LANSING- The judge who refused to return baby Bree to her parents is insisting on a trial to determine the legitimacy of father Steve Green’s medical basis for his medical marijuana certification. Green suffers from epilepsy and other ailments.
Judge Richard Garcia from Ingham County delivered his verdict on Friday, September 20. Although he could have returned Bree to her parents, Steve and wife Maria Green, he chose instead to continue the Referee’s order and keep custody of the child in the hands of her grandmother while demanding a trial to determine the validity of marijuana use and epilepsy. That case is set to be heard in early October.
Steve Green reported the startling development during his appearance on Michigan’s only real radio program focusing on marijuana issues, WFNT’s The Political Twist Up Show, which came less than 24 hours after the Judge’s ruling.
Judge Garcia doesn’t believe in the medical benefits of marijuana: at least, his actions indicate this. In the Green case he decided that the marijuana garden in the Green home creates a risk to the children, hence his decision to keep Bree from that building. If his trial proves that Green’s use of marijuana is justified, he will have to return Bree to the family and reverse his opinion that any marijuana garden in the home represents risk.
The chance of him making a pro-marijuana decision is minuscule. Tiny. Almost non-existent. We know this because he said so, two years earlier, when he threatened to take a child from another patient suffering from epilepsy.
Judge Garcia has made news in the past for using children as weapons to force parents out of the Michigan Medical Marihuana Program. In 2011, Garcia forced Livingston Thompson Jr (no relation to this article’s author) to spend a weekend in jail for refusing to give up his doctor-certified medical marijuana certification, threatening to revoke Thompson Jr’s custody right to his then-10 year old daughter Shylynn.
The story was told via WILX, who reported that Garcia refused to accept Michigan’s state-issued card as proof of any illness- just as he has in the Green case. ”I understand he says he has a license. I told him a long time ago that I don’t accept that on its face value,” Garcia was reported to have said, referring to Thompson Jr. “I think he obtained that card fraudulently. I don’t think there’s a legitimate reason why he needs to smoke pot because he may have epilepsy.”
That statement by Garcia to Thompson Jr proves that, no matter what evidence the Greens can produce in court, Garcia will not deliver a pro-marijuana decision, a pro-family decision, a decision that connects a daughter and her parents while respecting Michigan’s medical marijuana laws.
“The case worker feels Shylynn is doing find and well adjusted and so does the court because the court put Shylynn back with Mr. Livingston,” said Thompson Jr’s attorney, Matt Newburg, at the time.
WILX reported that Judge Garcia believed that Thompson Jr was addicted to marijuana and smoking it clouds his judgment as a father.
“If you continue to smoke, l will continue to put you in jail until you stop using,” Garcia said in court.
Attorney Thomas Lavigne, of Detroit’s Cannabis Counsel, told The Compassion Chronicles that “Judges are practicing medicine without a license, ordering patients to ignore their doctor’s recommendation to use an herbal alternative that has no overdose risk. Judges order patients to take instead the pharmaceutical drugs- but not too many or you overdose.”
It is time to petition another judge to handle the Green case as Garcia is clearly biased on the issue.
Source: The Compassion Chronicles
