklingsondrugs; whoreondrugs; wod
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This is how the drug war ends. Juries, empowered to think for themselves, let obviously guilty defendants walk free.

Links at the source.

1 posted on 07/27/2018 2:59:37 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: KC_Lion; TheStickman; dainbramaged; beaversmom; T-Bone Texan; dljordan; Mama Shawna; NobleFree; ...

Ping


2 posted on 07/27/2018 3:03:21 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: Drew68
And, at some point, the government realizes there is more money to be made off regulation and taxes.

The feline equivalent is catnip and our kitty really enjoys a pinch of it here and there. But she doesn't drive a car or vote either.

3 posted on 07/27/2018 3:07:47 PM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
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To: Vigilanteman

What’s voting got to do with pot?

I know pot smokers that are far smarter than the average Republican voter. They don’t vote for RINOs and voted for Trump.


4 posted on 07/27/2018 3:09:28 PM PDT by CodeToad
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To: Drew68; TheStickman; dainbramaged; NobleFree; beaversmom
WOW! And in Georgia too.

Thank You for posting Drew.

People are just flat out thinking differnlty about Cannabis these days.

5 posted on 07/27/2018 3:13:15 PM PDT by KC_Lion (If you want on First Lady Melania's, Ivanka Trump's or Sarah Palin's Ping Lists, just let me know.)
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To: Drew68
I would have voted to acquit also.
6 posted on 07/27/2018 3:13:51 PM PDT by Artemis Webb (Maxine Waters for House Minority Leader!!)
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To: Drew68

i thought an ounce was distribution. Every state is different but a pound should certainly qualify.

What was his illness? Anxiety, depression, afraid to get up in morning and face the world?


7 posted on 07/27/2018 3:14:12 PM PDT by joshua c (To disrupt the system, we must disrupt our lives. Do nothing, they win and we lose.)
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To: joshua c
What was his illness? Anxiety, depression, afraid to get up in morning and face the world?

Maybe he just enjoyed smoking weed.

8 posted on 07/27/2018 3:15:58 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: Drew68

Man admits to being a Trump Supporter, Jury sentences him to Death.


9 posted on 07/27/2018 3:17:01 PM PDT by Kickass Conservative (THEY LIVE, and we're the only ones wearing the Sunglasses.)
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To: Drew68
This is how the drug war ends. Juries, empowered to think for themselves

More like this is how the rule of law ends. When juries start judging guilt or innocence based on how they feel, the rule of law is dead. Next, they will base these decisions on political affiliation.
10 posted on 07/27/2018 3:17:44 PM PDT by JoSixChip (He is Batman!)
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To: Kickass Conservative
Man admits to being a Trump Supporter, Jury sentences him to Death.

Exactly!
11 posted on 07/27/2018 3:19:05 PM PDT by JoSixChip (He is Batman!)
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To: CodeToad
No objection from me as long as they aren't stoned out of their mind, but it is only natural to expect the same type of laws regulating booze will be applied equally to weed.

And, yes, there are recreational (and medicinal) users who can take a drag or two and an hour later be perfectly sound of mind. There are also those who just can't get enough and become a useless full time stoner.

Are you so naive as to think regulation and taxes will not follow?

12 posted on 07/27/2018 3:20:18 PM PDT by Vigilanteman (ObaMao: Fake America, Fake Messiah, Fake Black man. How many fakes can you fit into one Zer0?)
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To: Drew68

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Or is it a pound of prevention..? Anyway, I agree.


13 posted on 07/27/2018 3:22:01 PM PDT by outofsalt (If history teaches us anything, it's that history rarely teaches us anything.)
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To: KC_Lion
WOW! And in Georgia too.

And not some liberal college town or big blue Atlanta but a Trump-supporting county at that.

14 posted on 07/27/2018 3:22:21 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: Drew68

The war on marijuana is a failure. Using force to keep people from consuming this plant, has not worked, and will never work.

I think it’s time to decriminalize it, and let the states tax and regulate it in a fashion that is acceptable to the people.


15 posted on 07/27/2018 3:22:21 PM PDT by Windflier (Pitchforks and torches ripen on the vine. Left too long, they become black rifles.)
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To: JoSixChip

Our freedom of the press is a direct consequence of colonial jurors nullifying tyrannical laws.
This is the point of a trial by jury of your peers.


16 posted on 07/27/2018 3:22:56 PM PDT by Gunslingr3
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To: JoSixChip

Jury nullification at its finest.

That scenario is what Liberals had hoped an Activist Supreme Court would have done to us extremist Irredeemable Deplorable types.


17 posted on 07/27/2018 3:24:14 PM PDT by Kickass Conservative (THEY LIVE, and we're the only ones wearing the Sunglasses.)
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To: JoSixChip
More like this is how the rule of law ends.

I believe it was Jeff Sessions who said the best way to get bad laws repealed is to start enforcing them.

18 posted on 07/27/2018 3:24:34 PM PDT by Drew68
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To: JoSixChip
When juries start judging guilt or innocence based on how they feel, the rule of law is dead.

Not exactly:

"Jurors should acquit even against the judge's instruction....if exercising their judgment with discretion and honesty they have a clear conviction that the charge of the court is wrong." -- Alexander Hamilton, 1804

The jury is intended to be the rule of law - the final corrective process to a legal system that may go out of control.

Of course, the Founding Fathers never anticipated a jury selection system like ours has devolved into, either. I've always been of the opinion that jury pools should be made up strictly of volunteers over the age of 55 with demonstrable business or professional experience. The current system of seating unwilling draftees who often lack the ability to exercise judgment in their own lives gives predictably wretched results.

19 posted on 07/27/2018 3:26:34 PM PDT by Mr. Jeeves ([CTRL]-[GALT]-[DELETE])
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To: JoSixChip
Then, I say we go back to the 10 commandments. Something we all understand. There are so many laws and it's getting worse - how about the 'straw law' in California.

If I ain't coveting your stuff... leave me alone.

20 posted on 07/27/2018 3:26:47 PM PDT by Lagmeister ( false prophets shall rise, and shall show signs and wonders Mark 13:22)
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