MEDICINAL-POT ADVOCATE GETS PRISON TERM

Co-op founder convicted of selling, mailing marijuana

WESTMINSTER (AP) -- The founder of an Orange County medicinal marijuana
co-op was sentenced Friday to six years in state prison for selling
marijuana to undercover police and mailing pot to a cancer patient.

Asking for lenience, Marvin Chavez, 42, described himself as a casualty of
the war on drugs, using marijuana to ease the pain of an old back injury
and supplying it without profit to people for therapeutic use.

``His motivation is to help others in pain,'' said defense attorney J.
David Nick, who added he would appeal.

Citing two previous firearms violations and a conviction for selling
cocaine in the late 1980s, prosecutor Carl Armbrust called Chavez ``a dope
dealer, pure and simple.''

Chavez faced a maximum sentence of eight years for three felony marijuana
convictions: two of sale and one of transport.

Nick said Chavez gave marijuana to cancer sufferers, AIDS patients and
others in need, accepting only voluntary donations in return.

Immediately remanded into custody by Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Borris,
Chavez winced as a bailiff cuffed his hands behind the back brace that
protruded under his sport coat.

Proposition 215, passed in 1996, legalized the possession, cultivation and
use of cannabis for medicinal purposes, but not its sale. Prosecutions have
been handled in various ways. Several issues are pending on appeal.

Chavez mentioned friends who have been arrested and patients who have died
in pain, calling them casualties in the war on drugs. David Herrick, a
retired San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy who volunteered at the
co-op, was sentenced in July to four years in prison.

Armbrust acknowledged that Chavez gave away marijuana, but said he did it
only as a come-on for customers.

Chavez said he was trying to create a legal ``white market'' because the
clandestine leaf was so expensive.

About 20 Chavez supporters were in court, many sporting marijuana-leaf pins
and shirts. Their grumbles rose as Armbrust, who retired after the trial
and returned to work only for sentencing, excoriated Chavez.

Nick compared Armbrust to Javert, the obsessed policeman who hounds the
protagonist through life in Victor Hugo's ``Les Miserables.''