SAN FRANCISCO – The first medical marijuana patient convicted in federal court after the passage of California’s Proposition 215 won a victory before an appeals court today. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit today sent his case back to the District Court for reconsideration of his conviction and, at the least, re-sentencing.

 

Bryan James Epis, 37, is currently serving a ten-year sentence for providing medical marijuana to other patients. His attorney had argued that his 2002 conviction for conspiring to grow medical marijuana was not only unconstitutional but based on misconduct by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Sacramento.

 

The appeals court today said that if the Supreme Court upholds the Ninth Circuit’s ruling in Raich v. Ashcroft, which established a medical exception to the federal prohibition on marijuana, then his conviction should be reconsidered in light of that by the district court. The appeals court said further that if any portion of his conviction remains intact, he must be re-sentenced according to the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Blakely v. Washington, which found that juries, not judges, should determine sentencing.

"Bryan Epis deserves his freedom now," said Steph Sherer, Executive Director of the medical marijuana advocacy group Americasn for Safe Access. "He should not have to spend another day in prison waiting for the courts to resolve this."

In the Raich case, which Epis' attorney says is similar, the appellate court found that so long as patients obtain their cannabis without buying it or crossing state borders and use it medicinally in compliance with state law, the federal government cannot legally interfere.

 

Appeals attorney Brenda Grantland said she would be filing a motion to win Mr. Epis’s release on bail pending sentencing, as a decision from the Supreme Court on Raich is not expected until this winter and may not come until next June. Mr. Epis has already served two years in federal prison at Terminal Island.

 

Mr. Epis was arrested June 25, 1997, after Butte County sheriff's officers discovered marijuana plants growing in the basement of his home in Chico. Since his conviction, his case has been cited nationwide in news articles, columns and editorials as a prime example of the injustice of trying medical marijuana patients and caregivers under a federal drug-trafficking law. During the high-profile medical marijuana trial of Ed Rosenthal in 2003, advocacy groups put up billboards in the San Francisco Bay Area urging “compassion not federal prison” with an image of Mr. Epis’s 10-year-old daughter, Ashley, holding a sign saying, “My dad is not a criminal.”

 

Ashley Epis and her mother, Cheryl Parker, returned home today from a week-long tour of Florida, where they and national leaders from Americans for Safe Access met with local activists and lawmakers urging an end to the arrest of patients and caregivers.

 

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For interviews or more information, contact William Dolphin at (510) 919-1498. A national coalition of 10,000 patients, doctors and advocates, Americans for Safe Access is the largest organization working solely on medical marijuana.