THE WITCH HUNT CONTINUES

THORNTON - Jack Branson sits in the cluttered living room of the
modest house he rents from a family member on the ragged edge of this
Denver suburb. On the table between us are vials containing eight
different medicines.

Branson, a slightly built man who will turn 39 the next day, is
seriously ill. For nearly 20 years he's lived with the HIV virus that
causes AIDS; in addition he has hepatitis B, and a slipped disc in
his back. Some of the medicines keep him alive, while others,
including oxycodone and methadone, help control the chronic pain in
which he lives.

Like many people with HIV, Branson finds it difficult to tolerate the
drugs that suppress the virus. Indeed, the drugs tend to make him so
nauseated that on several occasions he stopped taking them, causing
him to develop full-blown AIDS.

And, like many other seriously ill people, Branson discovered that by
smoking marijuana he could control the nausea well enough to take his
medicine regularly. It was precisely to help people like Branson that
the voters of Colorado amended the state's constitution in 2000, to
allow doctors to recommend marijuana for patients they believed would
benefit from it.

Six years ago, a doctor at the University of Colorado School of
Medicine - an expert on the treatment of AIDS - told Branson he ought
to smoke marijuana if that would allow him to take his medicine
regularly (each time Branson stopped taking the medicine his body
became more resistant to its effects).

The Colorado medical marijuana law doesn't require a doctor's
recommendation to be in writing, and Branson began to grow a few
marijuana plants in his backyard, Eventually he had 14 plants, which,
given the relatively short Colorado growing season, was only enough
to supply him with enough medical marijuana to get him through two
thirds of the year.

In October of 2004, the North Metro Drug Task Force, a local law
enforcement consortium that gets considerable funding from the
federal government, showed up at Branson's house. They didn't have a
warrant, but according to Branson they told him they would do
serious damage to his house if he forced them to come back with one.

Branson had every reason to believe he had done nothing illegal (he
in fact has no criminal record of any kind), and he consented to the
warrantless search. He was then charged with felony cultivation of a
controlled substance, and possession with intent to distribute.

Branson shows me the approximately 10-foot-by-4-foot plot of earth
where he had grown his plants. "This is the east side and this is the
west side of the plot," he tells me. "I labeled the bags in which I
kept the marijuana East and West, depending on which side of the
plot the plants came from. The drug task force's theory is that I
intended to distribute the stuff on the East and West coasts."

Branson's lawyer, Robert Corry, describes himself as a strong
Republican (he was the Republican committee counsel for the House
Judiciary Committee in Washington in the 1990s.) In other words, he's
hardly a bleeding-heart liberal, yet he's genuinely outraged by what
the government is doing to his client. He estimates that Branson's
trial, which starts tomorrow, will cost the taxpayers of Adams County
at least $100,000.

That seems like a steep price to pay for the privilege of persecuting
a harmless, desperately ill man, who doesn't appear to have committed
a crime in even the most technical sense, and who might well die in
prison if he's sent there.

Prisons don't allow medical marijuana use, and Branson says he would
consider a prison sentence of more than six months to be the
equivalent of capital punishment, since he probably can't live longer
than that without his HIV medicine.

I suppose in our government's eyes that outcome would just prove once
again how dangerous smoking marijuana really is.

Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado.