See
Canadian MS
Patient Harichy To Begin Buyers Club Without Store: "We Don’t Want Buyers Scared
By Police"
and
Canadian MS Patient
Harichy: "We Don’t Want To Be Criminals But There Is A Necessity For It." London
Ontario Free Press
letters@lfpress.com
http://www.canoe.ca/LondonFreePress/home.html
April 2, 1998
By Don Murray—Free Press Court Reporter
POT TRIAL OF MS SUFFERER ON HOLD UNTIL RULING ON MEDICAL DEFENCE
Mindful that a milestone marijuana-as-medicine case is working
its way toward the Ontario Court of Appeal this fall, a judge has postponed the trial of
London’s Lynn Harichy.
Harichy, 36, was to go on trial April 27 on a single charge of possessing marijuana,
which she insists she needs to ease the spasms and pain of multiple sclerosis.
TOP COURT CASE
On Wednesday, Judge Alan Baker of Ontario Court, provincial
division, said he wasn’t willing to try Harichy’s case until the province’s
top court has ruled on the same medical defence issue.
Federal prosecutor Bill Buchner said the Crown agrees to the adjournment sought by the
defence team.
Harichy’s four-day trial is now set for Nov. 17 to 19 and
Nov. 23. Meanwhile, the top court will hear the Crown appeal of the case of a Toronto man
who came out on top in a court battle after his pot-growing operation was busted in 1996.
In a precedent-setting Charter of Rights and Freedoms case, a Toronto judge ruled Terry
Parker had a medical need to smoke marijuana as treatment for epilepsy, and the best way
for him to obtain it was to grow it.
See
The Lancet reports on the Terry
Parker case."Canadian Judge Allows Marijuana as Therapy"
The judge stayed charges of cultivating and possession against Parker, 42, but convicted him of a trafficking charge because he admitted giving joints to
other seizure sufferers. He was sentenced to time served and put on probation for a year.
The court also ordered police to return three confiscated marijuana plants to
Parker,
but they apparently had already been destroyed.
Also bound for the Court of Appeal is the case of former Londoner Christopher Clay, who
was found guilty of possessing and selling marijuana after a highly publicized trial last
summer.
Clay, now living in Vancouver, is a crusader for the legalization of pot, arguing that
keeping it a criminal substance violates the Charter.
Copyright © 1998 The London Free Press a division of Sun Media Corporation.
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