'Cannabis Minister' Testifies

[Jim Finnel]

The fate of a woman who claims marijuana is a sacrament of her religion and that growing and smoking it is her constitutional right is now in the hands of a jury.

Nancy Harris, a self-described "cannabis minister," faces a possible 20 years in prison if convicted of first-degree commercial promotion of marijuana. She's also charged with first-degree promotion of a detrimental drug and possession of drug paraphernalia.

Harris took the stand in her own defense Wednesday and argued that the Sacred Truth Mission, which she incorporated in Arkansas before moving to the Big Island, was shielded from marijuana laws by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993, which has since been found unconstitutional, and the U.S. Supreme Court's 2006 O Centro Espirita decision, which upheld a lower court's ruling that the government failed to demonstrate a compelling interest in barring a church's sacramental use of hoasca, a hallucinogenic beverage.

"That decision reaffirms the rights of churches that use substances that are otherwise prohibited," Harris testified.

Hilo Circuit Judge Glenn Hara told the jury it can't consider Harris' interpretation of the law as evidence. With the jury out of the courtroom, Harris' lead counsel, Paul Sulla, argued his client is provided a defense by a state law covering defendants who believe their conduct "was not legally prohibited when the defendant acts in reasonable reliance upon an official statement of the law, afterward determined to be invalid or erroneous. ..."

"The court sees no proffered official statement of law indicating that under the circumstances that cultivation or possession of marijuana or possession of drug paraphernalia was legal if it was used in conjunction with a religious practice," the judge said.

Harris testified that before moving to the Big Island, she visted in the winter of 2002 to investigate the state of religious freedom on the Big Island. She said she met with cannabis ministers Roger Christie, who's currently jailed without bail pending trial on federal marijuana charges, and Dennis Shields, who was sentenced to 90 days in jail in 1997 after being convicted by a Kona jury on a misdemeanor marijuana charge. Harris said that while here she "learned that persecution was nowhere as difficult as the persecution in Arkansas, and ... that people here did not look at my mixed-race family with disdain like they did in Arkansas."

Harris claimed that on Dec. 17, 2006, about three months before her Hawaiian Acres property was raided by police, she was robbed at gunpoint of marijuana and a television by three men who pulled into her driveway in a car with "two blue lights installed in the hood area, one on each side."

"I saw what looked to me like a big gun," she said. Harris said she followed the robbers' instructions to get on the ground and then "prayed very loudly."

Harris said she didn't report the robbery to police "because I didn't want to get robbed a second time." She said she moved out of the property and in with her boyfriend, Kenneth Miyamoto-Slaughter, in Fern Forest.

"Did you ever tell the news media that you were robbed by rogue cops?" asked Deputy Prosecutor Rick Damerville.

"I don't know, did I?" Harris replied.

A June 2009 Stephens Media article quotes Harris as saying police who raided the mission on Feb. 15, 2007, "were probably rogue cops."

"They would have probably robbed and left if we had not called 911," Harris said at the time. "So, when the cop showed up after the 911 call, they went to get a search warrant after the fact, so to speak. We have been trying to prove that they weren't behaving in a normal police manner."

Harris testified that several people, including her son and two of Miyamoto-Slaughter's daughters, lived at the mission after she moved out but she told them not to grow marijuana.

"You took things out of the greenhouse, the parsonage at the end of 2006. Did you grow elsewhere at that time?" Sulla inquired.

"I did not," Harris said.

NewsHawk: Jim Behr: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: hawaiitribune-herald.com
Author: John Burnett
Copyright: Hawaii Tribune-Herald
Contact: Contact us | Hawaii Tribune Herald
Website: 'Cannabis minister' testifies | Hawaii Tribune Herald

 

[RoguePoet]

the closing arguments were made, the final instructions were given to the jury...they were sent to the deliberation room at 4:21pm to select a chairperson, and then dismissed. They will begin deliberations at 9am on Friday morning.

Send your thoughts and prayers to Rev Nancy, and the jury, and pray for "not guilty"

 

[RaysDad]

This lady is a nut!!! What does she have to do with MMJ??? NOTHING Most people who I know that live on the big island say that her church is just a cover for a group of old time stoners,I don't say that is bad at all but getting stoned and tripping out isn't a legal form of religion in Hawaii or anywhere in our country. on her trial. RD

 

[demp5294]

This lady is a nut!!! What does she have to do with MMJ??? NOTHING Most people who I know that live on the big island say that her church is just a cover for a group of old time stoners,I don't say that is bad at all but getting stoned and tripping out isn't a legal form of religion in Hawaii or anywhere in our country. on her trial. RD

To be against an unjust law is always seen as nuts. I don't believe in religion but thier is no proof about any of them so what's the difference so how are any of them right. FREEDOM

 

[RaysDad]

To be against an unjust law is always seen as nuts. I don't believe in religion but thier is no proof about any of them so what's the difference so how are any of them right. FREEDOM

Hawaii is a MMJ State this lady and her little group are way overstepping there bounds and making it miserable for the locals who abide by the law. This has nothing to do about freedom unless you come to realize that she is posing a threat by her arousing the straight community to give second thoughts to allowing small grows by MMJ patients and there caregivers. RD

 

[Brinna]

Hawaii is a MMJ State this lady and her little group are way overstepping there bounds and making it miserable for the locals who abide by the law. This has nothing to do about freedom unless you come to realize that she is posing a threat by her arousing the straight community to give second thoughts to allowing small grows by MMJ patients and there caregivers. RD

I understand your point of view. What I do see is that we who recognize the beauty and the benefits of this plant would be stronger collectively, rather than disagreeing with each other. I would like to see an alliance between the promoters of industrial hemp, medical marijuana users, and advocates for marijuana as recreational tool, and those who hold it as a sacrament, with everyone working together.

I have seen that hemp people often want to distance themselves from the "marijuana folk", the medical users often want to distance themselves from the recreational users, and almost everyone looks at sacramental users as…well…I think "nutters" was the term you used.

But the fact that the plant speaks to all of us with such widely varying agendas and needs kind of suggests that this is, how would you say it, some kind of holy herb.

 

[THsea]

I feel ya RD, while I think she is a nutter... She does have the right to grow. Just not legally!! I'm not religious myself, but others right to belief is just as valid as my own right to dis-belief! So I try to respect everyone's koo-koo ways hoping they will accept my koo-koo ways

While I sometimes feel other cannabis movements (other than Medical) are detrimental to the Medical movement (which I think is where RD may have been going)... I cannot help respecting when these people say they do it for religion, and do not muddy our waters by jumping to medical claim or anything. Stand up for your rights!

I really think if its legal for a religion, it should be legal for everyone. I don't know. I'm going to stop thinking and have a smoke. This ones for you, Rev Harris! Good luck and hopefully you are let off the hook!