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Cannabis convict Eddy Lepp free

Cannabis convict Eddy Lepp free from prison
Lepp, age 64, hailed as a “marijuana martyr” by supporters

Eddy Lepp, sentenced to ten years in federal prison for growing marijuana, was released from the Florence, CO-based Correction Institution on Wednesday morning. He was greeted by a contingent of California supporters, organized by Sacramento’s Heidi Grossman (left.)

By LISA M. KRIEGER | [e-mail]
PUBLISHED: December 7, 2016 at 9:59 am | UPDATED: December 7, 2016 at 1:48 pm

Free after eight years of federal imprisonment, one of the nation’s most celebrated cannabis convicts is coming home to California this afternoon, released from a Colorado prison into a profoundly changed world.

Charles “Eddy” Lepp, a frail but outspoken 64-year-old Vietnam vet and ordained Rastafarian minister, was convicted in 2007 in federal court for doing something that the state now calls legal: growing marijuana.

Supporters revere him as a “Pot POW” in the war against drugs, a hero who paid dearly in the fight for rights that many now enjoy.

“He’s free!” cheered supporters, who welcomed him with hugs and cheers in a motor home outside the gates of Florence Correctional Institution. He was then served a hot breakfast of eggs, toast and a pile of fragrant bacon, washed down by a Dr Pepper soda.


Lepp arrives — flying first class, with a cane, beard and “rastacap” hat — into San Francisco International Airport this afternoon, then will be dropped off at his new home: a San Francisco-based halfway house.

“Eddy Lepp is a true marijuana martyr,” said Dale Gieringer of the California chapter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Calling him “a true believer,” Gieringer said “he never once tried to hide what he was doing. His garden was like an act of civil disobedience.”

Prosecuted during the tough-on-drugs George W. Bush administration, Lepp’s case also represents the deep — and tense — standoff between state and federal policies; one permissive, the other punitive. While a U.S. appeals court ruled in August that the federal government may not spend money prosecuting marijuana growers who comply with state laws, there are anxieties that Congress could appropriate new funds.

Proposition 64, approved by voters last November, establishes licenses for commercial growers. Licenses will be issued beginning on Jan. 1, 2018 to small- and medium-sized farms already licensed by local officials. One specific category of license, called Type 5, allows what it calls “large cultivators” with more than one-acre outdoors. But those licenses won’t be available to Jan. 1, 2023.

As a result of his conviction, Lepp lost his beloved Lake County home, farm and cars, which were seized and sold by the federal law enforcement. He also lost his marriage to divorce and missed nearly a decade of life with family and friends, some of whom died while he was behind bars.

Meanwhile, large agribusinesses are predicted to move into the state — doing what Lepp did, only bigger. There is no limit to the sizes of marijuana farms under Prop. 64, according to Steve Lyle of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.

“They’ll be growing more plants than Eddy ever did,” said Lepp’s attorney Michael Hinckley of Berkeley. “And they’ll be making a profit, instead of doing it for religious and medical reasons.”

Lepp grew more than 50 varieties of high-grade marijuana on 20 acres at the Upper Lake farm he shared with his late wife, Linda. Called Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens, it was near the gateway to Mendocino National Forest, about 150 miles north of San Francisco. He allowed others to grow their own plants on his property.

It was a rural mountainous retreat with several tenants, as well as flowers, trees and fish ponds. Devotees of the Rastafarian faith, they consumed, shared and donated copious amounts of weed, but allowed no alcohol or other drugs.

Most of the harvest went to people who needed it for medical reasons, Lepp said. He used some to ease his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, he said. It also helped Linda ease symptoms of terminal cancer.

The outspoken marijuana reformer’s vast crop was in plain view of Highway 20. He considered it legal for medical and religious reasons.

Early one morning in February 2002, a team of 34 different law enforcement officials — among them, the local Lake County Sheriff’s Department, Mendocino Marijuana Eradication Program and DEA — raided the property, arresting Lepp and confiscating 24,784 plants, processed marijuana and equipment.

It was reputed to be the largest single medical crop seizure in the United States, with an estimated street value of $18 million.

Lepp went to trial, took the stand, and admitted the farm was his and to what he was doing. While he did not admit specifically to the charges of cultivation and distribution, the jury found him guilty. Only one of the other growers on his farm stepped forward to share responsibility.

“He was brave, very brave,” Hinckley said. “It is very difficult to walk into federal court and admit to violating drug laws. When it came time to step up and take the risk, it was just Eddy.”

He was sentenced to 10 years in prison — the minimum mandatory sentence.

He spurned a plea deal that would have reduced his time behind bars because it would have required an admission of wrongdoing, Hinckley said.

“He wouldn’t say what the judge wanted him to say,” he said. “He believed he was helping people.”

His supporters stayed loyal over the years. Calling him a “freedom fighter,” the Modesto hip hop band Real One released its song “Eddy Lepp” on Wednesday morning, to celebrate his release.

“His tribe has not forgotten him,” said friend Dale Rostamo, who manages the website HerbFolks.org. “Eddy Lepp’s presence in the civilized world during his incarceration has been sorely missed.

“The gentle touch he brought to healing via his ministry has been usurped for the most part by interlopers, carpetbaggers, moneychangers in the Temple,” Rostamo said. “His safe return to the ‘maturing’ cannabis world that’s evolved since they stole him from us, is a blessing.”

He’s the most high-profile of several California activists sentenced to serve time in federal prison. Others include El Dorado County’s Dr. Marion P. “Mollie” Fry and Dale Schafer, a physician and attorney, sentenced to five years in 2011. Patricia Albright of Nevada City was sentenced to five years and five months in 2015 for manufacturing marijuana and money laundering.

Legalization will help defendants win future federal cases, predicted Amy Ralston Povah of the CAN-DO (Clemency for All Nonviolent Drug Offenders) Foundation, which seeks clemency for pot prisoners.

“The minute it becomes legal, that removes ‘the burden of proof’ needed to explain it is for medical purposes. You can just say: ‘It’s legal,’ not ‘It’s medicinal,’ she said. “It is a totally different, and much stronger, defense.”

Lepp called his sentence, later reduced by two years, “a wild and bumpy ride.” But most fellow inmates treated him “with love, respect and admiration,” he said. And with the exception of guards “who believe it is their job to punish us each and every day,” most guards “knew who I was… and were, for the most part, not that bad.”

Even in prison, he continued preaching, signing off emails with his own homespun scripture: “TRUTH. RESPECT ALL. HURT NONE. LOVE ONE ANOTHER !!!!!”

eddy lepp FB poster
Eddy Lepp’s Facebook page was updated Wednesday morning by his supporters, who revere him for paying dearly for a right that many now enjoy. Eddy Lepp
What hurts most, he said, is what’s now gone.

“We lost all the church property, our house, cars, the ministry itself. Our members are now spread far and wide,” he said in an email interview from prison.

“More important was the loss of life my (first) wife Linda Senti,” whose cancer returned because of stress, he believes.

His best friend, Jack Herer — “the grandfather of the cannabis movement” — died while he was in prison and Lepp could not attend the memorial service to pay his respects. Also dead are “my grandmother, my mother, two mother-in-laws, and so many friends I can’t list them all.” Also gone from life is his second wife, whom he married and divorced while in prison.

What remains is “the love, respect and support of so very many of those who believed in what we were trying to do,” he said. “I would never have survived as well as I have had it not been for that.”

Something else waits for him, too: “the sacred plant,” his name for marijuana

“It is the Tree of Life,” he said, “and I have seen first hand the miracles it can work.”


http://www.mercurynews.com/2016/12/07/cannabis-convict-eddy-lepp-free-after-long-prison-term/