Cannabis Nation News with Mike Boutin and Julie Rose

 It's Time For An Honest Conversation about Cannabis!

I read an article recently on the Huffington Post website about a casualty of the Federal Drug War entitled 'My husband is not the bigger fish to fry in your drug war.'  My story is even more horrific, I emigrated to the USA as 20 year old from Ireland, having been granted a visa. I worked hard and became a CSI for the local Sheriffs Dept. in Napa, CA. My duties included photographing crime scenes, processing & testing evidence and preparing cases for prosecution. I also worked in the District Attorney's office.

I left my position in the Sheriffs Dept. having been asked to count waste products from smoking marijuana including stems and seeds etc. as weighted marijuana in a case that was clearly meant to harm the individual in question as much as possible. I considered this an egregious abuse of power as the product could not be used by anyone and was being used to make up weight for a stiffer prosecution.

I moved into Private Investigations, working mostly insurance fraud cases for a series of firms over a 3-4 year period. My last employer in that field, falsified my reports and submitted them to clients as testimony to be used in cases despite the fact that in many cases I had been sent to the wrong address and was following the wrong person. Due to the massive number of errors on his behalf, my employer falsified those reports to state that I was in fact following the right person. This put me in a position whereby I was to testify potentially in court that a subject was somewhere he wasn't in order for him to get paid by his clients.

The problem with this was that at some point or another, this would be found out. What if the subject was in jail, having surgery or in court facing another judge at the time? In order to protect my potential to become a state licensed Private Investigator, I refused to testify to these falsifications. I was then fired by my boss who was an ex-BART(Bay Area Rapid Transport) PD cop, ie. not a real cop but a ticket collector with a gun, like the one who shot that poor African-American boy on New Years Eve a few years ago, also from Napa by the way.

His wife was a court reporter who knew all the prosecutors and judges in their county. To protect their business they used an off-duty cop who was moonlighting for them, Detective John Williams, from Petaluma P.D., to file malicious charges against me for stealing a video camera which I was given to do my job. I immediately began to defend myself outlining that the video camera etc. in question had been returned via USPS, in a package that was registered and insured and for which I still have the receipt to this day.

Detective John Williams of Petaluma P.D. was moonlighting for my boss as a P.I. and was on his payroll when he filed the malicious charges against me and that the charges were filed in the wrong jurisdiction even if they had have been correct. He was 'resigned' from his job within weeks of filing these charges against me for numerous reasons pertinent to the case.

I sent this information including photocopies and verifiable evidence to the Sonoma Co. District Attorney's office, which provided me later with the 'Smoking Gun' evidence that this prosecution was entirely malicious & an abuse of prosecutorial power in every aspect.
This evidence became important because the D.A.'s office in their infinite wisdom sent me back a copy of the fax, which showed a date and time stamp, including the fax number it was received on stating that from the beginning they knew I was innocent yet they continued to harass, intimidate and on at least one attempt it appears they made an attempt on the life of my heavily pregnant fiancee and myself.

This continued for a period of three years until the D.A. had exhausted every legal avenue before him EXCEPT the jury trial I demanded. I was falsely imprisoned for three weeks in Sonoma Co. Jail, during which time D.A. representatives approached my fiancee and threatened her.

By this stage I could not find employment as law enforcement would routinely show up at any place I did find work and speak to my employers, ending up with my dismissal. Since California had just passed SB420, a law stating that every county in the state must provide a Medical Marijuana dispensary, I had opened a dispensary in Napa which was welcomed by the Oncologists and AIDS/ HIV Dept.'s of the local hospital as their patients had previously had to drive to San Francisco to buy their medication, a violation of SB420.

I hosted visits from the staff at the hospital and due to the fact that my dispensary was clinical in it's operations and followed SB420 to the letter of the law, they offered to send all their patients to me. Our dispensary, Napa Natural Wellness Group, was licensed by the City of Napa, we paid them taxes and had a bank account. We did everything possible to be legal. Within a short period we had built up a client base, made up from Aids, cancer, paraplegics, quadriplegics and many more seriously ill patients. We operated in a non-profit manner and provided safe access to patients.

When the District Attorney in Sonoma, Stephan Passalacqua, found me with a source of income that could potentially be used to fight my case he asked his good friend Napa D.A. Gary Lieberstein to intervene. Between the two of them they conspired to file charges against me in Napa Co. where I had lived for years and had never been in trouble, for growing approximately a dozen plants despite the fact that under SB420 I was legally able to grow more that 3,000 plants due to the number of patients I was providing for.

While locked up in Sonoma Co. jail they approached my fiancee and threatened her with Federal prosecution and taking away our newborn child if she did not assist them in framing me for the marijuana charges. This can be verified simply, both our names were on the city license, lease and bank accounts for the dispensary, yet the dispensary was never brought up in any charges and she was provided a new apartment and life as well as my Mercedes and anything else she cared to take while I was locked up.

I was left homeless, broke and alone on a foreign land, my friends knew just how corrupt the Napa P.D. are and simply turned their back in an effort to avoid fallout. I was in the middle of a nervous breakdown and was forced to return to Ireland, leaving behind my daughter and any hope of justice.

That was over 8 years ago and I have not seen my daughter since she was nine months old. I am asking if this is the kind of story you would want to explore and expose?

I saw Passalacqua campaigning on Facebook for re-election in 2010 and began a campaign on there exposing him for what he did. This campaign was successful and he lost the election. (Some of the screenshots from that are HILARIOUS!!!) I destroyed the man locally and the campaign I launched is directly responsible for the California State law that was brought in on January 1, 2011 regarding impersonating people on social media. The new D.A. dropped the charges against me her first day of office, finally justice was served in some small way. Today I face the marijuana charge in Napa co., and a charge for threatening murder, based on a statement I made to the Public Pretender who conspired with the D.A. to ensure I was found guilty in absentia if at all, he clearly was in cahoots as can be shown by email etc. The statement I made was 'I want to see your head on a plate for what you did to my family.' This is a biblical term denoting a desire for justice and as can be proven in the email I sent I followed that by stating I wanted him to be disbarred and be unable to practice law as he was obviously violating the basic principles of law, NOT a threat of murder as he was quite aware I would be arrested if I tried to gain entry to the US. The very fact that a judge in Napa denied me Habaeus Corpus when I challenged the court and then allowed that charge to be brought shows that Napa & Sonoma Co's are corrupt as it gets and the system there is rotten to the core. The fact that it can be proven that the Public Defender & the Prosecution are in collusion in this case shows that ANY case prosecuted in Napa could potentially be overturned costing the county and state billions and could potentially overturn the convictions of anyone prosecuted in Napa that relied on the Public Defender to defend them including murders and rapists. You can see why they wanted me out of the country!

Since I returned to Ireland I have been active as a medical cannabis activist, I wrote proposed legislation (The Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Act 2010) for the Irish Government on this issue which has been sent to Australian, Czech, Irish, British, & Canadian governments and also several US states to assist them in forming medical laws. I have made this information freely available to all asking nothing in return but credit. My efforts have resulted in the Irish government recognizing a little-known EU law that provides for the compassionate use of cannabis for patients and them bringing in medical cannabis products for Irish patients this year.

I continue my struggle to overturn the injustice to me and my daughter who is now 9 years old and hasn't seen me since she was 9 months old. I ask you to consider sharing my story.

Yours sincerely

Gordon Mc Ardle

R E G I S T E R   T O   V O T E !