MEDICAL MARIJUANA PROPONENTS PROTEST CONVICTION

SACRAMENTO - Decrying last week's conviction of a Chico medical
marijuana dispenser, dozens of activists protested outside the state
Department of Justice's headquarters Monday, calling on government to
keep its hands off their medicine.

On Thursday, a jury of eight women and four men found Bryan James Epis
guilty of federal charges of conspiring to grow more than 1,000
marijuana plants near a Chico school, for which the Chicoan now faces
a mandatory minimum of 10 years in prison.

Epis, who plans to appeal the decision, is scheduled for sentencing on
Aug. 26. In the meantime he remains in custody.

Intensifying tensions between the federal government and local
advocates who point to a 1996 voter-approved state law that allows the
use of medically necessary marijuana, protesters Monday said they will
continue pressuring state authorities to challenge the federal law
that prohibits the use of cannabis for any purpose.

"This man's only crime is obeying California law, and his motive was
to reduce suffering of sick people," said Aundre Speciale of Americans
for Safe Access, a grass-roots group of medical marijuana supporters.

"What we want to know is what will Gov. Gray Davis and Attorney
General Bill Lockyer do to protect patients and to secure Bryan Epis'
freedom," Speciale continued.

Epis, who says he uses marijuana for neck pain resulting from a
near-fatal traffic crash, argued outside the courtroom he had the
right to dispense marijuana to seriously ill patients under provisions
of California's Compassionate Use Act.

U.S. District Court Judge Frank C. Damrell, however, forbid Epis'
attorney, the famous barrister J. Tony Serra, to use a medical
marijuana defense to justify Epis' conduct of illegal cultivation,
noting a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision which ruled such a defense
is not valid.

Don Duncan, a medical marijuana user who joined the protest from
Berkeley, said Epis' conviction is largely the consequence of an
uninformed jury, which was not allowed to consider the compassionate
circumstances surrounding the case.

"Had the jurors known that this was a medical marijuana case they
would have acquitted," Duncan said. "The jury had no idea that the
crime that they voted to convict on has a 10-year mandatory minimum
sentence."

Members of the Butte Alliance for Medical Marijuana said the case has
had a chilling effect on north state medical marijuana users.

"We have all gone to jail at some time for growing our own since
Bryan's arrest," said Mike Rogers, now of Live Oak, who faced
cultivating charges after being arrested in Cohasset in 1999. He was
acquitted in Butte County Superior Court two years later after he
presented a medical marijuana defense.

Added Dinah Coffman, director of BAMM: "This has had a ripple effect.
Now I have to try to grow my own medicine, and I have people trying to
break into my yard to get it."

The case against Epis, which is the first federal prosecution
involving a cannabis buyers' club, endured a string of procedural
challenges, including dismissal of the first jury pool after the
potential panel was tainted by pro-medical marijuana protesters
dispensing leaflets outside Sacramento's federal court building.