Eddy Lepp's arraignment and bail hearing will take place on Wednesday morning (February 23rd) at 9:30am. Read more
February 17th, 2005: Eddy Lepp and Daniel Barnes were arraigned today in Federal District Court in San Francisco. They were arrested at Lepp's home in Lake County yesterday. Mary Otte and documentary filmmaker Jason Dunlap were also arrested during the early morning raid on Lepp's house. Dunlap and Otte were later released, but the DEA seized all of the footage of Dunlap's planned documentary on Lepp. Lepp and Barnes were charged with distribution of marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana and maintaining a premise for the purpose of cultivating marijuana.

The DEA alleges that an undercover DEA Task Force Officer met with Lepp on January 19, 2005 and negotiated the purchase of one pound of dried and processed marijuana. The criminal complaint states that Lepp agreed to sell "the one pound of high THC marijuana" for $2,500. Barnes, allegedly acted as a go-between delivering the one pound of marijuana to the undercover officer and taking receipt of the $2,500. "At no point during the negotiations was the subject of 'medical' marijuana raised by either party," the DEA says. Read more

Eddy is a medical marijuana farmer, minister, and caregiver through his organization Eddy's Medicinal Gardens. California's regulations related to medical marijuana say that laws that prohibit the possession of marijuana, and the cultivation of marijuana, will not "apply to a patient, or to a patient's primary caregiver, who possesses or cultivates marijuana for the personal medical purposes of the patient upon the written or oral recommendation or approval of a physician," and that a patient or primary caregiver cannot be arrested for maintaining six or fewer mature or 12 or fewer immature marijuana plants per person with an identification card. Info about Eddy's 2004 arrest Read more on Indybay's Drug War Page