SGT. NORTHCUTT'S POST-IRAQ NIGHTMARE:

GETTING ARRESTED FOR GROWING POT

Phillip Northcutt started legally cultivating medical marijuana to
deal with PTSD from fighting in the Iraq. It wasn't long before the
police and the courts caught up with him.

Phil Northcutt saw the map of Iraq on the wall and started recalling
his time there. He'd been stationed in Ramadi, Al Anbar Province, in 2004.

Phil Northcutt: There was this main street, 'Route Michigan,' like a
4-lane highway going through town with a 12-inch tall median painted
yellow and black. When we first got there you could see big holes in
the median. By the time we left, there was no median. It had been
blown up along six or seven miles of roadway...

There were two different kinds of fighters we engaged. When we first
got there it was like local fighters. You could tell. They were
wearing the man dresses and flip-flops and they had old rusty AKs.
They were like beat-up, ragged-out goat herders but with weapons.
They didn't use squad maneuvers, they didn't use military tactics, it
was a shoot and run kind of thing. And pretty much we killed all
those guys or they went away.

And then the second wave came in. These dudes were wearing brand new
Adidas, American jeans, they were wearing tactical rigs like American
contractors, baseball hats, sunglasses they looked like American contractors.

Fred Gardner: When did that second wave appear?

Northcutt: Let's see... I got there in late August or September...
That first wave lasted for three months and then it died down and
then we heard, "Guys are coming from Syria." Next thing you know
there were these new guys, and they operated in squads, it was
obvious they'd been trained. But they didn't have the logistical
support that we did ?supplies and weapons. So they didn't really last
long, either.

I think they decided "This coming out in the open stuff is not
working, let's hang back and let's do more IEDs and suicide bombs."
That's when things got really scary. More scary than guys shootin' at
you, now you've got people hiding and trying to blow you up.

We lost our commanding officer to a suicide car bomber like 1500
meters from the gate. Captain Patrick Rapicault, 34. Fucking solid
guy. One of the best officers I ever worked with in the Marine Corps.
He got killed when a VBIED [vehicle-borne improvised explosive
device] rammed vehicle Whiskey Six. Marc Ryan, 25, and Lance
Thompson, 21, were also killed. Ben Nelson was seriously wounded but survived.

The psychs came out to see us. They said "We're going to do a
screening of you guys. We want you guys to get help... They sent us
to the Battalion aid station, which was Udei Hussein's old guest
house. They had turned his main house into a helipad. They leveled it
with Cruise missiles and landed helicopters there. The took the guest
house and turned it into the Battalion CP [Command Post]. At the far
end of it was the armory and the medical building. So we went over
there and got interviewed by a Navy captain. That'd be a colonel in
the Marine Corps a full-bird captain. He said, "what you have is
called chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. It's a natural result
of you being in combat and seeing the things you've seen, blah blah blah."

Gardner: And the diagnosis was written down in your file but it
wasn't grounds for taking a leave or anything?

Northcutt: Not at all. They would have had to send half of everybody
home. And if everyone had told the truth, they would have had to
send everybody home. "Take these anti-depressants and get some sleep.
You'll be fine. Here's your M-16. Back to work!" And then we're out
on the front lines.

Gardner: They gave anti-depressants to everybody in the company?

Northcutt: All the guys who didn't lie. The questions were, "Are you
having nightmares?" Fuck yes. Are you kidding me? Do you know what I
saw yesterday? "Are you having intrusive thoughts?" Yes. Fucking of
course. They went through this whole series of questions that
obviously, if you're in combat and you're being honest, the answer is
"yes" to all of them.

But a lot of guys say, "Well you just gotta suck it up. You're in the
Marine Corps." That's bullshit. Some of these guys are fucking
yelling in their sleep. And naturally everybody's so
hyper-fucking-vigilant that everybody wakes up. (softly) Oh, okay,
it's only Sergeant Tolson yelling in his sleep, okay, cool...
Sometimes we'd get woken up because fucking mortars would be hitting
next to the hooch and rocks would be crackling down on the roof. And
you'd just be laying there like "fuck, I think I'm still here," with
nothing but a tin roof over your head.

Basically our job was like, they would say, "Hey, there's an ambush
set up at checkpoint 295, you guys go check it out." Okay. We'll
check it out. We go there and see if they shoot at us. If they shoot
at us this is really the tactic! You've got bullets hitting around
you, concrete flying in your face... What can you do?

Northcutt is now 36. He joined the Marine Corps in 1998, after not
finding fulfillment as a music promoter (ska and punk bands) and
screen printer. He went through boot camp in San Diego, excelled, and
was made platoon guide (first in his unit). After School of Infantry
at Camp Pendleton he trained in "Military Operations, Urban Terrain"
at an off-the-map base in Virginia. He was stationed in idyllic
Iceland and the Hellish Mojave Desert, didn't see combat, and
finished his four-year tour without a scratch well before the US invaded Iraq.

In the spring of '04 he was about to start attending Santa Rosa
Junior College when he got a call: the Marine Corps was looking for
NCOs with his training to participate in the "combat casualty
replacement program."

Northcutt told them, "If you guys are looking for gate guards at Camp
Pendleton, forget it. But if a Marine can come home because I take
his place, then I'll do it." He says, "I was seeing Marines get
killed all the time on TV. And being a Marine I started to feel
guilty about it and take it personal."

He signed a one-year contract, supposedly non-renewable, and got
assigned to Two Five Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, the most
decorated unit in the USMC.

Northcutt: They put me in a regular weapons company, infantry unit.
We were replacing Two Four in Ramadi. They had seen more combat than
any unit since the Vietnam War. We got there and they're like "Thank
God you guys are here, we're going home!" A couple of them stayed
behind to show us around.

The first day out, all of a sudden wap ping ping poong "Ambush!
Ambush!" I start to dismount because that's what you're trained to do
when there's an ambush, dismount, spread out, and find the bad guys
and get 'em. "Negative! Negative! Don't dismount!" I'm just a
corporal. There's the vehicle commander and the patrol commander, a
lieutenant over me. "Stay in the vehicles. Button up." So we just sat
there taking hits. Ping ting toong ting. I'm like, this is fucking crazy.

Next thing you know a fucking football goes across the hood of the
Humvee but it's not a football, it's a fucking RPG! [Rocket-propelled
grenade]. I'm thinking "That could have hit this vehicle and we would
have gone up like a box of fireworks." So I'm like "why if we're not
dismounting don't we get out of the fucking kill zone?"

We sat there for what must have been a whole minute it seemed like a
whole hour just taking bullets. Nobody was shooting back because the
gunners were all down inside the fucking thing because they said
"button up." The sergeant sitting next to me and another sergeant in
the vehicle up in front are going "Get the fuck out of here. Get the
fuck out of here." Trying to get the point across on the radio to the
platoon commander.

Some lance corporal is driving but he's not doing shit until he gets
the word from the lieutenant up front who doesn't know what he's
doing, it's his first ambush. Finally he's like "Okay, let's go,
let's go" and we boned out.

We get back to the rear and I'm like "I am not going to die like
that. If I get killed, so be it. But I didn't come out here to do
some stupid shit and get killed." So I got together with the other
corporals and sergeants and I said, "We've got to talk to the
lieutenant, because if that shit happens tomorrow, some of us aren't
coming back."

So we got him and sat him down and said "look sir, I've made up a
little playbook. We should maybe come up with some basic maneuvers
for the different kinds of engagements me might be in. So we can
close with and destroy the enemy. That's how you win." He said, "You
gents are getting ahead of yourselves. We have to take baby steps here."

Baby steps? Well, he's the 'sir,' we do what he says, even if his
decisions are going to get people hurt. To the dude's credit, he got
his shit together later. But when he first got there, that first day,
what a clusterfuck. Looking back, I realize what a fucked-up job [the
lieutenant had]. I wouldn't want that job. Because you can't predict
what's going to happen, but you have to make decisions anyways. And
if you're making decisions in a combat zone, with combat troops,
undoubtedly some of your decisions are going to lead to people dying.
I think the dude was planning to pursue a Marine Corps career, but I
heard that he got out two years later.

Northcutt's unit lost 12 men and sent more than 150 home wounded. Up
close he saw men, women and children maimed and dead. He tried to
lift a dying friend whose shoulder "felt like raw hamburger." He was
wounded but stuck it out to the end of his tour.

Northcutt: I was on the 50-cal until I hurt my back. They mount these
things on a Humvee. Normally they have a traversing mechanism for
spinning the turret. But the turret is just a steel ring on top there
with a post for the 50 cal. Because of these IEDs [improvised
explosive devices] and snipers, they started bolting armor on the
top, on the sides, but it's not designed for that. The thing gets
turned into a Frankenstein. It's nothing like what it was designed to
be. They look ridiculous driving down the road.

With all that weight added, my 50 cal didn't have a traversing
mechanism on it. I had put one on there and was ordered to take it
off because I had stripped it off a damaged vehicle that had been
blown up and I wasn't authorized to do it. So I was ordered to remove
the part and put it back on the vehicle I had got it from. And I'm
like "that's bullshit, we're going out on patrols." And the staff
sergeant is like "just take it off."

A couple of weeks later I blew my back out and got Medi-vacced to
Baghdad. They're like, "You're going to Germany for an MRI because we
don't have that equipment here." I said, "I'm not going to Germany,
I've got a squad in Ramadi.'"

I knew that I could live with a physical injury and physical pain,
but I couldn't live with the guilt of thinking "Maybe I should have
gone back." What if your friends die and you're not there and you
think, "Well maybe I could have done something." I couldn't live with
that doubt. Of course I did nothing but complicate my injuries. My
guys helped me hide my injuries. They would carry the heavy equipment
to the Humvee.

Gardner: Are you in pain now?

Northcutt: I'm okay. Some days it hurts. It depends on how I
sleep. Sleeping on the floor is better than sleeping in a bed.
Cannabis helps. And it helps even more with anxiety.

Northcutt came back to Camp Pendleton April 1, 2005, and was put on
"medical hold" while the Marine Corps evaluated whether his back
injury qualified him for medical retirement.

Northcutt: The MRI showed that my L-4 and L-5 disks were bulging.
They were pinching my sciatic nerve and causing me severe pain down
to the back of my knees. They showed no interest in my PTSD, there
was never a word about TBI. Three years later a VA doctor in Martinez
diagnosed me with traumatic brain injury.

Gardner: How long were you on medical hold?

Northcutt: For a year. This is when they super-medicate me. I would
be given a grocery bag full of really heavy shit. Hydrocodones and
anti-depressants, Neurontin, Seroquel, anti-nightmare pills, half of
it you get really fucking high on. I'm not much of a pillbilly but
I've taken them all. And that is true of just about anyone I know who
went to Iraq and has come back. They're all pill experts. How the
fuck does that happen? You get back and they just like push 10 pills
on you right away.

Gardner: Were you dealing with Marine Corps doctors or the VA?

Northcutt: The Marine Corps. But I was also trying to deal with the
VA because they sent me home awaiting orders. I go to live at my
grandma's in Long Beach and I'm chilling in the guest house while I'm
waiting to get out of the Marine Corps. The VA Hospital is like a
mile from my house and Camp Pendleton is two hours away in traffic.
I'm drugged out all day long and they're like, "You've got
appointments on this day at Camp Pendleton." I would just lie in bed
all day, loaded. Totally fucked up. But it was cool because a doctor
prescribed it.

The VA tells me, "you're active duty, we can't treat you." So I'd go
to the appointments at Camp Pendleton sometimes and I'm telling these
people, "you don't understand. I have waking nightmares. I sleep with
a gun under my pillow." When I first got home I'd sleep for one or
two hours a night. I'd be like I'm here with you and we'd be talking
and (as if dozing off). And an hour later (as if startled awake)
"Where am I? Where are my Marines? Where is my weapon?" First thing
that comes to my head. And then it would be like: "This is not a
dream. This is not Iraq." It's weird because your brain goes [sound
of a car accelerating] and then it comes back. A lot of people
haven't been exposed to severe stress and don't understand that
severe stress makes your brain do weird shit. I knew something was
wrong with my head but I couldn't get help.

Gardner: Did you ask to be tested for brain injury?

Northcutt: No. I was not even thinking about it. And nobody asked me
how many times I'd been near things blowing up, or how close, or
anything like that. The help I needed was not pills but fucking
counseling. I needed people who knew what the fuck PTSD was and could
tell me: "Your life's going to change in this way." Nobody there
knew. We were like the first bunch of guys to really come back from
heavy combat in Iraq. They may have known about Gulf War Syndrome and
another set of deal-ios...

Northcutt punctuated his knocked-out days with adrenaline-junkie
jags, racking up speeding tickets. He relied on high-doses of
Hydrocodone to suppress his back pain.

Northcutt: They just left me to my own devices with PTSD and a steady
paycheck. So I bought a fast motorcycle and went to Utah. Went to
Vegas. My back was so fucked up I could hardly walk, but I could
drive real fast. I liked staying in hotels because I was drinking
heavily and in a hotel I could go first thing in the morning to the
hotel bar and start drinking.

I kind of avoided everybody I knew. I didn't want anybody to ask me
"How are you?" Because what do you tell them? "I'm all fucked up?"
You don't even know how to answer. And every time you start telling
them it takes you back. And you're trying to escape in your mind from Iraq.

Gardner: What about your grandma?

Northcutt: I would be there like two days a week. I would barely talk
to her. I would give her a hug and go out to the guest house and by
that night I was gone. Or I would stop in to do laundry and visit
with her for a minute.

Gardner: What did you drink?

Northcutt: Tequila, Newcastle, Guinness. I like really good tequila.

Gardner: Do you still drink?

Northcutt: No. Almost never.

Gardner: Did you quit through a program?

Northcutt: No. I don't need alcohol. As I'm getting older I really do
feel it the next day. And my days are hard enough. And that's one of
the reasons I love medical marijuana.

Gardner: How did you find medical marijuana?

Northcutt: I knew about marijuana because I was a recreational
smoker. And I started medicating with marijuana before I became a patient.

I started realizing, "Of all the crap they're giving me, I feel the
best when I'm smoking herb. Hmmm... That's weird. When I just smoke
herb I feel kind of relaxed, I don't feel so stressed out, I don't
feel the depression, I don't feel the guilt..." Eventually I
realized: "this is real medicine."

Gardner: Did it help you sleep?

Northcutt: For sure. It helped me relax so I could sleep. That's a
big difference. The pills just knock you the fuck out. You're just
gone. Even if you don't want to go to sleep you're still sleeping.
Which can be pretty dangerous. Once I decided to become a medical
marijuana patient, that's when everything changed.

Gardner: When was that?

Northcutt: I want to say October 2005. When I went to see Dr.
[William] Eidelman.

Gardner: How did you decide on Dr. Eidelman?

Northcutt: I Googled "medical marijuana" and started reading
different websites. I read stuff on his website about healing and
medicine and I thought he had a legitimate angle. People should take
him more seriously. A lot of what he says is just common sense, like
giving healing a chance to happen.

So I went to him and said I was interested in medical marijuana and
he said, "I'm going to give you a recommendation, but I want you to
quit smoking cigarettes and I want you to quit drinking." He also
warned about the side effects of all the prescription pills I was on.

At the time he got his letter of approval, Northcutt was becoming
enraptured with marijuana its beauty, its fragrance, its usefulness.
"I became a connoisseur," he says. His transition from consumer to
provider came in response to requests from friends a very common pattern.

Northcutt: I discovered that organic herb made me feel the best. So
next thing you know, I'm on this mission to get the best organic
herb. I started going up to Mendo and Humboldt and meeting with
farmers. (As if smelling a bag full of cannabis flowers) "Ah this is
good." And it would be that kushy wet hay... There's no smell like
it. But I would have to pay up the yin-yang.

Other patients knew that I was getting good organic herb and they
were like, "Can you get me some?" So I started coming back with a
couple of pounds. That's how I could afford to have good herb for myself.

So the next logical step is, "Why am I traveling all the time and
spending all this money when I can just be growing it myself and all
these people can learn to grow it, too?" So we got together and
decided to grow for ourselves. How many people were involved?

Four or five of us did the growing. There were more than a dozen
patients, including my girlfriend. We called ourselves a co-op. I
had the space. I had a warehouse from when I was in the screen
printing business. I had one screen-printing machine there, a gift
from my dad, who was moving to Tennessee. He'd gotten into the
screenprinting business after I did. He said, "If you can make money
at it, I can for sure." When he gave me the machine which is really
like giving somebody millions of dollars, because you can make a
living with it, he said, "Don't say I never gave you nothin'."

Gardner: Were you planning to go back into screenprinting?

Northcutt: I was. But as I became more health-conscious, I realized
the health hazards involved. The chemicals are terrible for the
environment... I'd been using the warehouse for storage and to park
my vehicles. For growing cannabis I turned it into like an operating
room. I made special doors so that no dust or dirt could get in under
the cracks. Air coming into the entire building was hepa-filtered.
The air going out was charcoal filtered. Every room was
plastic-wrapped and could be individually sterilized. I had four
10-by-10 tables, a separate nursery for my clones, a separate mama
room, a drying room, a sleeping area because I'm there all the time.
I slept under the lights. When the lights came on, I'd get up.

One of the really wild things that happened was: I became a gardener
for the first time in my life. I was developing a love of plants and
an appreciation of nature. And I was developing a relationship with
God. Instead of killing and maiming I was making things grow.

"He's military and he's got a gun!"

Northcutt was busted by Long Beach police on the evening of March 28,
2006, while driving away from his warehouse. He had two mason jars,
each with about 1/2 ounce of marijuana (New York City Diesel and
Skunk Number 1). He tried to smooth-talk his way out of trouble,
mentioning that he had a doctor's approval to use marijuana and was
an active duty sergeant in the Marine Corps. He suspected a set-up
when the officers said it seemed like "a lot of marijuana" and that
it was "packaged for sale." When Northcutt informed them that he had
a weapon, the officers vanished before he could hand it over.

In the rearview mirror Northcutt could see them crouched behind their
vehicle, calling for back-up. "He's military and he's got a gun!" one
yelled into her radio. She would repeat the urgent warning as
reenforcements arrived. Sgt. Northcutt was taken to L.A. County Jail
for booking. A warrant was issued to search his grandma's house. The
search yielded 20 grams of marijuana, a scale, five tablets of MDMA
(ecstasy), and an unloaded shotgun.

Northcutt: My neighbors came to me later and said, "The way they
cordoned off the whole fucking neighborhood, we thought you shot a
cop." Of course there was nothing to find. My cousin hears one of the
cops say, "Hey, look for some warehouse keys."

Next thing you know, they're issuing a warrant for my business, based
on my electric bill of $600. Which is not high in an industrial zone.
The diesel shop next door uses three times as much. It was unreal on
a professional level. It blew me away. But it didn't really surprise
me. I've seen that happen to other people. Now it was happening to me.

The media had been notified in advance of the raid on Northcutt's
warehouse, and it made the news that night. Long Beach police seized
339 plants that he and his friends were growing by the "sea-of-green"
method (small plants packed together). They also confiscated 18 mason
jars containing 1.2 pounds of dried flowers, bags full of leaf and
stalk, and a loaded shotgun.

Northcutt: They took me downtown to LA County Jail for booking and
the whole time they're talking shit to me: "Who do you think you are?
You think you're bad. You think you're Rambo."

Tim King says that law enforcement in Orange County has always had it
in for the grunts.

I have some buddies who are good cops because they're good human
beings. But these cops who are badge-heavy, who think they're
bad-ass, they're the ones who fuck things up. They told the judge
that I had an unregistered weapon, but one of them ran it and saw
that it was registered to me. They wouldn't call Dr. Eidelman.

Gardner: Did you ask them to?

Northcutt: Of course. And when they didn't, I asked them to call
someone from Narcotics who might know the proper procedure.

Northcutt was charged on counts of marijuana cultivation (with a
firearm), marijuana possession for sale, and MDMA possession (with a
firearm). He spent 18 days in jail before getting bailed out by his
uncle Bob Northcutt, who would loyally attend court appearances
throughout Phil's legal ordeal.

Gardner: How did the Marine Corps respond to your getting busted?

Northcutt: They came to me in LA County because on TV they'd said I
was a reservist. They wanted to get me out before it became known
that I was on active duty medical hold and had PTSD. A staff
sergeant came in and said, "Sgt. Northcutt, if you sign right here we
won't prosecute you, you'll be out of the Marine Corps in 20 days."

Gardner: With what kind of discharge?

Northcutt: General under other than honorable conditions. *
Northcutt's discharge cost him all his military benefits. He had
enough money to pay defense attorney Bruce Margolin
$20,000. Unfortunately, the Margolin associate handling his case
failed to appear at a hearing and Northcutt was sent directly into
custody by Judge James Pierce in December 2006. Northcutt heard that
his lawyer eventually showed up and had been scolded by the judge. He
figured he would be released but he was still in jail six months
later when his trial finally got underway.

Northcutt describes LA County jail as "a gulag that should be
investigated by the United Nations."

He was represented by a veteran public defender, Ken MacDonald, whom
he decribes as competent in court but not knowledgable regarding
medical marijuana law, and terminally pessimistic about Northcutt's chances.

The trial was held June 12-18 just when Northcutt's girlfriend
Jennifer, a key defense witness, was due to give birth. Northcutt
wondered if the date had been chosen to guarantee her absence. (Jen
delivered a healthy baby boy, Kai, June 16, 2007).

Northcutt says he was sleep-deprived during the trial, transported by
bus to different facilities, stashed for a few hours in overcrowded
cells, then driven back to LA County to hit the rack for a few hours.

It was stipulated that the amount of plant matter taken from the
warehouse was just under 17 pounds. A Long Beach detective testified
that 339 plants were growing at the warhouse and would yield three to
five ounces each. Cultivation expert Chris Conrad testified for the
defense that the "sea of green" plus the immature plants in
Northcutt's warehouse would yield about 4.25 pounds total.

Northcutt and Jennifer had letters of approval from Dr. Eidelman that
exempted them from the SB-420 limits on allowable quantity. Two
participants in the grow offered to testify about their involvement
and submit their letters of recommendation as evidence. The others
wanted to have their names kept out of the proceedings, and Northcutt
says, "I understood and protected them." More co-op members would
have come forth, he adds, if his lawyer had thought it would help.

The jury was not instructed by Judge James Pierce that collective
cultivation is legal in California. The jury was instructed that
California's medical marijuana laws include limits on allowable
quantity. Northcutt was found guilty of cultivation but acquitted on
possession for sale. Apparently the jurors thought the marijuana was
being grown for medical use, but the paperwork was insufficient to
justify the amount on hand.

Northcutt was acquitted on the MDMA charges because the five pills
were found in an area accessible to many people and there was no
evidence that they belonged to Northcutt.

After his trial Northcutt was transferred to state prison in Chino.
He was sentenced on Nov. 8 to three years' felony probation with one
year in jail (time served), and to pay $470 in fines.

He requested a court-appointed lawyer to appeal his conviction. At
the time of his release, Phil Northcutt had lost his Marine Corps
benefits, his chosen livelihood, and almost a year of his life.

Northcutt: "I lost my business, I lost my car, I lost my respect in
the community, I lost all my money trying to defend myself. I
literally had nothing to my name. Jennifer had moved back to Oklahoma
to stay with her mom while I was in jail. When I got out, she came
back, but we didn't have a place to live. Not the best strategic
decision but we'd been apart so long, we just wanted our family to be
together. So there we were together but homeless.

"Luckily, friends came to my rescue. A buddy whose girlfriend owned a
hotel let us stay there sometimes. Other people let us stay on their
couch. It wasn't till I got to the Pathway Home that I started
connecting with resources. That was really critical, that turned my
life around."

In Yountville. Run by Fred Gusman, funded by the the Tides
Foundation. It was there that I saw other people going through what I
was going through. I realized I wasn't the only one with legal
issues.There are other people who are going through this and it's
really having an effect on their lives.

I spent a lot of time on the internet figuring out who's available to
help veterans. I feel for guys who don't even know these organization
exist. It's ironic You've got organizations that have outreach
programs but don't know where to find the guys who need help. And
you've got guys who need help who don't know how to reach the
organizations. Or don't know they need help.

When O'Shaughnessy's took down his story May 14, 2009, Northcutt was
heading from Calistoga, where he lives, to go to "veterans' homeless
court" in L.A. to try to deal with $2,700 worth of tickets that could
cost him his driver's license. He was also planning to attend the
hearing of his appeal by a three-judge panel from the Second Division
Appellate Court on May 19.

Northcutt said admiringly that his state-provided appeals lawyer,
Benjamin Owens of El Cerrito, had spent more time discussing his case
with him than any of the lawyers who worked on the defense.

We felt bad for him driving off into the night. Rosie had heard on TV
that the hills above Santa Barbara were burning out of control.
Northcutt said something about going through danger and finding
success on the other side. I worried that he would not be able to get
out of paying for the tickets, they'd yank his license, then he'd
really be up the creek without a paddle.

A few days later Northcutt called this reporter to describe the scene
at oral arguments in People v. Northcutt.

Northcutt: My attorney had spent a lot of time preparing what he was
going to say. I was looking forward to hearing him argue and the
judges asking questions. I heard a judge say, "You're not going to
speak." And he sat down. I'm like, "What's going on?"

Then the judge said, "The attorney general can say something if he'd
like..." And the attorney general talked about cooperatives'
membership requirements and limits and gray areas of the law. Then
my attorney said, "I'm available if you have any questions." But the
judges said "You're probably better off if we don't ask any questions."

I'm sitting in back there going, "What is that supposed to mean?"
Then my lawyer comes back and says, "Okay, let's go." And I'm like,
"What just happened?" He said, "The judges had already decided the
case. I didn't have to say anything because we'd already won before
we got there. They said you're getting a full reversal."