COURT UPHOLDS 10-YEAR TERM IN MEDICAL POT CASE

A federal appeals court upheld the conviction and 10-year sentence
Wednesday of a medical marijuana advocate who grew 32,000 pot plants
for patients and fellow Rastafarians on his land in Lake County.

The federal judge who sent Charles "Eddy" Lepp to prison in 2009
criticized the federal law that required a 10-year term for growing at
least 1,000 marijuana plants. But U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall
Patel of San Francisco said she was bound by the law, and the Ninth
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed.

"The statutory minimum sentence is not cruel and unusual punishment,"
the three-judge panel said.

Federal agents arrested Lepp in 2004 after finding the marijuana
plants in gardens near his home in Upper Lake, most of them in view of
Highway 20.

He said the plants were for patients who had a right to use marijuana
with their doctors' approval under California law. Lepp also said that
he was a Rastafarian minister, for whom marijuana is a sacrament, and
that he was growing the plants for 2,500 members of his church who
were sharecroppers.

Federal law strictly bans marijuana, however, even in states that
allow its medical use. The appeals court upheld Patel's refusal to
allow Lepp to invoke his religion as a defense to the charges, saying
his prosecution served the government's "compelling interest in
preventing diversion of sacramental marijuana to non-religious users."

Lepp's lawyer, Michael Hinckley, had argued that the 10-year sentence
was grossly disproportionate to the crimes. Hinckley said that he was
disappointed by Wednesday's ruling and that "the thought of him
spending 10 years in prison, in circumstances like these, is tragic."