[420 Girl]

San Diego - A jury acquitted a medical marijuana collective operator of drug possession and sales charges yesterday.

The acquittal of Eugene Davidovich after two weeks of trial in front of Superior Court Judge Kenneth So is the second time in the past four months that juries have found medical marijuana operators not guilty of drug charges.

In December, Jovan Jackson, who was the manager of a medical marijuana dispensary in Kearny Mesa, was acquitted of five counts of possessing and selling the drug. Davidovich’s case had become an important cause among medical marijuana proponents.

District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis has aggressively pursued medical marijuana dispensaries and collectives that she contends are not complying with Proposition 215, the voter-approved initiative that legalized the drug for medical purposes.

Davidovich, a former software developer, was charged with selling the drug to an undercover officer posing as a patient in November 2008 with a doctor’s prescription for the drug. The transaction was captured on videotape. Davidovich insisted he had done nothing wrong and believed that the man he sold the marijuana to was a legitimate patient and the purchase was part of the legal operations of the collective. In phone conversations before the transaction he had emphasized that the purchase was being done as part of the collective’s work and for no other reason, said Davidovich’s lawyer, Michael McCabe.

Jurors acquitted him of four charges relating to the transaction, which was part of a larger investigation of medical marijuana collectives dubbed Operation Green Rx, McCabe said.

“The jury saw this for what it was,” McCabe said. “They thought it was a trumped up case from the get-go.”

Deputy District Attorney Theresa Pham could not be reached for comment on the verdicts. Steve Walker, a spokesman for the District Attorney’s Office, said the outcome is “disappointing, but we respect the jury’s verdict.”

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