In a local case exemplifying changing attitudes on the War on Drugs, a jury found a farmer in Albemarle County not guilty of marijuana possession on Wednesday evening.

54-year-old Philip Cobbs was summoned to court to answer for two marijuana plants spotted on his 37-acre farm by a helicopter. About 10 law enforcement officials came to his farm to confiscate the illegal plants, armed with semi-automatic guns. Cobbs claimed that he was not aware of the marijuana plants on his property, which can sometimes grow in the wild.

The plants were discovered by a task force of law enforcement officials that routinely flies over farms searching for marijuana. Cobbs’ attorneys, Paul Belonick and Andrew Sneathern, unsuccessfully contested in a pre-trial motion that these helicopter flyovers violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against “unreasonable search and seizure.”

Sneathern, pointing out that the task force uses National Guard helicopters, protested, “We’re treating our citizens like they’re the enemy.”

As Sneathern noted, Virginia law dictates that anyone found guilty of a first offense of marijuana possession must have their drivers license revoked without exception.

While the jury ultimately found Cobbs not guilty, it took half a day to find 7 people out of 25 who were neutral enough on drug laws to serve as jurors. Many potential jurors had to be dismissed because of their strong disagreement with national marijuana laws.

Sneathern, who in the past has prosecuted drug possession cases for the Commonwealth, observed that the law is still “playing catch up” to “a massive sea change in public opinion about small amounts of marijuana.”

Support for marijuana legalization is currently at an all-time high of 56 percent, according to a Rasmussen poll released in May. 15 states and several cities have reduced penalties for marijuana possession; recently, Chicago decriminalized small amounts of marijuana.

The prosecutor’s closing statement warned the jury against nullification, which allows jurors to find a defendant innocent because of their dislike of a law. Most judges prevent defense attorneys from informing the jury of this right. New Hampshire passed a jury nullification law in June, a move that could significantly affect drug cases in the state.

In Virginia, Sneathern hopes that lawmakers and prosecutors all over the Commonwealth keep Cobbs’ trial in mind for future prosecutions.

“This is not a good use of their resources,” he said. “This was an extraordinarily expensive trial for them to bring when the best outcome they were going to get was a maximum of 30 days [in prison], and likely just a fine.”

He also questioned the non-financial cost of frightened citizens: “This is over in the sense that this case is over, but as [Cobbs] told me yesterday, it will take him a long, long time to get over the feeling of the invasion and the fear that he felt — and still feels every time he sees a helicopter fly over his house.”

One of the principal weapons used by James Eagan Holmes in the horrific Dark Knight Rises shooting would have been subject to a series of sharp restrictions under the now-expired federal Assault Weapons ban. The AR-15 rife carried by Holmes, a civilian semi-automatic version of the military M-16, would have been defined as a “semiautomatic assault weapon” under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. If the law was still in force, semiautomatic assault weapons would have been outright banned:

Such weapons were “unlawful for a person to manufacture, transfer, or possess” under section (a)(v)(i).

Though there were several loopholes in the Violent Crime Control Act that allowed gun manufacturers to legally produce slightly modified AR-15s, a new version of the bill proposed in 2008 closed them.

The 1994 Act contained a sunset provision that caused it to automatically expire 10 years after passage, and it was not renewed in 2004, meaning that there are no federal restrictions on the ownership of AR-15s and similar weapons. Both Congressman Ed Perlmutter (who represents Aurora, the site of the shooting) and President Obama proposed a new assault weapons ban during their campaigns.

Today, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg called on the President and Governor Romney to address gun violence, saying “maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be President of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do about it, because this is obviously a problem across the country.”

The ACLU of Arizona has released thousands of emails it says prove that SB 1070, Arizona’s controversial immigration law, was racially motivated. According to a report by the Arizona Republic, the emails, acquired through a public records request, are to and from the author of SB 1070, recalled Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce (R). The documents may help the ACLU to convince a federal judge to prevent the “show me your papers” section of SB 1070 from going into effect.

Key excerpts from the over 10,000 pages of emails include:

• “Last week, Denver’s illegal aliens sang our national anthem in Spanish and bastardized the words of OUR country’s most sacred song.”
• “Battles commence as Mexican nationalists struggle to infuse their men into American government and strengthen control over their strongholds. One look at Los Angeles with its Mexican-American mayor shows you Vincente Fox’s general Varigossa commanding an American city.”
• “They create enclaves of separate groups that shall balkanize our nation into fractured nightmares of social unrest and poverty.”
• “Corruption is the mechanism by which Mexico operates. Its people spawn more corruption wherever they go because it is their only known way of life.”
• “Tough, nasty illegals and their advocates grow in such numbers that law and order will not subdue them. They run us out of our cities and states. They conquer our language and our schools. They render havoc and chaos in our schools.”
• “We are much like the Titanic as we inbreed millions of Mexico’s poor, the world’s poor and we watch our country sink.”

One email, with a the subject line “What’s a racist?” included the following:

• “I’m racist because I don’t want to be taxed to pay for a prison population comprised of mainly Hispanics, Latinos, Mexicans or whatever else you wish to call them.”
• “I’m a racist because I believe the News Media has a duty to tell us the names and race of criminals.”
• “I’m a racist because I object to having to pay higher sales tax and property tax to build more schools for the illegitimate children of illegal aliens.”
• “I’m a racist because I dislike having to push one for English and/or listening to a message in Spanish.”
• “Factual is not racial. Realism is not racism. The new definition of racist is anyone winning an argument with a liberal, minority, pacifist, bible banger, or moron.”

The part of SB 1070 that is currently being challenged by the ACLU is section 2(B), the “show me your papers” provision. The Supreme Court struck down three other provisions of the law earlier this summer, but left 2(B) intact, noting that there are potential constitutional problems with the section. The ACLU filed suit in federal court earlier this week contending that 2(B) unlawfully discriminates against Latinos and individuals of Mexican origin.

A recent poll of registered Latino voters found that 66 percent of those polled oppose the Supreme Court’s decision to leave “show me your papers” intact, while only 29 percent approve. Seventy-nine percent of Latino voters are concerned about racial profiling, responding likely to the question “how likely is it that Latinos who are legal immigrants or U.S. citizens will get stopped or questioned by police?” And 70 percent believe that allowing police to check immigration status will not increase public safety.

–Alex Brown