[3][4] Olson continued to protest, and in February 2012 he started writing anti-bank messages in chalk on the sidewalk in front of Bank of America branches.
[4] On January 7, 2013, the bank official (Freeman) requested that Officer Miles and then City Attorney Jan Goldsmith take action on Olson's case, even though he had stopped protesting.
Each count of vandalism on the document had a suggested sentence range of "1 Yr/$1,000," indicating that Olson was facing a possible 13 years in prison plus a fine of $13,000 for the 13 chalk offenses.
Although that was the theoretical maximum, local prosecutors and defense attorneys familiar with such cases were aware that the actual sentence, if convicted, would probably include a fine and some community service.
Soon after, several media reports decried the suggested sentences as excessive, including in The LA Times,[9] the San Diego Reader,[10] NPR,[11] Gawker,[12] New York Daily News[13] and The Huffington Post.
[8] In 2010, Judge Shore ruled that a dispensary operator named Jovan Jackson was prohibited from using California's state medical marijuana law as part of his defense in a case for three charges of possession and sale of cannabis.
Shore was required to interpret the meaning of the language in MMPA (Medical Marijuana Program Act (California Health and Safety Code 11362.7 et.
Judge Shore conducted a pre-trial hearing, and heard testimony that the collective to which Jackson belonged had 1674 members, only a few of whom were involved in cultivation.
[16] In October 2012, the Court of Appeal reviewed Judge Shore's decision not to allow the collective cultivation defense, and Jackson's felony conviction was reversed.