SAN DIEGO, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- A California court says the amount a medical-marijuana user can possess is for juries to decide, and using limits set by state law is improper.
Legal experts say the state appeals court ruling will change how medical-pot trials are handled, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported Monday.
Nathaniel Archer of San Diego was convicted in 2007 of cultivating and possessing marijuana. The medical-marijuana patient was sentenced to probation, the newspaper said.
The appeals court reversed his conviction, saying the state's 2003 amending of the original initiative that allowed medical use of marijuana, passed by voters in 1996, was unconstitutional.
The amendment illegally set limits not in the original measure, the court said. Juries, not the state, should decide what amount of marijuana is "reasonably related" to someone's medical needs, it said.
"This has real ramifications," Russel Babcock, Archer's lawyer, said. "It becomes a case-by-case basis for juries of reasonableness."
