|
 SACRAMENTO, CA -- The public won’t get to hear law enforcement officers testify about the degree of force they used to detain the minor son of a medical marijuana doctor.
That’s because U.S. District Court Judge Morrison C. England Jr. dismissed a panel of jurors midway through last week’s civil trial and made a judgment in favor of the police officers.
Without even hearing the defense’s case, which included witnesses flown in from as far away as New York, the judge ruled that the accused officers were blameless. “They took every step to make sure there wasn’t excessive force,” Judge England said. “They did nothing wrong.”
The case, Geoffrey Schafer v. Bob Ashworth et. al., alleged officers used excessive force and unreasonable detention when they held the then-adolescent Schafer at gunpoint during a 2001 drug raid on his parents’ home. During the first half of the trial, jurors heard from several witnesses who testified that Schafer suffered severe and lasting emotional trauma as a result of his treatment by agents during that raid. Under normal circumstances, jurors would have then heard the case presented by the defense, and ultimately deliberated on a verdict. Instead they were summoned to the courtroom on Wednesday morning only to be told that the judge had already made that decision for them.
This development resulted from a defense motion based on Federal Rule 50, which allows the court to make a judgment “when a party has been fully heard on an issue and there is no legally sufficient evidentiary basis for a reasonable jury to find for that party on that issue." In essence, Judge England ruled that no reasonable juror could have decided the case in favor of Schafer.
A crucial question raised by the case was whether psychological damage could be proven as a result of the officers’ actions...and, if so, whether the existence of such damage indicated that the force used by the officers was excessive. In addition, both sides argued over whether or not Schafer’s three-hour detention was a reasonable time for him to be held by agents during the search.
Judge England called Wednesday’s decision an extremely rare outcome, telling the jurors that it was only the second or third time in his career that he cut a trial short to make such a ruling.
It was perhaps the first time a shortcut was taken in the legal cases that have sprouted from the raid in question. Otherwise, the justice system appears to have moved very slowly for the plaintiff and his family.
The events of the case took place over eight years ago, on September 28th, 2001. That day, federal and local law enforcement officers searched the home where Schafer lived with his parents, Dr. Marion “Mollie” Fry and attorney Dale Schafer. The pair had come to the attention of law enforcement as a result of their activities involving the state’s Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which permits Californians to legally possess and cultivate marijuana when a physician recommends it for the treatment of a medical condition. Fry began issuing these recommendations after marijuana helped her through a near-deadly battle with breast cancer and convinced her of its medical efficacy. At the same time, Dale Schafer ran a parallel practice in which he advised his wife’s patients about California’s medical marijuana law.
One of the key points of that advice was that the federal government does not follow state law in this matter, and therefore federal authorities can choose to prosecute medical marijuana patients and providers for violations of drug laws. Although there is solid federal case law to protect Fry’s First Amendment right to recommend marijuana to her patients, a medical defense is not permitted for marijuana cultivation charges in federal court.
 That hard reality left Fry and her husband in a vulnerable situation after the 2001 raid, which revealed a small caregiver garden growing in their backyard. Agents seized only 34 marijuana plants from the property during the September 2001 raid, but prosecutors increased this number by adding together plant counts from previous years. These numbers were gathered by local law enforcement officers, including Bob Ashworth, when they were invited over by Fry and her husband for ‘medical marijuana compliance checks.’ The strategy bumped up the total to just over a hundred plants, which triggered a mandatory minimum five-year prison term for Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer when a federal jury convicted them for cultivation in August 2007. Those sentences still hang over their heads, but both are currently out on bail pending the appeal of their case.
In court on Wednesday, Judge England took a moment to explain that the ruling against Geoffrey Schafer had nothing to do with his parents’ involvement with medical marijuana or the politics of Prop. 215. “Those are non-issues in this case,” the judge asserted.
Fry, who testified during the civil proceedings, broke into tears as the judge ruled against her son and halted the jury trial. “They had a plan for everything else,” she later said about the agents who strategized the raid. “Why didn’t they have a plan for the children?”
The plaintiff, now twenty-two years old, was more prepared for disappointment. Although he certainly believes in the validity of his claims, watching his parents’ prior ordeals in court has given Schafer some skepticism about the justice system. He called Wednesday’s ruling “predictable.”
This skepticism was echoed by his attorney, Michael Sorgen, who offered his thoughts on the ruling outside the courtroom. “That’s what you get as the legacy of George W. Bush,” he lamented.
Sorgen had tried to fight the Rule 50 motion by comparing Schafer’s case to a precedent case, Tekle v. United States. In Tekle, an appeals court overturned the lower court’s summary judgment and decided in favor of the plaintiff, Epraim Tekle, who was eleven years old when detained by law enforcement agents during a drug raid on his parents. Sorgen argued that the Tekle decision demonstrates that officers can be guilty of excessive force simply by holding a minor at gunpoint, even if there is no physical injury.
Judge England, however, found the Tekle decision largely irrelevant. “It’s similar in that [Schafer] was not an adult and that there was a search for narcotics,” he commented. But according to the judge, that was where the similarities ended. “Under the circumstances, this case is far different from Tekle.”
As Judge England related, eleven-year old Ephraim Tekle had been frightened by the officers outside his home and initially tried to evade them by running inside. The unarmed, barefoot boy came back outside and lay down on the driveway in response to orders spoken over an intercom, then was handcuffed from behind while officers pointed guns at his head. Up to twenty guns were pointed at Tekle for the duration of the search, and when Tekle asked to have his shoes, an officer spat on them. Tekle was also subjected to insults from another officer who questioned him about where his parents were from. “Ethiopia is an f’n ugly country, and there’s nothing to see there,” the officer commented about the Tekle family homeland.
Perhaps the most compelling part of the case is the fact that, after Tekle was cuffed from behind, an officer brought him from a lying position to a standing position by pulling on the chain of the handcuffs, wrenching Tekle’s arms backward. An appellate judge referred to this incident as a “sadistic bit of bullying.”
As Judge England saw it, there was no such bullying in Schafer’s case. Rather, the judge suggested that Schafer wasn’t even scared during the raid, since he didn’t run when he saw the officers. Instead, the fourteen-year old informed his mother of the presence of a SWAT team, in a manner the judge said was “like someone announcing the arrival of neighbors or friends…there was no indication of fear.” To Judge England, such comments suggest the speaker “knows what’s going on…and maybe has something to do with it.”
Not only was Schafer older and more mature than Tekle, he was also confronted with fewer weapons than the eleven-year old had faced. Judge England referenced evidence indicating that these guns were kept at the ‘low-ready’ position and not pointed directly at Schafer’s head. In addition, Schafer had been handcuffed in the front and not subjected to any injury-inducing maneuvers like being pulled up by the handcuff chain.
Those handcuffs were a necessary precaution, according to Judge England, in case Schafer tried to interfere with the search. “He could be more impulsive and energetic than an adult,” the judge said of an adolescent boy. He also recalled testimony that, at the age of fourteen, Schafer already stood six feet tall.
Judge England acknowledged that two or three hours was a long time for the plaintiff to be kept in handcuffs, but said that the time was necessary because of the rural setting. There were 26 acres of land for the officers to cover and several buildings to search on the Fry/Schafer property, he commented, as well as plenty of hiding places for booby traps or secret weapons. Securing the area during the search was a lengthy endeavor, the judge explained, but one that was necessary for the safety of all those involved.
“It does appear the detention…was not unreasonable given the circumstances,” Judge England concluded.
That finding came in spite of pleas from Sorgen to delay a decision on the Rule 50 motion until the conclusion of the trial. Otherwise, he said, the entire trial would have to be done over again if the appeals court reversed the ruling and remanded the case back to district court. He argued that this would be a greater waste of time and resources than simply finishing the trial the first time around.
Frank Gumpert, attorney for the accused officers, balked at Sorgen’s theory. “It’s ludicrous to think the court might not do the right thing for fear that some appellate court sometime in the future might say, ‘No, no – go back and do it again,’” Gumpert said.
Judge England concurred. “Threats of retrial and reversal are not something that scare district court judges,” he said to Sorgen authoritatively. “I’ll tell you that right now.”
Sorgen also voiced alarm that taking the decision away from the jury before deliberation would lead to juror dissatisfaction. This possibility didn’t prevent the judge from going forward with his ruling, but it may have influenced the rhetoric he used when dismissing the jurors. “I don’t want you to think your time has been wasted in any way, shape or form,” Judge England assured them. “It’s because you were here that justice was administered.”
 By all appearances, the jurors were largely unbothered by the outcome. Contrary to Sorgen’s theory, many of them appeared glad to be relieved of the burden of decision-making.
After receiving their certificates of service, a few of the jurors gathered in the hallway outside the courtroom to express sympathy for the plaintiff and to answer questions from the attorneys.
“We’re sorry you’re suffering and I hope you get the counseling you need to get through this,” one juror told Schafer, offering him a hug.
Another juror gave a hug as well as some insight about the difficulty of proving psychological damage. “We don’t know if this was the singular incident that put Geoffrey in this state,” she said, speaking about the raid. However, she also praised the plaintiff’s efforts in stepping forward. She had learned about the justice system from prior experience as a whistle-blower in another civil case, a personal history that made her a controversial pick for this jury. “It takes advocates like you to move the system that much closer to integrity,” she told Schafer.
In the end, Schafer’s final words were also motivational. Speaking of the way his family has suffered at the hands of law enforcement and the justice system, he said, “This is why everyone needs to vote. The masses can change this.”
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed