Last week will go down as the busiest week for medical marijuana in the California courts of appeal. In a two-day span, the court issued three published decision in medical marijuana cases, all in favor of medical marijuana patients. This is a very welcome trend after the first several years of a series of bad decisions.

The most well-known case is the San Diego case, which I’ve already blogged about. The other two cases involve the denial of medical marijuana defenses in cases of patients who possessed more than the SB 420 guidelines.

One case is People v. Windus, where the Court of Appeal for the Second Appellate District (Los Angeles) held that the trial court improperly denied a medical marijuana defense to the defendant because his recommendation had “expired” and he possessed more than eight ounces of dried marijuana. The court held that the defendant’s medical marijuana recommendation did not expire, even though the doctor who issued it required yearly evaluations. The court further held that patients are not bound by the quantities specified in SB 420, but may possess an amount of marijuana that is consistent with their personal medical use. You can Click here to view the ruling.

The other case, People v. Phomphakdy, which comes out of the Court of Appeal for the Third Appellate District (Sacramento). Following a recent trend in the courts of appeal, the court agreed with the People v. Kelly decision and held that the quantities of marijuana specified in the Medical Marijuana Program Act (SB 420) constitute an unconstitutional legislative amendment of a voter-approved initiative. You can Click here to view the ruling.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 5th, 2008 at 1:54 pm and is filed under Americans for Safe Access (ASA), California, Law Enforcement, Legal, Medical Cannabis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.