On Thursday, we updated you on the trial of Bob Crouse, a medical marijuana patient with cancer who faced cultivation and distribution charges for going beyond the state's plant limit despite having a doctor recommendation to exceed it. At that time, activist Audrey Hatfield felt things were going Crouse's way and predicted a positive verdict the next day, and she was correct on both scores. Late Friday afternoon, he was acquitted of all charges against him.

Not that there wasn't some drama along the way. On Friday morning, according to Hatfield, president of Coloradans 4 Cannabis Patient Rights, who was among the advocates protesting throughout the week at the courthouse where Crouse was tried, prosecutors with 4th Judicial District DA Dan May's office "tried to get the judge to make it so Bob wouldn't be able to use the affirmative defense."

This tactic would have prevented the jury from considering a doctor's recommendation for Crouse to possess 75 plants needed to make Phoenix Tears, a cannabis-oil treatment that appeared to be having a positive effect on his chronic lymphocytic leukemia. At the time, Crouse, a longtime Colorado Springs restaurateur, had not received his medical-marijuana red card from the state due to a paperwork snafu -- meaning that without the doctor's recommendation, his entire case might have collapsed. But, says Hatfield, "the judge wouldn't have it."

Crouse's supporters interpreted this move as, in Hatfield's words, "a last ditch effort" on the part of desperate prosecutors -- and they felt the same way about courthouse personnel refusing to allow entry to Jason Lauve, acquitted in his own landmark marijuana case, because he had medication in his possession. In the end, though, these Hail Marys didn't seem to have much impact on the jury, which cleared Crouse after just four hours of deliberation -- a significant portion of which was taken up by lunch.

Immediately after the not-guilty verdicts were read, Crouse burst into tears -- an understandable reaction not only because his legal ordeal was finally at an end, but also due to his having been evacuated from the house he shares with his ninety-year-old mother after the Waldo Canyon fire roared into Colorado Springs. Fortunately, the two of them were allowed to return to their home yesterday, Hatfield says.

As Crouse was flooded with emotion, a celebration broke out in the courtroom among his supporters, with Hatfield decrying the resources wasted by targeting a cancer patient simply trying to follow his doctor's recommendation.

Indeed, May's office has been on quite the losing streak when it comes to high-profile marijuana prosecutions.

Page down to read more about Bob Crouse's acquittal and see a video shot after the verdict.