Pubdate: 09 May 2001
Source: Boston Weekly Dig (MA)
Copyright: 2001 Boston Weekly Dig
Contact:  http://www.weeklydig.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1515
Author: Seth Donlin, Boston Weekly Dig
Note: If you want to help Renee you can write letters to Minister McLellan 
in support of her petition. See www.Reneeboje.com for more information. Act 
now - Minister McLellan is not expected to announce her decision before 
September!
Cited: How to Grow Medical Marijuana 
http://www.drugsense.org/mcwilliams/www.growmedicine.com/
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/renee.htm (Boje, Renee)

RENEE BOJE - TAKING OFF TO THE GREAT WHITE NORTH

A Medical Marijuana Advocate & Grower Flees Prosecution In The US For 
Freedom In Canada

On July 29th, 1997, while leaving the home of her friend Todd McCormick, 
Renee Boje was stopped by two police officers. Handcuffed and read her 
rights, she was brought to a local fire station where 60 agents of the DEA, 
the IRS's criminal investigative unit, and the LA County Sheriff's 
Department waited in riot gear to raid her friend's Bel Air home. Renee had 
become the first arrest in the federal government's operation against a man 
that the local press would later dub "the Pot Prince of Bel Air.

While this may sound like just another chapter in the US war on drugs, it 
is much more than that. In a move that could set an astounding new 
precedent, Renee, facing charges of conspiracy to cultivate and distribute 
marijuana, fled to Canada. Today while one of her supposed co-conspirators 
is locked in isolation awaiting appeal and another lies dead, denied the 
marijuana that allowed him to keep down his AIDS medication, Renee is 
waiting to hear whether she will be returned to the US to face a 10 year 
mandatory minimum sentence or whether our neighbors to the north will grant 
her political asylum.

Renee's story begins in a popular Hollywood cafe/art gallery where she 
first met Todd McCormick. It was April 1997; Californians had just passed 
Proposition 215 legalizing medical marijuana and McCormick was sitting in 
the middle of the room smoking what Renee remembers as a "really big 
joint." Intrigued by the fact that he could be so bold, Renee introduced 
herself and the two began a conversation about medical marijuana.

McCormick is a long-time medical marijuana activist. By the age of ten, he 
had suffered 9 different bouts with bone cancer. The top five vertebrae of 
his neck are fused and he has one hip that is the size of a ten-year-old 
boy's. McCormick's mother began giving him marijuana, with a doctor's 
blessing, at the age of nine and he has used it ever since to manage the 
pain of his condition.

In 1995, McCormick opened the first San Diego cannabis buyer's club. In 
early 1997 his new project was a book entitled How to Grow Medical 
Marijuana. With a $200,000 advance from publisher and fellow activist Peter 
McWilliams, McCormick was conducting research for the book in his rented 
Bel Air mansion. The night that he met Renee, who had recently graduated 
with a fine arts degree from Loyola Marymount University, he asked her if 
she would be interested in doing some illustrations for his book. Renee 
agreed and thus began her relationship with the "Marijuana Mansion Man," a 
relationship that would end up with her in jail less than four months later.

When the Feds raided McCormick's home, it was the culmination of a 
whirlwind five-day investigation. For the next 72 hours, Renee was held at 
the Los Angeles Federal Prison for Women where she claims she was 
strip-searched fifteen times, sometimes under the leering gaze of male 
officers, all the while being denied access to legal council. When she 
finally was released, Renee was charged with possession, cultivation, 
intent to distribute, and conspiracy.

The press surrounding the case caused her to lose her job and for most of 
the next year, Renee says, "my phones were being tapped" and "there were 
men sitting outside my house." Even after all charges against her were 
temporarily dropped in October of 1997, she was still being followed by the 
Feds. The DEA was continuing to aggressively pursue its case against 
McCormick and Renee was a pawn in their game.

In May of 1998, nearly ten months after she was first arrested, Renee's 
attorney Kenneth Kahn called to tell her that he needed to see her 
urgently. In a meeting the next day, Kahn informed Renee that the charges 
against her were most likely going to be reinstated, and in a very 
professionally-risky move, he advised her to flee to Canada. After three 
days of meditation, Renee decided to take his advice. Telling her friends 
and family that she was taking a trip to pursue a photography project, she 
packed a bag, gave away the rest of her possessions, and headed for Vancouver.

Once in Canada, Renee traveled across the country, worked odd jobs to make 
a few dollars, and eventually ended up in Montreal where she learned 
through an anonymous e-mail tip that bounty hunters were hot on her trail. 
On July 23rd, 1998, the US government had dropped the other shoe. In a raid 
on the offices of McWilliams' Prelude Press and three other locations 
throughout the Los Angeles area, the DEA arrested McWilliams and several 
others bringing the total number of people indicted in the case to nine. 
Renee's charges had been reinstated, just as her attorney had feared, and 
the Feds desperately wanted Renee back in custody.

Renee immediately dyed her hair and fled back across Canada. Arriving in 
Vancouver broke and exhausted, she turned to the only people she felt were 
likely to help her, members of Canada's medical marijuana community. Renee 
was given shelter in a home with a medical marijuana garden that supplied 
cannabis to the Vancouver Compassion Club. Unfortunately it didn't take 
long for her troubles to catch up with her.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police raided the house where Renee was staying 
on February 15th, 1999. Her outstanding warrants were discovered and she 
was quickly rushed off to the Supreme Court in Vancouver for a fast track 
extradition to the United States. In Canada, however, Renee was given 
access to legal council much more quickly than in the States. Luckily her 
lawyer, Alex Stojicevich, was able to convince a judge to hear her case 
before sending her back to the US to face trial and an almost certain ten 
year sentence in Federal prison.

Renee used her temporary reprieve to retain a second lawyer named John 
Conroy who, as a founder of NORML Canada, was very interested in her case. 
Conroy helped Renee file for political asylum and agreed to represent her 
through this long, complicated process. On February 9th, 2000, British 
Columbia Supreme Court Justice Michael Catliff ruled that Renee must be 
returned to the United States. Conroy appealed the decision and now Renee's 
case sits with the Canadian Justice Minister, Anne McLellan, who has stated 
that she will not make a decision until June.

So what are Renee's chances of actually being granted political asylum? 
Well that is not such an easy question to answer. Upon first consideration 
you might think her chances were along the lines of the old snowball in 
hell. After all the United States is Canada's largest trading partner 
meaning that the Canadian government is usually very reticent to thumb its 
nose at the US. Secondly, Renee has not managed to win any of the rounds of 
this drawn out fight. It looks as if the law is against her.

However, there are a few points that weigh heavily in Renee's favor. 
Firstly, Anne McLellan is taking an awfully long time in rendering her 
decision. While her self-imposed deadline is now set sometime in June, 
initially she said that she would have a decision by April 17th, 2000. In 
the thirteen months since her first deadline, Minister McLellan has been 
deluged with briefs and letters in support of Renee. Amnesty International, 
NORML, and many other organizations have filed briefs on her behalf. Actor 
and marijuana activist Woody Harrelson wrote to McLellan asking her to 
"please show compassion for a wonderful young lady...who has never been 
violent or hurt anyone, who simply believed that what was going on in that 
house in Bell Air in 1997 was perfectly legal.

"I beg you to give Renee a chance, to let her remain in a country that is 
genuinely free, and not to allow a bullying, all powerful government, that 
has lost all connection to it's people (and which I am ashamed to call my 
own) to take ten years of her young life away from her.

"Please, please, show some compassion toward Renee and don't allow her to 
become another statistic in a money-making, hypocritical war against good 
citizens."

The second point in Renee's favor is that Canada has much more liberal laws 
regarding marijuana use than does the United States. Last April the 
Canadian Health Ministry, known as Health Canada, went so far as to issue 
regulations that will make Canada the first nation in the world to create a 
government regulated system for medical marijuana. Health Minister Allan 
Rock said, "Canada is acting compassionately by allowing people who are 
suffering from grave and debilitating illnesses to have access to marijuana 
for medical purposes." Add to this the fact that Renee's lawyer John Conroy 
will be before the Canadian Supreme Court next year arguing cases from 
Ontario and British Columbia challenging the constitutionality of laws 
prohibiting recreational use of marijuana; you might begin to get the 
impression that Renee might have a chance after all.

Lastly, not to be forgotten, is the fact that while it may not do so very 
often, Canada does have a history of occasionally defying the United 
States. One such occasion, of course, was Canada's granting of political 
asylum to the Vietnam War era draft dodgers.

So what is it that is keeping Renee from being granted her asylum? Well, 
things may not have been as simple as Renee and her co-defendants have made 
them out to be.

First of all, the government's claim that McCormick's operation was part of 
a larger conspiracy is supported by evidence that McWilliams seems to have 
been funding the growing of marijuana in three other locations besides 
McCormick's Bel Air home. Marijuana plants were found in McWilliams' Laurel 
Canyon home as well as two houses in Chino and Van Nuys connected to a man 
named Scott Hass. In one of the houses overseen by Hass, the police found 
equipment for the manufacture of hashish, but Hass defends himself by 
saying that he was simply experimenting with different ways to deliver 
medical marijuana.

While McCormick and Hass claim to never have met each other and in fact to 
both have had no knowledge of the other, this is not legally necessary to 
prove a criminal conspiracy. By law, conspirators don't need to actually 
know each other, they merely have to know that they are part of a larger 
operation. But was there a larger operation?

Scott Imler, president of the LA Cannabis Buyers' Club (an organization of 
which McWilliams was a member), seems to think so. He claims that 
McWilliams approached him wanting "to enter into a contract with [the 
Buyers' Club] for the sale of marijuana at $4,800 per pound." Imler and 
other Club workers also claim that McWilliams said that he wanted to become 
"the Bill Gates of Medical Marijuana." McWilliams denied having suggested 
any sale, and said of the Bill Gates quote that he was simply joking. Both 
Renee and McWilliams' Attorney have indicated a belief that Imler may have 
been the one to tip off the Feds to McCormick's growing operation.

The government's case is not without its own inconsistencies, however. For 
instance, the government's claim that McCormick was growing 4,116 plants 
with a street value in excess of $20 million dollars is a bit of an 
exaggeration. In fact, the majority of the plants that the Feds found in 
McCormick's home were dormant cuttings, planted nearly one hundred apiece 
in two foot by one foot boxes - hardly mature 'plants'. This is perfectly 
consistent with McCormick's claim that he was doing crossbreeding 
experiments to determine which strain of cannabis produced the most 
effective cannabinoid for the treating of a particular medical symptom. 
Also the government has failed to adequately address why, if in fact he was 
involved in a criminal conspiracy, was McCormick so open about his actions? 
Many of his plants were on his front porch easily visible from the street 
in a neighborhood that boasts Elizabeth Taylor and President Reagan as 
residents.

In the end it is important to keep everything in this case in perspective. 
For one, the most damning evidence that the government claims to have 
against Renee is a video on which she is seen watering and moving 
McCormick's plants for a little over an hour. Even supposing that 
McCormick, who according to California State law had a legal right to grow 
marijuana, was in fact breaking the law, does Renee's watering of his 
plants merit a ten-year sentence in Federal prison?

Two, what real harm were these people doing? Even if they were planning to 
sell the marijuana to California buyers' clubs, should this be a crime? The 
United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld the Oakland Buyer's 
Club's right to operate stating that a patient's right to health care 
superceded the Federal government's need to regulate the drug trade.

And lastly, we need to look at the behavior of our Federal government.

The Federal government refuses to recognize the validity of laws duly voted 
into being by the citizens of the state of California and many other states 
as well.

The Federal government has charged a group of medical marijuana activists 
with a variety of crimes involving marijuana and they deny them the right 
to mention medical necessity as a defense, claiming it would "serve only to 
confuse and mislead the jury."

The Federal government has locked away Todd McCormick, a man doing 
legitimate medical research on the premise that he might be intending to 
sell the by-product of his research to an organization that is legally 
allowed to distribute this product. The Feds deny him his chosen, 
doctor-prescribed medicine, a medicine that he has been taking for over 20 
years. And when a drug test shows that he may have been continuing to take 
that medicine while in jail waiting appeal, they confine him to isolation.

The Federal government convicted Peter McWilliams, a man fighting a battle 
with cancer and AIDS, of being a drug kingpin for his financing of medical 
marijuana research. The Feds deny him the use of doctor prescribed 
marijuana as a means of keeping down his AIDS medication, and as a result, 
he dies, choking on his own vomit while awaiting sentencing.

The Federal government, in 1997 prosecuted more people for drug offenses 
not related to trafficking than it did for murder, rape, and all other 
sexual offenses combined. There is a marijuana arrest every 40 seconds in 
the US and one in six people in prison are there for marijuana related 
charges. The US spends $17 million dollars a day building more prisons, and 
yet still there is not enough room. Rapists and murders are paroled to make 
room for the flood of incoming drug offenders.

At a time when, by some estimates, it costs the federal government over 
$150,000 a year to lock up a prisoner, why are we putting so many drug 
offenders behind bars? In a nation in which 15,289 murders were reported in 
1997; where there is an average of 2,147 bombings or attempted bombings a 
year; where over 60% of the population can expect to be raped or physically 
assaulted in their lifetime, does our country's war on drugs make sense? 
Renee Boje certainly doesn't think so. Hopefully, her case can convince the 
Canadian government as well.

If you want to help Renee you can write letters to Minister McLellan
in support of her petition. See www.Reneeboje.com for more
information. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake