Word: cusick
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...Boston Commons. The activity was hardly unique to the occasion: the 18th annual Boston Freedom Rally was, like its 17 predecessors, a joint concert-and-protest event aimed at boosting the campaign to legalize marijuana. Nor was the action entirely spontaneous: the two men were Keith Stroup and Richard Cusick, they were, respectively, the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and the publisher of High Times Magazine, and they intended to make a statement. Taken into custody by an officer at the rally, the two men were respectful and well-behaved—quiet...
...tactic was about more than just making a scene. What Stroup and Cusick had been doing behind the NORML/High Times booth was illegal: this was hardly in doubt. But by demanding a trial, Nesson and his clients were hoping to make a start on changing that—tapping the power of a little-used legal prerogative known as “jury nullification.” In old English common law, if a jury felt that a particular law was destructive to liberty, it could refuse to render a guilty verdict on the basis of that law?...
...record companies for her file-sharing activities. A juror went on record after that trial calling Thomas a “liar.” (Thankfully for Thomas, a judge later threw out the trial verdict, invalidating the proceedings.) Things went something better for Cusick and Stroup, the marijuana crusaders, who were convicted by a jury in less than 30 minutes, but sentenced only to a single day in prison, which they had already served on the date of their arrest...
Arrested for sharing a marijuana cigarette at the annual Boston Freedom Rally in September, Cusick and Stroup turned to Harvard Law School professor Charles R. Nesson ’60 for legal counsel. Nesson and his clients acknowledged that they had used the illegal drug, and decided upon an unusual defense: they argued that the statute outlawing marijuana in Massachusetts has no “rational basis,” and that the jury has the power of jury nullification, or ruling a defendant innocent while recognizing that he or she had violated...
Both co-defendants built their careers around marijuana: Cusick is associate publisher of the well-known marijuana magazine, High Times, and Stroup is the founder of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. They said that they do not believe marijuana to be a social...