A POT PROFESSOR'S DAY IN COURT

BELLEFONTE, Pa.--Centre County President Judge Charles Brown paused,
delicately felt around for the right touch of understatement, then
told jurors in his courtroom yesterday they were hearing "a rather
unusual case."

He expected something different?

The man on trial was Julian Heicklen, retired Penn State University
chemistry professor--a man so incensed by marijuana laws that he
repeatedly showed up at the campus gate last winter, smoked joints and
preached individual rights to lunchtime crowds.

When police balked at arresting him, Heicklen decided to stop back
weekly and light up until they did.

And they did--four times, for possessing small amounts of
marijuana.

So, yesterday was his day in court. And for Heicklen, it was
showtime.

This was Julian Heicklen, 66-year-old iconoclast, social activist
since adolescence, a gradual convert from liberalism to
libertarianism.

On his suit lapel, this lanky, gray-haired man wore a baseball-size
button emblazoned with a marijuana leaf and the words, "Free Julian
Heicklen."

He stood at the defense table, microphone in hand, and called Brown
"an inveterate liar."

He brandished sticks and Styrofoam balls, fashioned into 2-foot
replicas of the molecules of marijuana's active ingredient--and
quizzed a state police chemist until Brown ordered the models put away.

"This is a political trial. The state is trying to punish me for
exercising my God-given right to own a vegetable," Heicklen told
jurors. "Your decision will influence the future of this country,
whether we become a free country or continue to live in tyranny."

It took them 25 minutes.

They found him guilty.

Heicklen warned jurors he was an old man who could be headed to
prison.

Brown fined him $2,000 and put him on 120 days probation.

"This is the most trivial, minor charge you can be charged with,"
Assistant District Attorney Stephen Sloane told jurors. "The
commonwealth doesn't want that man in jail."

At least for now.

Fresh from telling jurors that he spent nine months and $10,000 on his
fight, Heicklen pledged to appeal.

And sometime between now and December, he's supposed to go to trial
again-- this time for smoking marijuana during a protest on the
courthouse steps.

The thing of it is, Heicklen says he doesn't even like marijuana, and
he doesn't really fathom any of this hullabaloo about getting high.

He told jurors that around marijuana he is a prime "Bogarter"--a la
Humphrey Bogart, waving his cigarettes more than smoking them. And he
lights up only at protests, he said.

"You have the right to do stupid things as long as you don't hurt
anybody else," Heicklen said. "Marijuana isn't the message. It's the
messenger."

Heicklen is an internationally known chemist, a world-class bridge
player, and, Rabbi Jonathan Brown of State College told the jury, an
honest guy who oversees his congregation's cemetery committee and
sometimes conducts services.

He's also a lifelong activist, with civil disobedience dating back to
an arrest at a civil rights sit-in in California three decades ago.

So when Heicklen deemed marijuana laws an evil that were glutting the
prison systems, be brought together his own band of libertarians with
foes of marijuana laws.

In court, Heicklen had an entourage of about a dozen supporters, most
of them near college age.

He also had the guts--if that's what it was--to confine two lawyers to
the status of unofficial advisers and argue his case himself, often
fumbling his way through courtroom procedure.

What Heicklen lacked in gloss, though, he made up for in
brass.

When Brown decided Heicklen was getting windy and told him to end his
questioning, Heicklen snapped, "This is a court proceeding. It isn't a
timed event."

When it was over yesterday, Heicklen hardly seemed fazed--albeit just
a trifle more cautious.

"The smokeouts will continue," he pledged. "What my role is, that's up
in the air."

Checked-by: Patrick Henry