Cannabis Warrior of the Month - Bryan Epis

[User]

Bryan Epis learned about the medical value of marijuana when he found it treated chronic upper back and neck pain from a near-fatal car accident in which he fractured two vertebrae.

After California voters passed Proposition 215 in 1996, Epis saw an opportunity to provide a service to patients like himself, and created the Chico Medical Marijuana Caregivers dispensary. Forty patients — all of whom were carefully screened — were served by the dispensary, and Epis personally provided money for five low-income patients' medical bills. Epis was in the process of starting another dispensary in San Jose when the federal government arrested him.

Epis was charged with — and ultimately convicted of — conspiracy to manufacture more than 1,000 marijuana plants. He was growing far fewer, but prosecutors used unrelated documents from his computer to suggest that he had plans to grow more.

At trial, U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell, Jr., refused to allow any mention of California's medical marijuana law or that the marijuana was for medical purposes. Like all federal juries, even in states with medical marijuana laws, Epis' jury was instructed to disregard any references to the medical circumstances that witnesses attempted to mention. The jury had no choice but to convict Epis for the hypothetical 1,000 plants that he allegedly was going to grow.

Despite rallies on the courthouse steps by dozens of supporters and numerous letters to the judge requesting leniency, Epis was sentenced on October 7, 2002, to a mandatory minimum term of 10 years in federal prison. Afterward, members of the jury said they had no idea that such a stiff sentence might be imposed, and would have voted differently had they known. Epis is the first California medical marijuana patient convicted under federal law.

While Epis was in prison, the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal government has no constitutional authority to regulate or prohibit medical marijuana activities that are purely intrastate in nature. The ruling protected patients in every medical marijuana state under the Ninth Circuit's purview — Alaska, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington.

While the case — later known as Gonzales v. Raich — was on appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, Epis was freed on appeal and reunited with his daughter on August 9, 2004. Nine-year-old Ashley had appeared on a series of billboards highlighting the injustice of her father's conviction and incarceration.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to allow federal interference in intrastate medical marijuana activity in June 2005, Epis must now ask for a reduction in his sentence or finish his sentence, which ends in 2010.