Pubdate: Wed, 22 Mar 2000
Source: Spokesman-Review (WA)
Copyright: 2000 Cowles Publishing Company
Contact:  P.O. Box 2160 Spokane, WA 99210
Fax:  (509) 459-5482
Website: http://www.spokane.net/news.asp
Author: John Craig, Staff Writer

POT 'PIONEER' WINS POINTS

State's Medical Marijuana Law Central To Stevens County Case

Washington's voter-approved medical marijuana law inched toward 
clarification Monday in a Stevens County case against a man whose attorney 
calls him a "self-appointed pioneer."

Arthur "Ocean Israel" Shepherd Jr. won a couple of points in his battle to 
provide marijuana to a Colville man with spinal and emotional problems, but 
not enough to avoid conviction.

However, the 50-year-old Shepherd may avoid more time in the county slammer 
because of a prosecution agreement to recommend he be sentenced Friday to 
time he's already spent in jail.

Shepherd wouldn't have been in jail pending trial except for his reluctance 
to promise, as a condition of release, not to use marijuana. "I do 
sometimes pray with the herb," he said in an interview. "It's my religious 
conviction."

He said he considers methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin to be dangerous 
drugs. But he thinks marijuana is one of the "herb-bearing seeds" with 
which God blessed the Garden of Eden.

Shepherd, who is known as Ocean everywhere except in court, is a former 
member of the counterculture Love Israel family that venerates marijuana.

After voters passed Initiative 692 in November 1998 to allow medical use of 
marijuana, Shepherd said he asked Stevens County authorities early last 
year to tell him how he could legally supply marijuana to an ailing 
Colville man.

He wasn't charged when deputies seized three mature plants and 11 starters 
at his cabin in the Kelly Hill area north of Kettle Falls, but Superior 
Court Judge Larry Kristianson ruled he couldn't have the plants back. 
Kristianson said Shepherd didn't qualify for an exemption under medical 
marijuana law because he didn't have a valid caregiver relationship and the 
patient's medical condition wasn't adequately documented.

Shepherd raised the same defense last September when sheriff's officers 
seized what they said were 30 mature plants and 27 starters. When that case 
finally came to trial Monday, Judge Rebecca Baker ruled the caregiver 
relationship was valid and that the patient's medical need was adequately 
documented in a note by Colville osteopath Gregg Sharp.

After his arrest in September, Shepherd refused to swear off pot as a 
condition of release, and served a week in jail. Then, he said, "they came 
in and asked if I wanted a second chance to lie to get out, so I lied to 
get out."

Jailers probably were glad to be rid of him. Shepherd said his orange jail 
suit made him feel like a criminal, so he took it off and wore his bed 
sheet and pillow case instead.

"They started cracking up, and they wouldn't let me out of my cell," he 
recalled.

Shepherd was glad enough to get out, considering that jailers wouldn't 
serve him the hemp seed diet he demanded, but he met an inmate he wanted to 
go back to visit at Christmas. When authorities told him he couldn't visit 
because he had recently been an inmate, Shepherd said he pulled out a joint 
and held it up to the security camera outside the jail.

He said he told officers, "If you'll send a lighter out, I'll smoke it for 
you, but I have possession with intent to use."

That got him in to visit his friend, but wouldn't have kept him long if he 
hadn't again refused not to light up if released. Shepherd went a month 
that time before changing his mind, and he spent most of the time on a 
hunger strike.

He said he had nothing but water and "some frosting off a brownie one time."

Baker ruled Monday that Shepherd failed to meet Initiative 692's 
requirement that supplies be limited to quantities that can be used in 60 
days.

Sheriff Craig Thayer believes the 20 to 31 mature plants Shepherd admitted 
having when he was arrested last September are much more than a 60-day supply.

"They were handsome plants that towered above Ocean," Deputy Prosecutor Al 
Nielson quipped. "He was very proud of them."

Estimates by a Drug Enforcement Administration expert indicate that's 
enough weed to keep someone puffing in almost every waking moment for two 
months.

Still, defense attorney Frank Cikutovich said he will appeal. He said his 
client "is hopeful to have a crop in the ground by Memorial Day weekend."

Nielson was not optimistic that the appeal will produce much clarification 
without the medical testimony Baker insisted upon. But this case, and 
similar ones working their way through trial courts, collectively may shed 
some light.

Meanwhile, Nielson said -- and Baker agreed -- Initiative 692 provides only 
a narrow exception to the state's drug laws. It is up to defendants to show 
they qualify for the exception.

Shepherd insists the law needs further liberalization. Urban medical 
marijuana users can't realistically grow their own plants, he said. And 
farmers such as himself have to grow more than a two-month supply because 
they are limited to one outdoor crop a year, he said.

Pot grown indoors just isn't as good, Shepherd said. 
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