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The medical marijuana lawsuit ends as Nebraskans prepare to vote on cases
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The medical marijuana lawsuit ends as Nebraskans prepare to vote on cases

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

Attorneys for Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana, former Sen. John Kuehn and the Nebraska Attorney General’s office wrapped up the prosecution portion of the trial on Monday. The process concluded on Friday after exceeding its expected completion date.

The court heard testimony from two more people, including Crista Eggers, sponsor of Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana.

Both spent most of their testimony arguing the fifth with their attorneys. The state presented several texts, which apparently showed a laissez-faire attitude on Eggers’ part regarding how petitions could be notarized.

The text messages cited by the state showed that Eggers regularly gave circulators the opportunity to hand over their petition pages for notarization out of sight of a notary. Currently, a York notary is facing more than a dozen charges of official misconduct after being accused of notarizing pages of petitions outside the circulator’s presence.

However, attorneys for Nebraskans for Medical Marijuana said these text messages were shown out of context to paint Eggers in a bad light.

After questioning, the state asked the judge to give an adverse inference to Egger’s testimony – meaning the court would consider her fifth pleas as possible evidence of misconduct.

Judge Susan Strong previously denied the state’s request to apply an adverse inference to Egger’s statement, where she regularly argued the fifth.

She is now awaiting instructions from both parties before taking the case. These briefs must be filed by the state by November 12, while a defense response must be filed by November 15.

Should Judge Strong conclude that the state prevailed, a second phase of the trial will be ordered so that the defense can argue their case.

In its closing argument, the state accused Nebraskans in favor of medical marijuana of purposefully violating the state’s rules on petition circulation and notarization.

Attorneys shared the state law they hope to use to attribute alleged misconduct or malfeasance to further signatures collected or notarized by accused circulators and notaries.

The attorneys said their prosecution was important to prevent future campaigns from acting unlawfully.

However, the defense concluded by noting that the fraud cannot be attributed beyond the 700 to 1,000 signatures positively identified as fraudulent.

They argued that these signatures are valid and certified, and that any misconduct involving the person who submitted them cannot be used to invalidate properly collected signatures. Even if 700 to 1,000 signatures were subtracted from the total count, both medical marijuana petitions would still have enough signatures for certification.

They also argued that the attribution could call into question many other duties that notaries perform outside of notarizing petitions.

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

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

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