I’ve been saying for months now that the real scandal in the U.S. Attorney firings is just how whacked-out the Justice Department’s priorities really are.

Now comes the latest in the Ed Rosenthal case. Rosenthal, you may remember, was tried by federal prosecutors in federal court for growing marijuana. Thing is, he was growing it in Oakland, California, where both city and state have legalized medical marijuana. What’s more, Rosenthal was growing the stuff for the city of Oakland, which was using it trial runs of med-mal dispensaries.

No matter. The feds raided him, arrested him, and tried him for breaking federal law. The jury was barred from hearing that Rosenthal was growing the marijuana for Oakland They also weren’t permitted to hear or consider the fact that he was growing in a jurisdiction where growing was legal. The only thing they were to determine is whether or not he was in fact growing marijuana. Which was easy, of course. So they convicted him. Afterward, when they’d learned about the information that had been hidden from them, several jurors were furious. They even called a press conference to relay their outrage.

The sympathetic judge sentenced Rosenthal to a mere one day in prison, which he’d already served. Months later, an appeals court judge threw out Rosenthal’s conviction because a juror apparently consulted with a lawyer during his trial. The court also affirmed the light sentence, which the government had appealed, and urged the feds to drop their prosecution of Rosenthal.

The federal government immediately refiled charges, and added the new charges of money laundering and filing false tax returns. The district court threw out the extra charges, and took the extra step of scolding federal prosecutors for adding them solely to get vengeance on Rosenthal, a pot activist who by now was making them look rather stupid.

Now comes word that recently appointed U.S. Attorney Scott Schools will proceed with the plans to retry Rosenthal on the charges for which he was convicted, sentenced to a day and jail, but were then thrown out by the appellate court. Rosenthal cannot go to prison for the charges he’s being retried for. In fact, he can’t get any additional punishment at all.

They won’t do that, of course. This is about pissing all over federalism. It’s about asserting at all costs the supremacy of federal laws prohibiting sick people from smoking marijuana.

Schools is a GOP party guy (he’s given $11,000 since 2000), and was recently appointed on an interim basis to the San Francisco-area U.S. Attorneys Office. He came from South Carolina via Washington, D.C., instead of the usual route, where the president appoints attorneys who serve around the area of their appointment, after consulting with the state’s U.S. senators. Schools’ predecessor, Keven Ryan, was one of the eight U.S. Attorneys forced out in the recent scandal (though apparently more for poor managerial skills than for political reasons).

What seems pretty clear is that Schools knows what his priorities are. His prior gigs included working in the office of South Carolina U.S. Attorney Strom Thurmond, Jr., where he handled public relations in the first federal case ever brought against a political protester for not adhering to “free speech zones” during a presidential visit. Thurmond, Jr.’s (who was appointed at the age of 28 as a White House favor to his father) office also made news a few years ago for prosecuting girls who sold their panties over the Internet.

This is your Justice Department. And these are their priorities. Sleep safe, America.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 10:24 pm by Radley Balko and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.