LODE JUDGE DISQUALIFIED FROM POT PREACHERS' CASE

SAN ANDREAS -- A Calaveras County Superior Court judge who accepted and
then rejected a plea-bargain agreement for two Wallace ministers accused of
cultivating marijuana is off the case.

The district attorney's office filed a motion to disqualify Judge Douglas
Mewhinney from the case involving Ricky Dewayne Garner, 43, and Sue Melinda
Garner, 40, both ministers of the Northern Lights Church.

The prosecution and defense can file such motions to disqualify one judge
each, and both county judges -- Mewhinney and John Martin -- have been
disqualified from the Garner case.

Assigned Judge Duane Martin presided over a hearing for the Garners on
Tuesday. They are scheduled to go to trial Sept. 19 on the cultivation charge.

The Garners had their property raided in August by sheriff's deputies who
found 290 marijuana plants and seized weapons, smoking pipes, growing
equipment, church documents and doctors' recommendations for
medicinal-marijuana use.

The Garners were not hiding their growing operation and said they were
cultivating it for their own medicinal use and for 16 other people who had
a legal right to the drug under Proposition 215.

The Garners eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of possessing
more than an ounce of marijuana as part of a plea-bargain that Mewhinney
endorsed.

But the terms and conditions of probation called for the Garners to abide
by medical-marijuana guidelines the county Board of Supervisors adopted
last year, guidelines that allow for six marijuana plants and 2 pounds for
each person who has a doctor's recommendation for medicinal-marijuana use.

A day after approving the plea bargain, Mewhinney called the Garners'
attorneys and Seth Matthews, a deputy district attorney, and said he feared
the probation terms he approved were illegal in light of the U.S. Supreme
Court's ruling on the Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative case.

Mewhinney last month ruled the probation terms indeed were illegal and
needed to be stricken, at which time the Garners withdrew their guilty
pleas and a new trial date was set.