Medical marijuana trial ends as Nebraskans prepare to vote

LINCOLN, Neb. (KOLN) – Closing arguments have been made in the medical marijuana trial as Nebraskans prepare to vote to approve or reject the initiatives.

Nebraska medical marijuana lawyers, former state Sen. John Kuehn and the Nebraska Attorney General's Office concluded the prosecution portion of the trial on Monday. The process concluded after exceeding its expected end date on Friday.

The court heard testimony from two other people, including Crista Eggers, a medical marijuana sponsor from Nebraska.

Both spent most of their testimony representing the Fifth with their attorneys. The state produced several texts that appeared to demonstrate a laissez-faire attitude on the part of Eggers when it came to notarizing petitions.

The state argued that text messages showed Eggers regularly gave mailers the opportunity to submit their petition pages for notarization outside of the view of a notary. Currently, a York notary is facing more than a dozen counts of official misconduct after he was accused of notarizing petition pages outside the presence of his circulator.

But attorneys for Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana said those text messages were taken out of context to portray Eggers in a bad light.

After questioning, the state asked the judge to take a negative view of Egger's testimony – meaning the court would consider her pleas in the fifth part as potential evidence of wrongdoing.

Judge Susan Strong previously denied the state's request to draw an adverse inference on Eggers' testimony, in which she regularly invoked the fifth count.

She is now waiting for written submissions from both parties before taking up the matter. These briefs must be filed by the state by November 12th; a defense response must be filed by November 15.

If Judge Strong finds that the state has prevailed, a second phase of the trial will be ordered in which the defense can present its case.

In its closing argument, the state accused Medical Marijuana Nebraskans of intentionally violating the state's rules on forwarding and notarizing petitions.

The attorneys shared state law they plan to use to trace alleged wrongdoing or wrongdoing to additional signatures collected or notarized by accused circulators and notaries.

The lawyers said their prosecution was important to prevent future campaigns from committing unlawful acts.

However, the defense concluded that the fraud could not be blamed further than the 700 to 1,000 signatures that were clearly identified as fraudulent.

They argued that these signatures were valid and authenticated and that any misconduct on the part of the person who submitted them could not be used to invalidate properly collected signatures. Even if 700 to 1,000 signatures were subtracted from the total, both medical marijuana petitions would still have enough signatures for certification.

They also argued that the credit could call into question many other tasks that notaries perform outside of notarizing applications.

Judge Strong ruled that votes for medical marijuana initiatives would be counted regardless of the process and Nebraskans could choose to approve the measures on Election Day.

However, it is unclear how, if at all, Judge Strong's ruling might affect its implementation later in November.

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