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Medicinal pot case goes to jurors today
By Wayne Wilson

Bee Staff Writer

(Published Dec. 15, 2000)


Jurors at the medical-marijuana trial of Steve and Michele Kubby were told Thursday they will be making a profound and meaningful decision when they return their verdict.

This is a case that has a place in history, declared J. Tony Serra, an attorney representing the former Libertarian candidate for governor charged with growing pot for sale at his Squaw Valley home. It has meaning beyond the four walls of this court.

Argument in the closely-watched trial was concluded Thursday and the jury is expected to begin deliberations at 9 this morning.

Serra characterized the prosecution of the Kubbys as a microcosmic test of the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, the law that permits the cultivation and use of marijuana for medical purposes.

Law enforcement saw Kubby, an activist and promoter who became the symbol of medical marijuana in the campaign for the initiative's passage, as a big trophy, the defense argued.

But prosecutor Christopher M. Cattran said the Kubbys were simply hiding behind the act for profit, to sell marijuana. Cattran urged the panel of nine women and three men to look at the math when deciding if the 265 plants seized during a January 1999 raid at the Kubbys' residence were being grown for sale.

Quoting his experts' testimony that each plant would yield four ounces of pot, Cattran computed that the Kubbys could expect to harvest enough marijuana to last them for more than three years.

You have a commercial operation here . . . That's what you have, Cattran stated.

Defense counsel challenged the legitimacy of the prosecution's experts, suggesting they are nothing more than 30-year narcs . . . who specialize in ripping up and burning marijuana.

Their expertise was acquired by getting together with a bunch of police officers at a convention and voting on it, said J. David Nick, Michele Kubby's counsel.

Not one person the prosecution presented in this case had any scientific background with respect to botany, with respect to collecting data, Nick stated.

Defense experts based their estimate of a much smaller yield on a government study, Nick said. And it was that study the Kubbys relied on in deciding how much marijuana to grow, he pointed out.

Both Kubbys are charged with cultivation and possession of marijuana for sale, two counts of conspiracy relating to those alleged crimes, and three additional counts having to do with the discovery of minute quantities of other controlled substances in their home.

It is the prosecution's theory that Kubby sold $103,000 worth of his home-grown pot to the operators of two cannabis clubs in the Bay Area.

Kubby acknowledged receiving money from the clubs but said it was donated to him over an 18-month period to help him carry the banner of seriously ill Californians who look to marijuana as their miracle drug.

In his closing argument, attorney Serra said the $103,000 Kubby received was chicken feed in a campaign necessitated by law enforcement's refusal to accept the passage of Proposition 215.

When the feds, who don't respect the law, stepped in and closed the cannabis clubs, patients felt that everything they'd worked so hard to achieve had been taken away from them, Serra explained.

They looked to Kubby as their spokesman, and he provoked law enforcement. He stuck his marijuana buds in their nose, Serra said.

Kubby testified, and his doctor of many years confirmed, that he uses marijuana to control the effects of a rare form of deadly adrenal cancer.

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