Medical Marijuana: US 9th Circuit Upholds 10-Year Sentence for Bryan Epis, First California Supplier Tried on Federal Charges

In an unpublished opinion issued last month, a three-judge panel of the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has upheld the 10-year mandatory minimum federal prison sentence of Bryan Epis, the first medical marijuana supplier prosecuted in federal court after the passage of Proposition 215 in 1996, though not the first convicted.

Epis, of Chico, was arrested by Butte County officers in June 1997 and ultimately convicted by a federal jury in 2002 of conspiring to grow more than a thousand marijuana plants. Authorities only seized 458 plants from his home, but presented records suggesting more plants had been grown there.

Epis had a doctor's recommendation to use medical marijuana for chronic back and shoulder pain. He said he was growing for a Chico patients group and admitted selling some plants at cost to co-op members. But federal prosecutors portrayed him as a drug dealer with dollar signs in his eyes.

He and his attorney, Brenda Grantland, appealed the sentence on various grounds, but the three-judge panel didn't go for any of them. Epis had no reason to believe Prop. 215 would shield him from federal law, especially because "a large-scale marijuana operation can have an impact on interstate commerce," they wrote, harking back to the Supreme Court decision in Raich v. Gonzalez that established federal primacy over state law. Epis served a little over two years on his sentence before being released on bail in 2004 as he appealed his case. Grantland will request that his bail be continued pending an appeal to the full 9th Circuit.

Epis supporters expressed shock and outrage at the decision. "This is an egregious miscarriage of justice with no conceivable benefit to the public," said California NORML coordinator Dale Gieringer, "Bryan Epis believed he was acting lawfully. To imprison him for 10 years is the kind of sentence one might expect only from judges who countenance torture," Gieringer added, taking a direct swipe at panel member Judge Jay Bybee, now infamous as one of the authors of the Justice Department memos justifying torture during the Bush administration.