Ed Rosenthal may have received his best shot yet at a new trial. A juror disclosed that she sought legal advice during his marijuana cultivation trial.

In a startling revelation that could mean a new trial for convicted medical-marijuana cultivator Ed Rosenthal, a juror in the case says she violated the law by seeking outside legal advice during the trial and then sharing the information with a fellow juror.

The development is another chapter in the bizarre case of Rosenthal, a nationally recognized medical pot advocate whose case pitted state medical marijuana laws against federal laws, which do not allow for any use or cultivation of pot.

With Rosenthal's sentencing slated for later this month, jury member Marney Craig will appear this morning before Judge Charles Breyer. Craig is expected to say that despite constant warnings from the judge not to discuss the case outside of the courtroom, she sought and obtained outside legal advice on whether she could vote not guilty.

To make matters worse, the juror said she shared the advice she received with another juror.

When extraneous or outside evidence is brought into the jury room, it can be grounds for a mistrial. This seems like a clear case to us--the verdict should be set aside and a new trial ordered. If only Ashcroft would decide not to re-prosecute, but that's probably not likely given the mission he is on to stamp out medical marijuana.

Some justice in Texas today:

Texas prosecutors today agreed to throw out the convictions of 38 people, nearly all of them black, who faced drug charges based on the uncorroborated testimony of a former white undercover police officer.

In a stunning reversal, the state agreed with defense lawyers that the former officer, Thomas Coleman, was an unreliable witness even though his testimony was the only evidence used to convict the defendants, some of whom are serving sentences of 90 years or more.

Asked if the convictions represented a travesty of justice, the state's special prosecutor, Rod Hobson, hesitated a moment and then said, "Yes."

....Lawyers close to the case said that as part of today's agreement, Swisher County Commissioners Court would pay the defense $250,000, to be split among the defendants according to the amount of time spent incarcerated. In return, the defense would agree not to sue Swisher County, its sheriff or district attorney for civil rights damages.

Here is an earlier post of our's about the case. The ACLU has a list of older articles here.

Lisl Auman was in police custody at the time of the crime, yet under the felony-murder rule she was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Last summer, she lost her bid to the Colorado Court of Appeals to reverse the conviction. Monday, the Colorado Supreme Court granted a writ of certiorari and agreed to hear the case.

The issue before Colorado's high court court will be whether Lisl's arrest by police precluded her liability for felony murder.

Journalist Hunter Thompson took up Lisl's cause during her first appeal, writing about it often in his ESPN column, including here.

An ethics panel has issued a six page opinion finding that Montgomery County Police Chief Charles Moose may not profit from his planned memoir on the Sniper killings.

The panel, which reviews outside employment for all county employees, said Chief Moose had not met the standards for an exemption to a county law that bars employees from using the prestige of their office for private gain.

"Accepting remuneration for services directly and immediately related to an employee's governmental activities violates the prestige-of-office prohibition because, to paraphrase the state ethics commission, those services `go with the job,' " the commissioners wrote.

The commission ruled that the county's best interests would not be served by granting a waiver and that Chief Moose's importance to the county did not "outweigh any potential harm from a conflict of interest."

The Montgomery County Executive, Douglas Duncan, was disappointed with the ruling, saying, ""I continue to feel strongly that the chief should have the opportunity to tell not only the story of his life's work in law enforcement, but also his story of the tragic events of last October."

Fine, but how about waiting until the trial is over so he doesn't prejudice the jury pool.

Update: Chief Moose says he finds himself under such personal attack that he is considering leaving the force.

Smoking Gun has the charges in the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping case. You can read them here. If you just want the alleged facts supporting the charges, start here.

Brian Mitchell, the suspect in the Elizabeth Smart Kidnapping case, has a lawyer. The lawyer went on television Sunday and said Mitchell considers the teen as his 'Wife'. The lawyer, Larry Long, said that his client..."wanted me to tell the world that she is his wife, and he still loves her and knows that she still loves him, that no harm came to her during their relationship and the adventure that went on.''

Long said Mitchell did not consider Elizabeth's disappearance a kidnapping, but a ``call from God.''

Long also suggested that giving a light sentence to his client -- whom he referred to as ``the perpetrator'' -- could send a signal to kidnappers that they should keep their captives alive.

``If we can somehow set up some structure where the message gets out that if you bring the girl back alive, that there's some kind of commutation of the sentence, we may be much better off as a society.''

Long said Mitchell is on a fruit-only diet in the jail and wants to be called ``Immanuel David Isaiah.'' He wants Barzee to be known as ``Hephzibah Eladah Isaiah'' and for Elizabeth to be called ``Shear Jashub Isaiah,'' or ``Remnant Who Will Return.''

``I found him to be very intelligent, very knowledgeable, very coherent and very articulate in his expression of his views,'' Long said.

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We expect this is only the first of such incidents we'll be reading about. It's a shame people can be so arrogant in their ignorance. Thanks to Hesiod at Counterspin for emailing us the article.

On the Elizabeth Smart case: We were going to leave it alone, we posted that we were happy she was home and we noted that she may been brainwashed. We had second thoughts about bringing up that her mother had found the creep who abducted Elizabeth panhandling and she not only gave him $5.00, but brought him home and gave him a job. Who does that? With young kids at home? We didn't want to be among the first to bring that up in the midst of the homecoming celebration. But now things are beginning to seem a little funky with the case again (like they were last summer when the Smarts took to the airwaves every day) and Mr. Smart is calling for "Amber Alerts" to become law and we don't care for "Amber Alerts" any more than we care for "Megan's Laws." So we've now decided the Smarts' actions are fair game.

Jeff Taylor over at Reason's Hit and Run tackles the Smarts head-on.

Taking events at face value, the whole episode was close to self-inflicted.

Lois Smart broke two cardinal rules of living in a modern, metropolitan area. One, never give money to panhandlers, especially ones in long flowing robes. And two, never, ever invite them to do work for you at your home. This goes double if you have young children at home. And if you have an achingly beautiful teenage daughter, well, puzzle it out.

It might seem cruel to point these facts out, but Ed Smart is on a crusade to get Congress to pass a national "Amber alert" law. Such federal action would help save kids like his daughter, he avers.

Let's just assume that is true -- another federal law that makes everyone safer. OK. Heard that. The law would still be no substitute for parental awareness of the threats their kids may face. We're not talking raging paranoia, just common sense.

Is there a homeless shelter or drug treatment center nearby? A lot of construction going on in the neighborhood? Other commercial traffic or workers? Who are your kids' peers? What are their brothers and sisters and moms and dads like? And is that street preacher in flowing robes following you home?

We hope Jeff won't mind that we raided the comments to his post to bring you the following snippets:

Jeff, be careful what you think and even more careful what you say. Next incident the activist parent will push for a federal law making it a felony to voice any appreciation of a young girl's beauty. Punishable by mandatory reeducation, close monitoring and a place on the offenders'registry. You'll also have to surrender a DNA sample, just in case.

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That amber alert shit sounds kinda creepy. what happens when the wrong car gets tagged and a few right minded citizens kill an alleged - but innocent - abductor?

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Hey gang - let's pass an unenforceable, pointless law that will unnecessarily violate the Constitutional rights of the innocent and serve no practical purpose, except to the demagogue politicians who proposed it. It's easy, you know: just name the law after a child...

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The circumstances of this case are so extreme and bizarre that it's basically useless to try to draw any conclusions from it, other than the fact that we live in a big world, sometimes some really weird shit happens, and there's nothing we could have feasibly done to prevent it. You seem to understand this basic point later when you point out the silliness inherent in passing a federal law because of this one case.

To be clear, we don't agree with other posts we've read speculating that Elizabeth ran away or was sent away because she was pregnant. We don't believe that Mr. or Mrs. Smart had any complicity in her disappearance. But we do think there's a lot more to this story and that it involves the family. We also can't forget that one person--handyman, Richard Ricci-- was falsely labeled a suspect in the abduction, an accusation that generated so much media heat that he was arrested for a violation and incarcerated in hopes he would talk. Instead, he died in jail, protesting his innocence. We hope the Smart family and the police apologize to his widow and stepson.

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"Actor Robert Blake posted $1.5 million bail and was released from jail Friday to await trial on charges of murdering his wife. "Give me a cigarette," Blake, 69, said to his defense investigator as he stepped out of the downtown jail. He took a drag before briefly commenting to a crush of reporters and photographers."

"I never thought I'd make 11 months in a cement box," he said....

Actor Robert Blake will be going home from jail. The Judge in his case, while finding probable cause to make him stand trial for the murder of his wife, also granted him release on a $1.5 million bond with home detention as a condition.

Madelyne Toogood, the mom videotaped beating her young daughter in a parking lot has regained custody of her daughter.

"The judge recognized Ms. Toogood has done a good job with parenting skills," her attorney, Fred Hains, told the South Bend Tribune. Madelyne Toogood underwent court-ordered parenting and anger management counseling.

We're glad to see that in the end, Toogood was treated like every other offender and the Judge refused to make a decision that bowed to the media lynch mob mentality. We're not condoning the behavior, only the result.

Elizabeth Smarth's father said she was definitely brainwashed by her alleged captor.

"Smart, who broke down at times, said the man had held his daughter at knifepoint until August in the mountains directly above their Salt Lake City home. Elizabeth heard rescuers calling her name but could not reply. "It kills me she was there for three months, literally up in the hills (behind our house)," Smart told NBC's "Today" show."