But there is more. As I said, no one could make this up, so I reprint two local news stories. The reporters seem a bit stunned themselves.)

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."
Thomas Jefferson

From The Sonora Union Democrat

March 19, 1998

Pot garden’s size brought case to court

In the trial of a Twain Harte area man accused of growing far more marijuana than he needs for his chronic health problems, jurors yesterday heard of his devastation upon learning that lawmen had uprooted his garden.

Defendant Myron "Carl" Mower was in Tuolumne General Hospital for treatment of uncontrollable vomiting when he got the news last July.

"Taking those plants was my life," he said in a taped statement to investigators that was played for the jury. "My health was all in that garden. You guys just don’t know what you’ve done to me."

The pot, both Mower and his doctor testified yesterday, has proven to be the best medicine he has for treating his severe diabetes. The disease has left him almost completely blind and with a condition that paralyzes his stomach and makes it almost impossible for him to eat or keep much down.

His primary-care doctor, Joy Boggess, testified that while she supports medicinal marijuana use, she won’t prescribe it for fear of federal prosecution and the loss of her prescription license.

The trial, before Judge Eric DuTemple in Tuolumne County Superior Court, began Tuesday and has been marked by periodic breaks so Mower can get insulin shots, throw up or get fresh air to keep from passing out.

During much of the testimony yesterday, the frail, 35-year-old man sat at the defendant’s table with his head down.

While the taped statement gave jurors a powerful picture of how much Mower needs marijuana, it also provided evidence of why he’s facing a felony cultivation charge.

From The Modesto Bee

Jury finds blind man guilty of cultivating pot

A Tuolumne County jury took less than 90 minutes Thursday to find Myron Mower, a blind diabetic with medical clearance to smoke marijuana, guilty of felony cultivation.

By Ron DeLacy

Modesto Bee staff writer
http://www.modbee.com/metro/story/0,1113,15676,00.html
March 20, 1998

SONORA—A Tuolumne County jury took less than 90 minutes Thursday to find Myron Mower, a blind diabetic with medical clearance to smoke marijuana, guilty of felony cultivation.

"I’m sad and surprised," said Mower’s public defender, Karen Block Davis. "I thought they’d have more humanity."

Mower didn’t. As his wife wept in the gallery behind him, Mower listened to the verdict with a blank expression, and afterward he said he expected to be convicted "because of that tape."

The tape, played for jurors Wednesday, was a recording of Mower telling a drug agent he was growing pot both for himself and two other medical users. Mower had made the statements from a hospital bed while an IV tube was shooting morphine into him.

He has since denied growing for anyone else, and said he doesn’t know what possessed him to say he was. And after Thursday’s verdict, he said he will seek legal help to file an appeal on grounds that his Miranda rights were violated.

The agent, Kenneth Diaz, didn’t advise Mower of his rights against self-incrimination before taping the interview. Deputy District Attorney John Hansen said the agent didn’t have to, because Mower was not in custody at the time.

And apart from all that, Hansen said the verdict was a good one—reflecting the work of a jury guided by the facts, not their emotions.

"If I were a juror, my response to this case would be to want to acquit," Hansen said. "This jury was put in the position of ‘I have to put my wants aside, my feelings aside, and look at the facts.’ That’s a difficult thing to do."

In his closing argument, Hansen had acknowledged that "if there is a person in the state of California for whom Proposition 215 was enacted, it is Myron Mower."

That law permits people to grow and use pot if their doctors recommended it, as Mower’s had. The man suffers from diabetes, blindness, digestive dysfunction and a host of other problems. Marijuana, he and his doctor had testified, is the most effective medicine in a desperate situation.

Intermittently through his three-day trial, he had to take time out to go to the bathroom and vomit—a situation caused, he said, because the drug agents had ripped out 28 of his 31 marijuana plants last summer and the others were later stolen, leaving him with none.

But the medical need wasn’t an issue, Hansen argued, and neither was pity. The issue was quantity—whether those 31 plants were more than Mower needed.

Experts differed over whether the plants would grow into too much or too little for him. And Davis, the defense attorney, argued that the only certainty was that the three plants left by the drug agents weren’t enough.

She asked the jurors to reflect on what purpose the trial had served besides keeping a drug officer in court for three days "instead of being out there looking for real criminals."

After their verdict was read, making Mower a real criminal, the jurors quickly filed out of the courtroom and declined to talk about their deliberations.

Mower was ordered to return for sentencing April 20 at 8 a.m. He could get up to three years in prison, although Hansen said he won’t ask for anything more than probation—so that agents can raid Mower’s home without warrants for the next five years to make sure he isn’t growing too much pot.

It is county Sheriff’s Department policy that medical users should be allowed no more than three plants. Hansen said he expects they may allow Mower more than that, but the most important thing is that with Mower on probation, they can easily monitor the supply.

Mower and his wife, Laurie, said they didn’t mind reasonable limits on the supply but they do mind the probation raids, which they put up with for five years while he was on probation for an earlier cultivation conviction.

"They can come in and trash our home whenever they want," Laurie Mower said, her eyes red from weeping. "They come in with their full-blown armor, guns drawn, and all our neighbors think we’re this big drug house. We’re not. He’s never sold marijuana and they know that.

All they want is control, and all we wanted was for him to have his medication and have a normal life like they do."