Quick Hits (page 4)
Cops Force Students to Disrobe
By: Norml Newsbrief
It was supposed to be business as usual just another police dog drug search at Kent County High School in Maryland's Eastern Shore, but it ended up with 16 students patted down and two female students ordered to strip down and be inspected by a female sheriff's deputy. No drugs or other contraband were found on any of the 18 students.
Drug dogs brought in by the Kent County Sheriff's Department at the behest of the school district sniffed about 250 book bags at the school and alerted on 18. The owners of those 18 book bags were the students who got searched.
Now, the Baltimore Sun reported, Kent County Sheriff John Price has conceded his deputies were on shaky legal ground. "We were acting under what we thought was probable cause, and we still believe there was probable cause," he said. "At the same time, it was an area that was unclear," Price said. "We didn't know it was a gray area."
He is reviewing the department's policy, he said. So is the school district. Superintendent Bonnie Ward told the Washington Post the high school policy on searches is being reviewed, but added that safe, drug-free schools are her "top priority."
But Ward's top priority may soon turn out to be defending the district from lawsuits filed by outraged students like Heather Gore and her parents. According to the Post, Gore, a varsity tennis player and majorette in the school marching band, broke down in tears as described her ordeal at a recent school board meeting held to discuss the raid.
"My name is Heather Gore," she began, sobbing before even the first word was out. "I am a sophomore at Kent County High School, and on April 16, I was forced to endure a partial strip-search due to a drug search carried out by the Kent County Sheriff's Office. The humiliation that I endured that day, and that I am still enduring, is overwhelming."
Heather, 15, and fellow sophomore Lacey Fernwalt, 16, were taken to a room with a school administrator, where a female deputy ordered them to partially undress. Lacey removed her pants, and the deputy, Marcellene Beck, looked inside her bra, she said. According to Heather, Beck told her to remove her skirt then lifted her tank top, exposing her breasts. Then Beck told Heather to spread her legs as the deputy tugged at the edges of her underwear. "I was crying and hyperventilating. I sat there in disbelief," she told the Post. "I'm still so embarrassed," she said.
Heather's mom, Patricia Gore, is looking for more than a simple policy review. An apology would be nice, she said. "I certainly have a lot of things besides lawyers' fees I need to spend money on, but my daughter shouldn't have had to go through all this, and neither should anyone else," she said.
The Gores may get some help from the Maryland chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, Deborah Jeon, managing attorney for the group's Eastern Shore office, told the Sun. "I think there is a very significant question as to how the entire sweep could be consistent with the Maryland regulation prohibiting investigative searches by a police officer unless there is a
warrant," Jeon said. Those regulations also bar police from searching a student unless the student is under arrest or believed to be concealing a weapon, she added.
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Tan 'n' Trends
Growin' Our Own (page 4)
Judge Takes Leave From Bench to Join Senate Race
By: Scott Martelle (Times Staff Writer)
UKIAH, Calif. - Jim Gray, rigid as a judge's gavel, stood at the front of a high-ceilinged tavern here and ran through a list of political positions he hoped would appeal to Mendocino County's famously idiosyncratic voters. Pot should be legal. Genetically modified foods should be labeled. The Patriot Act should be gutted.
"We are galloping, racing toward a police state," said Gray, his voice curt and direct. "This Patriot Act is the most recent, but our civil liberties are in jeopardy."
These are not political views normally associated with a 59-year-old Orange County Superior Court judge, a self-described "conservative dude" who left the Republican Party less than two years ago over its stances backing the war on drugs and the Patriot Act, and joined the more doctrinaire Libertarians. But in a life marked by anomalies - Gray once led an anti-Vietnam War protest while enrolled in USC's Navy ROTC program - the judge is engaged in yet another incongruous act: a yearlong leave of absence from the bench to challenge two-term Democratic incumbent Barbara Boxer for the U.S. Senate.
With a three-person staff, pocket change in his war chest and a campaign based mainly on legalizing marijuana, Gray's path to the Senate is steeper than the traditional uphill run. It's more like standing at the base of El Capitan, looking skyward and wondering just how high he can scramble before gravity drags him back to earth.
But Gray sees his campaign as an act of personal responsibility. He might be a pragmatist on an impractical mission, but he believes current government policies are wrong and should be changed. And he believes you change things by example.
"How can I expect anybody else to come forward unless I do more than my share?" Gray told the crowd.
So Gray has been making small forays like this one, going out for a few days to talk to supporters, troll for fresh votes and try to get himself interviewed by local media. Then he returns to Costa Mesa to map strategy from his office near John Wayne Airport, a rented first-floor space wedged between two fast-food joints and downstairs from a tanning parlor.
Like most minor-party candidates, Gray doesn't really expect to win in November. With Boxer anchoring the Democratic left, challenger Bill Jones on the Republican right and no one from the Green Party on the ballot, Gray hopes to galvanize enough support from the political margins and the independent center to send a message to the mainstream.
"Even if we just make a strong showing, the Republicans and Democrats are going to see our votes as the difference between winning and losing future elections," Gray said.
To be considered by any voters, Gray has to get heard.
Late on this cool May afternoon, about two dozen people had gathered in the Ukiah Brewing Co. as the judge took the stage. It was unclear how many came to hear him talk and how many just stopped in for a beer and stayed.
Tough Road
Mendocino County is not what you would call Gray - or Libertarian - country. In the March primary, Gray placed second, picking up 64 votes to perennial Libertarian candidate Gail Lightfoot's 98, a reversal of the statewide results. The Libertarian vote was barely an asterisk to the major parties: Jones received 3,164 votes and Boxer, running unopposed, outpolled everyone with 13,034 local votes.
Yet Gray, a little over 6 feet tall with drilling hazel eyes, has more in common with Mendocino County voters than those numbers would suggest. The redwood-covered hills and vineyard-carpeted valleys about two hours north of San Francisco are home to all manner of recalcitrant hippies and back-to-earthers at the forefront of the medical marijuana movement. County voters
decided in March to require genetically modified foods to be labeled - the first such local mandate in the nation.
That progressive unpredictability extends to local elections. Libertarian Norm Vroman - a convicted tax-evader - has twice won election as district attorney largely because he backs legalizing marijuana. And Sheriff Tony Craver is a renegade Republican who also thinks the drug war has been a failure. Both men, popular political figures here, have endorsed Gray.
Gray may have found sanctuary with the Libertarians, but he's an indifferent member of the tribe. Part of his appearance in Ukiah, for instance, was spent arguing for mandated labeling of genetically modified foods, something most Libertarians would say amounts to the government sticking its nose in where it doesn't belong.
"I am not a purist. I am not doctrinaire," Gray said. "I believe in responsibility. I also believe in anti-trust law - [Libertarians] have no place for antitrust. I part company with them there."
The differences aren't likely to cost Gray support among hard-core Libertarians, though, since as a sitting judge he lends credibility to the party mainstream.
"He's got the background to at least make an impression on people," said Kenneth D. Allen, a Libertarian and president of the Anderson Valley Brewing Co. in Mendocino County. "Then maybe somewhere along the way people will stop thinking we're weird."
Marching out of step is a trait Gray proudly shares with his late father, U.S. District Court Judge William P. Gray. The elder Gray, a Republican, was appointed to the bench by Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson and became a controversial defender of prisoners while overseeing legal challenges to overcrowded jails in Orange and Los Angeles counties.
After graduating from UCLA, the younger Gray spent two years in Costa Rica as a Peace Corps volunteer, then entered USC Law School through the Navy ROTC program.
Two months after leading the anti-Vietnam War protest, Gray went to war himself on a training mission, assigned as an ROTC midshipman to a landing craft plying the Mekong River. He earned a combat ribbon, and after the summer tour returned to USC for his final year of law school, then joined the Navy's judge adjutant general's office.
Gray worked as an assistant federal prosecutor in Los Angeles before entering private civil practice in Newport Beach. He lives in Newport Beach with his wife, Grace Gray, who runs a physical therapy clinic in Orange.
In 1983, Gov. George Deukmejian appointed Gray, who had worked on his campaign, to Santa Ana Municipal Court, where he served as a no-nonsense conservative jurist with a deep conviction that a criminal owes society penance for his sins.
But not every crook. One class of criminal, he believes, shouldn't exist at all: pot-smokers, both recreational and medicinal. Gray believes deeply that the U.S. has lost a "hopeless" war on drugs, a conclusion he reached in the 1980s after seeing the heavy flow of drug cases through his courtroom.
Personal Choice
Gray said he believes that the decision to take drugs should be a matter of personal responsibility, not law, and that drug users should be given access to drug treatment, not jailed. But he said radical change also should begin with moderate steps.
"Let's start with marijuana and see where we go," Gray said. "I don't think people are ready for anything other than that."
Since 1989, when Deukmejian elevated Gray to the Orange County Superior Court, he has handled civil matters almost exclusively, in part to head off complaints that he had displayed a bias on the drug issue.
But Gray said he also had tired of criminal cases and was drawn to the complexities of civil suits. One of his more notable cases was overseeing a 2001 legal settlement in which the Catholic Church agreed to pay a molestation victim $5.2 million and promised deep reforms aimed at preventing recurrences. Both sides credited Gray for his role as conciliator.
That year, he published a book, "Why Our Drug Laws Have Failed and What We Can Do About It: A Judicial Indictment of the War on Drugs."
Gray's platform has more planks than just legalizing marijuana and opposing parts of the Patriot Act, the anti-terror device that critics argue has eroded civil rights.
Gray also believes that federal agencies should periodically justify their existence to Congress or shut down, and that the federal government should reimburse local governments for costs associated with illegal immigration - which administrations of both parties have refused to do. Gray touched on many of those issues during his 45-minute appearance before the small crowd in Ukiah.
But he seemed ill at ease, as if uncertain about exactly how one asks strangers for help. Ever the reserved courtroom figure, he asked for votes with a formal "I request your support." And, almost as an afterthought: "I actually need money, too. If you are in a position at all to give $5 to $500 to more, we need that and we'll put it to good purpose."
Afterward, Gray moved through the room shaking hands and posing for photographs with the few voters who hung around, and sipping from a pint of beer. They chatted about marijuana laws and genetic engineering, small talk about large matters as Gray sought common political ground.
A few minutes later, the party over, Gray left, walking past the local courthouse and into the evening.
[Ed. note: Check out Judge Gray's website]
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Pipeline (page 4)
Legal pot use Draws a Crowd
By: Chris Togneri (Modesto Bee)
A group of about 60 medical marijuana advocates gathered at a farmhouse in rural Winton for a rally they dubbed "Weedfest."
The goal of the event, the organizers said, was to promote support for the legalization of marijuana.
"It is not a dangerous drug," said Judge James Gray, a Libertarian and Newport Beach Superior Court judge who is running for the U.S. Senate. "It is made dangerous when it is made illegal. Marijuana should be treated basically like alcohol."
Gray said his candidacy will focus on two issues: repealing the "excesses of the Patriot Act" and the legalization of marijuana.
"If the Founding Fathers were here today, they'd take up arms against what's happening to our country," he said. "We are giving away our civil liberties, and we should be ashamed of ourselves. How we can look our grandchildren in the eyes is beyond me."
The event was held in the back yard of a small, white farmhouse surrounded by strawberry fields. One of the organizers, Dustin Costa, used to live in the house, and grew medical marijuana there.
But in February, Costa said, police raided the house, confiscating 900 marijuana plants. He has since had to sell the property to pay his legal fees. The makeshift greenhouse where he used to grow marijuana is empty.
"I'm broke now," he said. "But I'm not giving up the war."
While Gray said he has never smoked marijuana, many people at Weedfest said they must smoke it daily to deal with painful medical ailments.
But in doing so, they said, they are constantly harassed by police.
Seth McLean, 19, from Sacramento, said he suffers from Crohn's disease, which causes inflammation in the intestines. At a recent rally in Sacramento, he said, police threatened to jail him for smoking.
"All I was doing was what a sick person must do to be there," he said. "I could not attend the rally without being medicated."
Jean Cowsert has had bouts with cancer and fibromyalgia -- a chronic musculoskeletal syndrome with symptoms similar to those of chronic fatigue syndrome.
Cowsert said that five years ago she and her husband were charged with felony possession after police raided their home in Galt.
"It was nasty, it was ugly, it was devastating," she said. "Suicide is something that comes to your mind a lot when you go through something like that."
Medical marijuana users lack legal protection, said attorney Richard Runcie of Fresno, because no civil case has set a precedent.
Runcie laid out the ideal plaintiff for such a case: An elderly lady with a chronic disease. She grows medical marijuana, but not a lot, "say 10 to 20 plants." She gets arrested, the police refuse to give back her marijuana, and she is made to suffer.
"Then we'd have a civil rights case," he said. "That would start backing off the police."
Another attorney in attendance, Dennis Roberts of Oakland, compared the medical marijuana movement to the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.
"It's the same thing," Roberts said. "You have a bunch of people who are isolated but are working on the same issues. Now we've just got to bring everyone together and start the movement."
"If I am elected, this shooting match is over," Gray told the group. "It will be historic."
In the crowd, Laura McKenzie, a sufferer of depression and arthritis, listened to Gray's speech. McKenzie, who drove down from Redding to attend Weedfest, said she had never heard of Gray before this event, but that she'll vote for him now.
And she echoed the sentiment of many people at Weedfest when she said, "I hope he's electable."
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