President Obama: Free Eddy Lepp

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in San Francisco Monday sentenced a Lake County man to 10 years in prison for growing more than 1,000 marijuana plants, saying the marijuana activist appeared to “want to be a martyr for the cause.”

The sentence for Charles “Eddy” Lepp, 56, was the mandatory minimum under federal law for growing more than 1,000 plants.

U.S. District Judge Marilyn Patel said Lepp didn’t qualify for a so-called “safety valve” exception with a lesser sentence because he testified at his trial last fall that he was a proud leader of others who grew marijuana on his land.

Patel told Lepp, “I think Mr. Lepp is very proud of what he’s been doing. The problem is that now unfortunately, Mr. Lepp, it’s caught up with you.”

“Maybe you want to be martyr for the cause,” Patel said. “That will be your lot.”

The U.S. law doesn’t allow the safety-valve exception for people who are leaders of drug crimes.

Patel said she thought the length of the sentence was excessive, but said it would be up to Congress to change the law.

I’ve been working in marijuana law reform now for four years.  Eddy Lepp is the first activist I’ve known personally to become a prisoner of drug war.  I last spoke with Eddy last September at our Portland Hempstalk:

To know that this gentle man is going to prison for a decade at age 56 makes me physically ill.  This religious man who so bravely helped so many sick and dying and sense-threatened Californians find relief through the medicine grown on his land is going to spend more time in prison than the average rapist, manslaughterer, and child molester because our country has not yet overcome its prudish impulse to punish people for moral reasons.

President Obama, you can commute his sentence.  With the stroke of a pen, you can see that Rev. Eddy Lepp receives no more punishment for being convicted of growing plants for sick people than Scooter Libby received for felony convictions of obstruction of justice, perjury (twice), and providing false statements to federal investigators.  Eddy Lepp’s felony conviction will still stand, but we will save the taxpayers the unnecessary burden of feeding, clothing, and housing a man who is no threat to society.

Or you could do the truly just thing, Mr. President, and pardon Eddy Lepp, removing all prison punishment and the felony convictions, seeing as Eddy Lepp was forbidden from entering any real sort of defense to the charges, since federal courts do not allow testimony regarding California’s medical use law.

I just cannot stomach the notion that people that ordered torture are getting away with it, people that greedily sacked Wall Street are getting away with it, and the guy that ordered 9/11 has gotten away with it, but one middle-aged Rastafarian minister who grows medical marijuana must be punished according to strict adherence to the “rule of law”.  President Obama: FREE EDDY LEPP!

Call President Obama at 202-456-1111 and tell him to FREE EDDY LEPP!