SUPPORTERS ARE GRIM AS CHAVEZ LED AWAY TO JAIL

Marvin Chavez grimaced as his arms were pulled behind him. Handcuffs
clicked closed around his wrists.

And as bailiffs led him away to jail Friday, the last thing his army
of ardent supporters saw were Chavez's hands, hanging beneath the
awkward outline of his back brace.

Sobbing, Andrea Nagy crumpled into the arms of a friend. "There is no
justice! No good deed goes unpunished!" yelled David Zink.

"Totally wrong," said Jack Shachter, grimly shaking his head. "Totally
wrong."

Chavez, founder of Orange County's medical marijuana co-op, was
sentenced to six years in state prison for selling pot to undercover
officers posing as medical patients, and for mailing pot to a cancer
patient. Chavez's past had come back to haunt him, and numerous
tearful appeals did not convince Judge Thomas Borris to grant Chavez
probation, or to allow Chavez the shield he insists he has under
Proposition 215, a ballot initiative that legalized marijuana for
medical use.

"It's harshly unjust," said J. David Nick, one of Chavez's attorneys,
likening Chavez to Jean Valjean, the hero of Victor Hugo's "Les
Miserables." "It's persecution after persecution. We will appeal."

The grounds: Judge Borris did not allow Chavez to mount a defense
under Prop. 215, the medical marijuana initiative approved in 1996.

Chavez, who suffers from severe back pain, began crusading for Prop.
215 months before it passed. After its victory, he founded the co-op,
got a business license and worked to familiarize people with the new
law.

But Chavez's understanding was apparently wrong. When officers posing
as patients came to him for pot, complaining of pain, Chavez gave them
"medicine" in exchange for "donations."

That, prosecutor Carl Armbrust successfully argued to the jury, is a
marijuana sale.

"While a law has been passed that people in need of marijuana can
possess, and use, and cultivate marijuana, there is no law that says
people can sell marijuana," he said.

In arguing for prison rather than probation, Armbrust brought up
Chavez's arrest record, which dates back more than 20 years. In the
1970s, Chavez twice was arrested on suspicion of carrying a loaded
firearm in public.

In the 1980s, he was convicted of cocaine possession and sent to a
drug diversion program, which he didn't complete. In the 1990s he was
arrested for cocaine trafficking. Though not convicted, the arrest
landed him to prison for two years based on conditions of the earlier
conviction.

After his arrest for selling marijuana last year, Chavez promised a
judge he would stop distributing is, and was released. Shortly
afterward, Chavez mailed pot to a patient in Chino. That broken
promise weighed on the judge's decision.

"The defendant's record does indicate a pattern of increasingly
serious conduct," Borris said. "Probation is not appropriate in this
case."

While Armbrust said Chavez is nothing more than a sophisticated street
dealer using Prop. 215 as a front, Chavez's friends say nothing could
be further from the truth.

"Marvin's intention was always to help people who were in pain," said
his mother, Ruby Harbaugh.

Confusion about how to implement Prop. 215 is still rampant in
California. Many cannabis clubs have been shut down in Northern
California, and many local authorities do not agree on
interpretation.

A local police officer who stole drugs recently received just a
one-year sentence, said Julie Ireland, a former Los Angeles police
officer. Chavez helped Ireland's husband and son, both terminal cancer
patients. "This case should have never gone to trial," she said.