(Sep 24, 2012) Free Stater Who Helped Acquit N.H. Pot Grower: Jurors Were Thinking About Nullification 'From the Beginning'

Doug Darrell, a 59-year-old Rastafarian who admitted growing marijuana at his home in Barnstead, New Hampshire, had been found not guility of manufacturing a controlled drug after jurors received instructions about their power to acquit even if the prosecution has met its burden of proof.

Although Darrell emphasized that he used mariuana as a sacrament and a medicine, one of the jurors recently told the Manchester Union Leader his religion was not a factor in the verdict:

"It was the fact that the system was coming down on a peaceful man, and it wasn't right," said Cathleen Converse, a 57-year-old retired accountant and grandmother who moved to New Hampshire with her husband in 2004 in the first wave of the Free State Project.

Converse was one of eight women on the jury that on Sept. 13 used a legal concept known as jury nullification to acquit Darrell, who is 59.