It's too hot to work outside today. I was late getting started on my walk around the ranch this morning and really got dehydrated from sweating before I got back home.

Lets talk about recall elections. Everyone knows California's governor is facing a recall. Few know that Humboldt County's District Attorney is threatened with a recall election also. We're in a curious situation here in Humboldt county. For 20 years or so we had one man, Terry Farmer, as the District Attorney. The DA is elected, and he is in charge of deciding who to charge with criminal activity, what to charge them with, and what kinds of plea bargains to offer. That's important stuff, and it really affects how people are impacted by the criminal justice system, whether as victims of crime, or victims of allegations of criminal activity. Now, I imagine that most people arrested for crimes think that they are guilty and just had the bad luck to get caught. I was in court in Garberville last Friday, where they do a lot of speeding tickets and driving under the influence cases. Most people pled guilty, got their sentence, and went on with their lives. SInce a DUI costs over $2000 and carries with it a 3 year probation period, I wouldn't think anyone would plead guilty who didn't think they were gulity.

But, what about people who grow and use marijuana? We have quite a bit of marijuana growing in these parts, and I represent many of the people involved if they get charged. I don't think I've even encountered someone associated with marijuana who felt like they had done a criminal act, even if they did break the law. They don't think they are wrong, they think the laws are wrong. Since proposition 215 passed in California in 1996 we have had a medical marijuana exemption from State cultivation and possession laws, and many of the cases I have handled have been people with medical defenses. In those cases the case really came down to an argument about how much marijuana a medical patient could grow, or keep on hand. Most counties in California have adopted some policy stating that if medicial users have less than a certain number of plants, and/or less than a certain amount of marijuana, they will not be prosecuted (by the State, marijuana remains almost completely illegal under Federal law). Terry Farmer set his policy at 10 plants or 2 pounds. There was a lot of dissatisfaction with that limit, and additional problems causes by an anti-marijuana Sheriff, Dennis Lewis, who allowed his deputies to raid some people who had 10 plants or less. Terry Farmer backed the Sheriff up. This was one factor in his election loss in 2002 after 20 years in office. (Sheriff Lewis lost also, after two terms in office).

The new DA, Paul Gallegos, instituted a limit of 99 plants (which must be grown in 100 square feet) and/or 3 pounds. One result of this is that small marijuana cases, which are the kind that I've been doing, vanished. I'll bet the number of marijuana prosecutions went down by at least 50%. I'll bet the number of successful marijuana prosecutions did not go down much at all, since the little cases were often lost cases for the DA.

Another frequent criminal charge in our county is trespass associated with environmental protests against Pacific Lumber's logging of redwoods. PL is, or was, the largest private employer in the county I believe, and logging is a long-time basic industry here. People who grew up in the county prior to say 1980 typically think that logging is a great idea, and PL is a great company. People who came here later, or grew up here later, after the influx of people from the cities became an important factor in the local culture, typically think logging old-growth redwoods is a very bad idea, and that logging in general is a major cause of environmental destruction. I would not be surprised if arrests for protests against PL have amounted to as many as 25% of the arrests in the county over the past decade. One day in Carlotta in the mid-1990s, during a very large demonstration, over 1000 people were arrested. These days we see possibly 100 a year (I could be way off on this number). The people arrested do not consider themselves criminals, and of course, often they are not. That is, they are factually not guility of the charges brought. Those that are factually guilty feel that their acts were dictated by necessity (that is that they did a small crime to prevent PL from doing a big one). They also feel that there is a cultural conspiracy between the Sheriff's deputies and Pacific Lumber's loggers that results in one-sided law enforcement, with them on the wrong side. My estimate after doing some jury selection is that perhaps 1/3 of the jury pool agrees with them to some extent. About 2/3 does not.

But what about violations of the law by PL? Terry Farmer generally felt that PL was conducting itself legally. One year, perhaps 1999?, he brought several misdemeanor violations again them, and they were "convicted". I put that in quotes because a Corporation may be a "legal person", but it can't go to jail. But Mr. Farmer did not follow up environmentalist complaints of assaults by loggers, nor complaints that PL was operating illegally. That's another factor in his defeat, although as with marijuana, probably not a major one. Mr. Gallegos stunned everyone soon after being elected by filing a lawsuit against PL alleging that their logging permits were obtained by fraud and deception and asking for $250 million in fines. As you might imagine this made 1/3 of the community happier than it made the other 2/3.

The upshot is that a recall was launched against Mr. Gallegos on the basis that he attacked PL, was soft on marijuana, and wasn't tough enough on criminals generally. PL started running newspaper ads saying the environmentalists are terrorists, and putting out press releases denouncing environmentalists and the DA as often as they can. I find that he is prosecuting environmentalists just as much as his predecessor, and that the new Sheriff is just as much a friend to big timber as his predecessor was. The recall, unlike that against our state governor, so far has failed to qualify for the ballot. There' still time, and it certainly would be cheaper for PL to defeat him at the ballot box than in the courtroom, so we'll see. If you don't live around here you probably will not hear about this story unless you stay tuned. Bye for now.
- posted by Eugene @ 3:46 PM

 
Yesterday I went to court in Willits - about 80 miles to the south. I had three cases going and it was pleasant to be back in court after a week off. Willits is a small town and the court is very friendly. Mendocino County courts and the DA in general are more friendly than those in neighboring counties, but Willits is the nicest place of all. It also has been having very crowded court schedules. I waited through a Prelminary Hearing that another lawyer was conducting, and learned something about aggressive cross-examination. We postponed one of my cases, and got the others done in short order and I was free for the rest of the day.

Fortunately the heat wave broke and it was cooler - even a few sprinkles of rain fell. In the evening I went to KMUD to do my monthly call-in radio show on human rights. Good show, lots of calls, no crazies. On the way home I drive over Pratt Mountain. The road rises from 700' in Garberville to perhaps 2500-3000' at the high point, and then drops back down to Alderpoint at 500'. It is 17 miles of two lane, narrow and winding, road with great views of the Lost Coast mountains. As I started up the mountain I came upon a hillside of golden dried grasses with the light of a setting sun upon it. The whole hillside was luminous. I decided I would take a picture of the next similar hillside I saw, and of course I did not see anything like it again. Further up the mountain i did get shots of a vivid rainbow which arched for miles in the sky. The drive over Pratt Mountain on the Alderpoint Road often treats me to stunning views. I hope to post some of them.
- posted by Eugene @ 11:06 AM

 
It was 104 here yesterday. I don't know about your part of the world, but here that's really hot. The record for my house since I starting keeping records in 1980 is 108 degrees and that was reached last year. I tried running some water on the roof of the law study. It was almost painfully hot to the touch when it rolled off the roof. As a practical means of cooling I'm still checking it out. But, we had quite a bit of late rain this year (it doesn't rain here in the summer) and the plum trees are heavily laden with fruit - one in the garden fell over - and the meadows are still filled with wildflowers as I see on my morning walk about the ranch. I use a swamp cooler in the law study as air conditioning. Yesterday in the middle of the afternoon we thought it was broken, until we found out how hot it was. Now I'm thinking of going to the siesta format for the day.
- posted by Eugene @ 12:33 PM

 
I've been enjoying a week without court appearances, which is rare for me and a welcome relief after more than a month of showing up at 8:30 a.m. every day. This week I only put in about 200 miles of law travel. Just as well that I got away from the ranch for a bit, however. I usually park in the shade of an old apple tree by the house. Some years back it droped a limb on my truck and caused some damage. This week I came home and parked by the law study to unload all my various legal files and left the car there overnight. In the morning I found that about half of the huge apple tree had broken off and fallen onto my usual parking spot. This gives new meaning to the line in my radio theme song, "If a tree don't fall on me I'll live a long, long time".

Meanwhile my work defending forest defenders has had some interesting effects. I just finished a 3 week trial defending a client against charges of trespassing on timber company lands and delaying an officer. These are typical charges where timber protests are concerned, but the trial was anything but typical. I have a motion for a new trial pending so I won't bore you with factual details, except to say that the outcome was that the jury hung on the trespass charge and convicted on the delaying an officer charge. Pacific Lumber, the alleged victim, issued two press releases attacking the District Attorney for failing to get a conviction on the trespass charge. The DA has now responded by issuing a press release saying that the Deputy DA on the case was "one of the best and most promissing young prosecutors in the State of California." Its great getting all this publicity about the case. As one of the great publicity hounds said "I don't care what they say about me as long as they spell my name right." Unfortunately neither Pacific Lumber nor the DA has seen fit to include my name in any of their press releases about the case. You would think that PL would denigrate me, to make the DA look worse for failing to convict on one charge, and the DA would say how good I am to make their guy look better for having gotten a conviction on one charge. No such luck. Oh, well.
- posted by Eugene @ 12:34 PM

 
Hello, I should start by explaining that everyone in the Coastal Mountains of California drives a Volvo, or seems to aspire to. We like mainly the Volvos from the '80s, square and solid. They say no one has ever been killed in one of these Volvos. We all think they have the endurance that our mountain roads require. My sweetie just gave me a '94, which is pretty uptown for these parts. Unfortunately in less than 800 miles the transmisison (stick, 5 speed ) went south while I was going north. So my new Volvo is in Eureka, and I'm not. I'm in the mountains of Southern Humboldt county still driving Old Blue, the 1990 I got last year. My sweetie drives the '87. By next week I expect to be on the road in the splendor that was top of the line about a decade ago. Power windows and mirrors, windshield wipers on the headlights (I swear its true) and a 6-CD changer in the glovecompartment. Just in time for DVDs to take over the market. I listen to a lot of Books on Tape which I get from the Mendocino county library in Willits when my cases take me there. Just finished Foundation and Empire by Asimov, and an Ed Bain mystery. More later, with photos I hope.

ED
- posted by Eugene @ 7:07 PM