CASE MAY TEST COSTA RICA DRUG LAW

Former County Resident Facing 15 Years in Prison for Growing 12 Pot Plants

His romance with Costa Rica started budding when he was barely out of high
school.

White sand beaches, sapphire water and a steady march of waves conspired to
steal Andy Seidensticker from his hometown San Diego. His ventures south
grew more frequent and prolonged.

By the mid-1990s, the Poway High School graduate was living year-round in a
remote beach village called Mal Pais and running his surf shop with a
friend from California.

He rode waves every chance he got. He married his girlfriend, and they had
a baby daughter.

Life was bountiful for the U.S. expatriate, until police following an
anonymous tip showed up at his home in February and arrested Seidensticker
and his wife, Edith, on suspicion of illegal cultivation of 12 marijuana
plants.

Him, they took away to Robles Prison in Puntarenas, nearly a day's travel
from their hamlet. Her, they arrested but released on bail after several
days because she is a citizen of Costa Rica.

Now Seidensticker, 32, is facing up to 15 years in prison under a strict
drug law that went into effect weeks before his arrest. After more than
eight months behind bars, Seidensticker is scheduled to make his first
appearance in a Costa Rican court today.

"His spirits are really good, although once in a while he gets down," said
his father, Steve Seidensticker, a North Park engineer who has spent most
of this year trying to untangle his son's legal problems.

"He's terribly frustrated by the inability of his lawyers to do anything,"
Steve Seidensticker said.

There is little doubt Andy Seidensticker is guilty. He admitted as much to
police. But until early this year, growing a few marijuana plants was not a
crime in Costa Rica.

Agents found the plants at the beach house Seidensticker shared with his
wife and 4-year-old daughter, Clarissa. The plants yielded 61 grams of
marijuana, just more than two ounces.

Steve Seidensticker said that just before his son's arrest, Andy had
complained to police about a neighborhood thief. He thinks the call leading
officers to his son's house might have come from that man.

The arrest raises questions about how small-time drug users are punished in
the Central American nation, and it may become a test case for the new law.
It also attracted the attention of a San Diego congressman, who asked the
president of Costa Rica to show leniency to Seidensticker.

No one from the Costa Rican embassy in Washington, D.C., or at government
offices in the capital of San Jose or in Puntarenas would discuss the case.
Repeated calls and e-mail messages to multiple departments were not returned.

Tough Terms

Costa Rica's Illegal Substances Act was designed to combat trafficking and
money laundering, rather than simple drug possession. Adopted last December
under pressure from the United States, it makes no distinction between
marijuana, cocaine, heroin or other narcotics.

Nor does the law take into account the amount of drugs a person might
possess, or even whether a suspect is accused of manufacturing or selling
such banned substances.

Until Jan. 11, when the legislation took effect, growing a small number of
marijuana plants for personal use was not illegal, defense attorney
Mauricio Brenes said.

Brenes said the punishment his client is facing far outweighs the crime.
For example, kidnapping can rate a prison term as short as six months and
rape is punishable by as few as two years in custody, he said.

"A person holding one ton of coke should not be judged under the same rules
as one who holds 61 grams of marijuana. . . . It is obvious to me that Andy
is going to be a guinea pig in the practical application of this law."

So far, claims from Brenes that the law is unconstitutional have not
worked. The court also refused to hear arguments that the search was
illegal or that Seidensticker was denied an interpreter at the time of his
arrest.

Officials from the U.S. Embassy in San Jose have visited Seidensticker
three times. Beyond seeing that he is adequately cared for, there is little
they can do.

An embassy spokeswoman declined to discuss the case because Seidensticker
has not signed a privacy waiver. But she said the Costa Rican government is
ratcheting up prosecutions on drug violators.

"Costa Ricans have made it a priority to work on counter-drug-trafficking
issues," said Marcia Bosshardt of the U.S. Embassy in San Jose. "They're
working to make those laws effective."

There are 45 other Americans in Costa Rican prisons, Bosshardt said, 31 on
drug charges. It was unclear how many of those are serving time for
possession rather than trafficking. About 500,000 Americans visit the
country every year, and between 25,000 and 35,000 live permanently in a
nation of 4 million people, one of the more stable and democratic
governments in Central America.

Just as in the United States, marijuana and cocaine are widely available in
Costa Rica and widely used, residents and tourists say.

Only rarely have users or small-scale growers such as Seidensticker been
charged, said David Boddiger, a Chicago native who has worked as a reporter
at the Tico Times newspaper in San Jose for more than a year.

"It is common to see people smoking marijuana on the beach, in parks, in
the street, outside bars, etc.," Boddiger said in an e-mail interview. "It
is difficult to determine where police officers and the police force in
general will draw the line in such a gray area."

By The Numbers

According to the Organization of American States, a coalition of Western
Hemisphere governments that deals in trade, human rights and other issues,
Costa Rica made 4,953 arrests on drug trafficking and possession charges in
2000, the most recent year for which statistics are available.

That was a major increase over the previous year, when 848 people faced
drug charges. Through the 1990s, the number of drug arrests regularly
hovered in the hundreds.

Government leaders began debating the stiffer drug law in early 2000, in
part due to pressure from the United States, which spends more than $8
million a year to finance the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission.

With a goal of eliminating drug trafficking, the commission of 34 member
nations works under the Organization of American States but is an
independent agency. The United States is by far its biggest financial
supporter.

In debate before passage of the Costa Rican law, legislator Otto Guevara
complained about the disparity in prison terms. Three times he tried to
lessen sentences for casual users but failed.

"We don't want to send a message to the international community that Costa
Rica is not fighting against drugs," lawmaker Carlos Vargas Pagan
responded, according to congressional records.

Tom Riley of the Office of National Drug Control Policy in Washington,
D.C., declined to discuss the Seidensticker case. He downplayed any role
the United States might have had in Costa Rica's decision to arrest
low-level drug users.

"I don't think there's any effort from the United States to tell Costa Rica
to arrest people growing small quantities of marijuana," Riley said. "There
is an organizing effort in the hemisphere to work together on these drug
issues. Drugs don't respect borders."

U.S. Rep. Bob Filner called Seidensticker's possible 15-year sentence "a
great injustice." Filner wrote letters to the president of Costa Rica and
to the U.S. ambassador appealing for leniency and intervention, so far to
no avail.

"There is no evidence that (the Seidenstickers) sold, bought or traded
marijuana," Filner wrote to President Abel Pacheco in August. "They are not
and never have been drug dealers."

Filner received no response from the Costa Rican leader, and a September
letter from Ambassador John J. Danilovich said there was nothing he could
do to secure Seidensticker's release or even to expedite a trial.

Three times in the past months, Seidensticker has been told he would likely
be released, either on bail or outright. Each time, the reports proved
groundless.

"It would be great to have him back," said Aaron Abernathy, a transplant
from Morro Bay who co-owns the Corduroy to the Horizon surf shop with
Seidensticker. "He taught me everything I know."