Barbara Tillis isn't sure when she'll get to see her son, Corvain Cooper, again.

Every few months for the past four years, Tillis, has driven five hours with her husband, daughter and Cooper's oldest daughter, making the trip from Rialto to the federal prison in Atwater, near Merced. They'd spend the day visiting and chatting, and guards would let each family member give Cooper exactly one hug. When the visit was over, they'd reluctantly pile into the car and drive home.

[continues 2434 words]

As Louisiana's medical marijuana program takes shape some patients might have to make a difficult choice: keep their gun ownership rights or participate in the program.

Louisiana is one of 30 states that have approved medical marijuana laws in some form. Although the state's nine dispensaries won't open until later this year, patients who qualify for medical marijuana under Louisiana law may be surprised to learn that federal law restricts their ability to purchase a gun if they use marijuana.

[continues 462 words]

Hair testing by Motherisk was presented as evidence in a murder case. It was deemed not up to forensic standards, tossed out and even mocked by the judge. That was in Colorado - 22 years before the Motherisk scandal blew up

Twenty-two years before controversy shuttered the Motherisk lab, before its hair-strand drug tests were deemed unreliable, before the outcomes of thousands of child protection cases were called into question, a Colorado court threw out Motherisk's evidence in a hearing that foretold the crisis that is now playing out across Canada.

[continues 2352 words]

Charges include fraud, bribery, trafficking

A suspended Hamilton police gangs and weapons enforcement unit officer already awaiting trial for his alleged role in helping a drug trafficking organization is facing 16 new criminal charges.

On Tuesday, Craig Ruthowsky was charged with bribery, two counts of breach of trust, two counts of obstructing justice, public mischief, two counts of weapons trafficking, fraud under $5,000, trafficking marijuana, perjury, two counts of conspiracy to commit an indictable offence, robbery and two counts of trafficking cocaine.

[continues 613 words]

Junk science endangers lives. Forensic junk science in the hands of overzealous prosecutors, ignorant police detectives and reckless experts threatens liberty.

There is a crisis in America's government-run crime labs - and it's not just the result of a few rogue operators. The problem is long-festering and systemic.

In April, Massachusetts state crime lab chemist Annie Dookhan made national headlines after investigations and lawsuits over her misconduct prompted the state's Supreme Judicial Court to order the largest dismissal of criminal convictions in U.S. history.

[continues 670 words]

Though Prop. 64 legalized recreational marijuana, businesses aren't allowed start selling it until the state establishes a licensing system.

A security guard enters a shop with a sign posted that reads PROP 64 FRIENDLY! in Compton on Wednesday. (Photo by Ed Crisostomo, Orange County Register/SCNG)

The online ad for Green Light District -- a pot shop in a brick office building 5 miles from Disneyland -- was clear: Anyone 21 years and older was welcome to buy weed with only a "valid ID."

[continues 554 words]

TRENTON - Ed Forchion wants to film a reality show chronicling the impact of the country's so-called War on Drugs on his life.

He has a couple titles in mind: "The War on NJ Weedman." Or perhaps even better, "Marijuana Martyr."

Forchion pointed to prosecutors' desire in a drug case in Trenton that could land him in prison for years to protect the identity of a confidential informant who allegedly purchased weed from him several times at his downtown city business.

[continues 814 words]

TRENTON - Marijuana activist Ed Forchion gave a famous Los Angeles graffiti artist $300 cash, an ounce of weed and an expensive bong to paint a political statement on the side of his "Weedmobile" in 2008.

The provocative portrait showed NJ Weedman blowing smoke into Uncle Sam's face. The van would later become a rolling billboard for Forchion's Trenton restaurant and pot temple, capturing in cartoonishly large candor his pro-marijuana views and disdain for New Jersey's "hypocritical" drug laws.

[continues 930 words]

TRENTON - Marijuana legalization activist Ed Forchion and his attorney took turns bashing police and prosecutors for alleged perjury and gamesmanship and demanded the resignation of the county's top law enforcement official during an impromptu news conference outside criminal court Thursday.

Wearing a burgundy pinstripe suit, Forchion, known as NJ Weedman, took a hit from a bong and handed out jury nullification pamphlets following his first appearance in Mercer County Superior Court.

He railed against the tactics of Trenton Police and Acting Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri and discussed how his attorney, Edward Heyburn, was at a disadvantage to argue his case in court without a crucial sworn affidavit of probable cause.

[continues 854 words]

TRENTON - Facing an 11-count indictment on drug charges, Ed Forchion, aka NJ Weedman, is not breaking a sweat.

In fact, the pro-marijuana activist has challenged acting Mercer County Prosecutor Angelo Onofri to take the lead on the case.

"I'm ready for it," Forchion said Tuesday shortly after learning of the indictment. "I really hope that Prosecutor Onofri presents this case and takes this ass whooping himself."

Onofri announced Tuesday in a press release that a grand jury returned the indictment charging the 52-year-old with numerous drug offenses stemming from a raid on April 27 at his restaurant and pot temple directly across from City Hall on East State Street.

[continues 630 words]

A Toronto cop who, along with three fellow officers, is accused of planting drugs in a man's car in 2014 now faces new charges for his arrest of the same suspect a year earlier.

Const. Benjamin Elliot first came under fire last fall during Nguyen Son Tran's trial when a judge accused him and colleagues Const. Jeffery Tout, Det.-Const. Fraser Douglas, and Const. Michael Taylor of lying under oath and planting evidence to justify an illegal vehicle search.

[continues 289 words]

The state's highest court said Wednesday that people convicted on drug charges in cases that involved a disgraced state chemist, Annie Dookhan, can seek new trials.

Last year, the Supreme Judicial Court gave special permission to people to undo their pleas if they had pleaded guilty to drug charges in Dookhan-related cases. On Wednesday, it ruled that the same protection must be extended to some defendants who went to trial.

"Regardless whether a defendant pleads guilty to a drug offense or is found guilty at trial . . . the evidence is still potentially tainted by Dookhan's misconduct," Chief Justice Ralph D. Gants wrote for the court. "The taint is still attributable to the government [because] it may be impossible for the defendant to prove [their] case . . . was actually tainted by Dookhan's misconduct."

[continues 609 words]

A group of men met among the tombstones of a Paso Robles cemetery sometime in 2014.

Two of them were lawmen from the SLO County Narcotics Unit, a multiagency group dedicated to tackling drug crime in the county. The third was a civilian. A man with a wife and kids and a past checkered by drug use and criminal charges.

They were there for different reasons. The lawmen knew drugs were flowing into the county. They wanted to root out the criminals responsible for selling them and put the dealers behind bars. The third man was just looking to stay away from the wrong side of those same bars.

[continues 3166 words]

Department Investigates Alleged False Testimony That Could Derail Cases

Chicago police have begun an internal investigation into allegations that as many as six officers lied in their court testimony and are prepared to take at least one of the officers off the street because of a judge's determination he had testified falsely in a narcotics case.

The inquiry, confirmed by a police spokesman, comes in response to a Tribune investigation that documented more than a dozen examples over the past few years in which judges concluded officers gave false or questionable testimony in court.

[continues 946 words]

A Harper's Magazine writer recently reiterated a stomach-turning admission of racist societal control concocted by the Nixon Administration.

That scandal plagued presidency was the first to declare war on drugs, and did so squarely in the midst of social and racial upheaval, as well as a foreign war. In a recent article arguing in favor of the legalization of drugs, writer Dan Baum recounted how he'd tracked down former Nixon advisor John Erlichman in 1994 for a book Baum was working on.

[continues 534 words]

PRESIDENT Richard Nixon's former White House counsel John Dean says he's shocked by the claim that his boss' motivation for declaring "War on Drugs" was to lock up hippies and black people but admitted "it's certainly possible."

Dean, 77, addressed the decades-old allegation by former Nixon domestic policy chief John Ehrlichman a day after it surfaced in a new magazine article.

"I was surprised by the statements," Dean told the Daily News Wednesday.

"If this was indeed true, it would have been the Nixon-Ehrlichman private agenda. I can't believe (Nixon administration official Egil) Bud Krogh would run the program with that agenda knowingly."

[continues 227 words]

THE "WAR ON DRUGS" was actually a political tool to crush leftist protesters and black people, a former Nixon White House adviser admitted in a decades-old interview published Tuesday.

John Ehrlichman, who served as President Richard Nixon's domestic policy chief, laid bare the sinister use of his boss' controversial policy in a 1994 interview with journalist Dan Baum that the writer revisited in a new article for Harper's magazine.

"You want to know what this was really all about," Ehrlichman, who died in 1999, said in the interview after Baum asked him about Nixon's harsh antidrug policies.

[continues 563 words]

The hits just keep coming for Toronto cops.

The already low morale among police officers was dealt another blow Thursday with the news that four of their colleagues are charged with perjury and obstruction of justice.

"It's definitely having an impact on morale, but the officers who work in this city will keep doing their job to the best of their ability," Toronto Police Association president Mike McCormack said.

He said cops can't help but be concerned about how the public perceives them in the wake of the criminal charges for allegedly planting heroin during a bust and lying under oath at Nguyen Son Tran's trial.

[continues 350 words]

Attempted murder, deceit, collusion, perjury, obstructing justice and something else that won't be revealed until a disciplinary tribunal in March. These are your cops, Toronto. "It certainly has been an anomaly week for our service," said Police Chief Mike Saunders, confirming the latest charges Thursday. And you've got to feel some sympathy for the guy, who's barely had a moment's peace since he got the top job.

Const. James Forcillo: Guilty of attempted murder in the six rounds he fired at the already dying teenager Sammy Yatim.

[continues 1110 words]

Four officers charged with perjury, obstruction of justice

TORONTO - Four Toronto police officers have been charged with obstruction of justice and perjury after allegedly providing false testimony in court.

Police Chief Mark Saunders says the officers face a total of 17 charges and have all been suspended with pay as the case plays out in court.

Saunders says a team from the force's professional standards division will investigate other cases the officers have worked on.

"Anything that questions the integrity of any member of the Toronto Police Service concerns me," Saunders said at a news conference Thursday morning.

[continues 592 words]