People v. King may be regarded as the most significant ruling for the Michigan Medical Cannabis Community. To fully understand the impact of this decision one must first consider what was taking place in Courts throughout the State of Michigan regarding the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act (MMMA) at the time the decision was reached.
Judges and prosecutors across the state had developed a theory that if a patient or caregiver violated any aspect of the MMMA, specifically Section 4, the accused patient or caregiver was precluded from arguing a medical marihuana defense. Opinions and Orders signed by Judges were being issued with disturbing regularity specifically stating that no mention of a card or medical cannabis would be allowed before the jury, nor could it be argued that marihuana is a recognized treatment for a defendant’s medical condition.
In other words, the accused patient or caregiver was treated as if the MMMA did not exist. Nineteen cases that went before the Court of Appeals unanimously affirmed this practice. I have spent countless hours over the last Four and half years reading and analyzing the MMMA. I have spoken with all the major medical marijuana lawyers and activists in the state as well as those who were involved with authoring the Act, and never did this interpretation ever come out of anyone’s mouth. Yet here we were in June 2012 and this was the law. Worse yet, the language from the ballot initiative seemed to be in direct conflict with this interpretation. How could such rulings be reconciled with the ballot language 63% of the voters approved? To wit: “Permit registered and unregistered patients and primary caregivers to assert medical reasons for using marijuana as a defense to any prosecution involving marijuana”.
Throughout this time, calls continued to come in to my office from patients and caregivers seeking representation. They were being arrested for a variety of alleged violations: not securing the “master lock” on the door to their grow room, having too many plants or too much “usable” marijuana. Dead and un-rooted plants were often used to create higher plant counts, as well as unusable and un-dried plant matter being weighed as “usable material”. Arrests were being made simply because they could be, and I noticed an alarming statewide policy of “arrest first, ask questions second”. These arrests were executed with the understanding that there would be no defense for the patients and caregivers. I strongly believed that in many of these cases, the evidence that led to the arrests would not hold up in a jury trial, but my clients were repeatedly being stripped of their right to a fair trial.
The King ruling has enabled a way to change social policy, via jury trials. The citizens who voted for this law in overwhelming numbers will now be the deciders, not the police, the prosecutors and the judges. The most sacred of rights outlined in the U.S and Michigan constitutions, the right to present a defense, had been identified as a critical component of the MMMA. To me this is what the Act was really all about, an opportunity for a patient or caregiver to give a presentation, based upon their own specific medical condition and the specific way they use cannabis as medicine. King provided clarity of the interpretation of the act, and ultimately determined that questions of facts of medical use would be questions for the jury.
The ongoing, relentless government pushback cannot stop the will of the majority voter. The extreme opposition by prosecutors to have cases heard by juries reveals their well-founded fear that people on a jury will not convict for the technical violations people were getting arrested for. Statistics from across the country have continuously shown that people on juries are sick of the resources wasted on prosecuting cases involving marihuana. Now, with an actual defense of medical use, juries could hear the entire case and decide themselves whether they want to make criminals out of people who have been arrested for silly violations. I believe they will not, and King is the catalyst that will allow juries to return not guilty verdicts and force prosecutors to decide if they want to keep prosecuting cases that the juries don’t see as crimes.
After years of struggle, and court battles making one step forward of progress while getting slapped three steps backward by improper interpretation, I now see hope. In light of the King holding, medical marihuana may not be the Sisyphus the community once feared it was. It is unfortunate that it took three and a half years to get here, but I would like to believe within another three and a half, the cases that are being prosecuted today will be looked at as the beginning of the end of the fear that prevails today in the medical cannabis community. King is the start of the peace of mind the community has been asking for, and the beginning of a more rational approach to thinking of medical cannabis in Michigan.
