Three Raids--Mendocino Style

During the Craver-Vroman era, "a working relationship" with the medical marijuana patient community was established and remained the stated goal until 2006 when Sheriff Tony Craver retired and DA Norm Vroman died. Under Vroman, the single jury trial of indicted medical marijuana patients--Kathy Honzik and Bill Matthews--never came to fruition because the case was dismissed after the Supreme Court issued People v Mower (2002) based on the following principle: People who use marijuana for medical purposes are "no more criminal than" (exactly equal to) people who use prescription medicines.

Vroman's goal of public policy trials--letting jurors decide the issues, then following their lead--was stopped dead in its tracks by Mower, which ruled that legal discrimination against cannabis patients had gone on long enough and reinstated the proper burden of proof--beyond a reasonable doubt rather than preponderance--that had been denied them since the law's passage in 1996. This meant that the prosecution had to disprove a medical claim beyond a reasonable doubt, making patients equal to murderers in a court of law.

The case against the PTSD-suffering Vietnam-era veteran Bill Mathews and his partner, growing 53 plants for 9 patients within state guidelines on their own land, should never have been brought. Mathews described being flown the year before with low-flying helicopters hovering over the garden. When they came back the next year in camo with rifles at the ready, door open, ready to land, Mathews thought, he mooned the hovering helicopter invading their space. Bill's defiant PTSD-driven action was not held against him as they garnered Medical Marijuana Patients Union court support and press coverage and drew head Public Defender Jeffrey Thoma into the case with written and oral arguments, delivered passionately and persuasively, in order to get the critical case dismissed. For that action alone, Thoma was worth his salt.

The Mower court affirmed due process and warned prosecutors about where not to tread or their cases would backfire. Vroman got the message and essentially gave up on his strategy of policy trials relieving him of the burden of deciding who to prosecute and by what criteria.

The current DA Meredith Lintott has a similar burden and has not carried it well. Hundreds of marijuana prosecutions are piling up like dead bodies--small gardens, medical grows, low hanging fruit, people easy to pick off--the poor, elderly and ill being special targets for arrest and prosecution. It is a roundup. Look at the victims.

In the past month alone, we have Philo residents 90-year old Lester "Smitty" Smith and his severely disabled wife Mary, 79, who is confined to a wheelchair or her recliner with crippling arthritis. Her medicine of choice is bud tea, which she says increases the mobility in her joints and her ability to move by herself. Both have medical approvals but their life savings of over $80,000 and 17 medical marijuana plants between them were illegally seized by sheriff's deputies, leaving them nothing, followed last week by the DA's belated filing of criminal charges against Smitty for cultivation and sales.

This over-charging is likely designed 1) to help coerce a guilty plea from the grandchildren in exchange for dropping charges against Smitty and 2) to justify the county's large confiscation of money, which is tied up until the case is resolved, gathering interest--$52,000 in Mary's inheritance, $28,000 in Smitty's CDs, cashed in due to fear of leaving his money in the bank. Both granddaughters who've gotten their children back unconditionally passed the Child Protective Services test but have nonetheless had cultivation, sales and child endangerment charges filed against them.

One granddaughter, Yolanda Mabery, said she fears "the stress of a prosecution will kill my granpa". Smitty's heart is giving out; he has already suffered one heart attack, and more recently, she said, a small stroke. As a former Navy gunner in the Pacific during WWII, accustomed to being able-bodied, he complained to me that he had worked watering logging roads in the woods and that now he can no longer do that. "I couldn't even dig the holes for my plants. I'm that bad off."

Yolanda went on to say, "If they kill my granpa, I will file a wrongful death lawsuit. I believe what they did was illegal."

These are glimpses into Lintott's charging decisions as DA, largely petty marijuana cases, while leaving the large commercial profiteers in tact.

A Caspar marijuana raid last week reaped peace and environmental activist Zac Zachary and his brother Mel and his wife Rachel. The land, the garden, money and guns all belonged to Mel Zachary, who was originally held on the astronomical bail of $250,000.

Zac who was living separately was apparently not involved in the garden but was swept up in the raid and is being held in a separate case on $75,000 bail. Zac's hearing to lower bail or grant OR is set for Thursday morning (10.30.08) in Ukiah.

Mel Zachary is said to have had a doctor's recommendation for his legal medical garden. My understanding is that he had under 20 "mature flowering female" plants. One may wonder why he was arrested at all, since that meets the definition of a small garden for personal medical use. The 100 and/or 300 plant numbers originally reported by the sheriff's office were merely starts, i.e., babies, not "mature flowering females", which is the definition of what qualifies as medicine under law (Senate Bill 420) and the only thing that can be counted as plants for prosecution purposes.

The source of the raid may be California Department of Fire. Zac had reported seeing CDF officials inspecting his brother's property a few days before the raid. They saw a marijuana garden and reported it, without regard to its medical purpose. I have heard about this new twist from lawyers whose clients are coming in with the same CDF story, resulting in their arrest. This surely cannot be legal.

Aside from the wildly prejudicial early accounts of the raid on Zac, Mel and Rachel--hundreds of plants, 11 guns, $38,000, $250,000 bail, designed to paint a prejudicial picture and to make it look like a big commercial grow--this appears to be a legitimate medical marijuana garden by the community's own standards. The guns were explained by Bernie McDonald of the newly formed Zac Zachary Defense Committee: "It's a hunting family. They were all rifles or other hunting guns." Mel's cash has been explained as legitimate savings earned over years, not "drug money".

The Zac Zachary Defense Committee is offering court support and fund-raising for legal counsel. Info will be available at Corners of the Mouth Natural Food Coop in Mendocino where Zac is employed as a collective member at $10 an hour.

There has been a huge law enforcement miscalculation in the case of Zac Zachary, a community-minded icon, a frugal person of integrity and hard work and principles he lives by. He is saving the community money by not bailing out, but rather waiting in jail an extra week for OR to be granted. Every year he is a central part of the Martin Luther King memorial march down Highway 1, affirming civil rights. He is known for consistent work on behalf of veterans, peace and environmental protection. He is currently one of 40 co-founders of the newly formed Ocean Protection Coalition, envisioning a future ocean research center at the millsite and a perpetually protected ocean.

There's another example of low-hanging fruit: Lillian Frazier, 71, Secretary-Treasurer of the Cahto tribe, was arrested for marijuana cultivation. If anyone knows anything about this, please call 707.964.9377 or post it on the ListServes.

Elderly people are far from exempt from law enforcement intrusions. If anything, there appears to be a pattern of abuse toward low-hanging fruit with our elders who rely on medical marijuana being among the most vulnerable.

What is happening in Mendo county under the Allman-Lintott team is a result of law enforcement being out of touch with the citizenry. Sheriff Tom Allman has abandoned Sheriff Craver's written instructions to deputies and acknowledges that he no longer trains them in medical marijuana guidelines. We are in a period of limbo, when all numerical limits have been voided while the Supreme Court reviews the Kelly case. It is the wild wild west in the interim with law enforcement left to its own devices with a menu of options to harass people with while we wait for Supreme Court guidance sometime next year.

The broader medical marijuana community will turn to the voters at a future ballot for their take on guidelines and regulation procedures we can all live with.


See also "Marijuana Raid on long-time peace activist Zach Zachary" at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/10/26/18546790.php

Pebbles Trippet is Secretary of the Mendocino Medical Marijuana Advisory Board and a member of the Patient Innocence Project. She can be phoned at 707.964.9377, snailmailed at PO Box 2555 Mendocino 95460, and e-mailed at pebblestrippet [at] sbcglobal.net