MODESTO, CA – No judge showed up to arraign the defendants from the Oakdale Natural Choice Collective yesterday.
Neither was there an appearance from a commissioner, a referee, or anyone else wearing a robe and wielding judicial authority.
The placard outside Dept. 12 of the Stanislaus County Courthouse assigned the room to Timothy Helper, but that mysterious adjudicator was nowhere to be found.
Instead, the seven defendants were called forward individually by a clerk and recited an identical pre-written message. The District Attorney was still investigating their case, they were told, and they would be due back in the courtroom at 1:30pm on September 25th, 2007. As the memo assured them, they would remain out on bail in the meantime.
Addison DeMoura - Photo by Vanessa Nelson
Each responding to his name, an assortment of young men in dark three-piece suits rose to receive the repeated message: Angel Herrera, Russell Green, Michael Cadiz, Brennan Johnston, Joseph Young, and, of course, media frontman Addison DeMoura. But one defendant in particular stood out from the rest – a frail-looking man who breathed through tubes hooked up to the oxygen tank he pulled around behind him on wheels. This man, Modesto's Shawn Garvin, was reportedly arrested in a sting operation officers set up by pretending to keep the collective open during the bust.
“They reopened after they had raided us,” DeMoura explained, speaking of the law enforcement officers. “They just ran it themselves, like we were open, and arrested the people who came in.”
He shook his head, looking genuinely dismayed at the turn of events. “That’s entrapment,” he added. “We hope it’s what gets the case thrown out.”
This issue certainly adds another layer of texture to the case, but dodging the prosecution will probably take more than one try…and perhaps even in more than one courtroom. After all, the feds have been in on this investigation almost from the beginning, and there are multiple agencies for the defendants to legally out-maneuver.
The Oakdale Police Department began its investigation of the collective right on the heels of its opening, which coincided almost precisely with the city’s passage of a moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries. Soon, however, the local police were asking for assistance from a multi-jurisdictional group called the Stanislaus Drug Enforcement Agency. Although it carries nearly the same acronym as the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and even includes man-power from this federal agency, the SDEA also employs agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Internal Revenue Service. Combining the skilled specialties of federal agents with the local knowledge of city police officers, cooperative task forces like SDEA often make formidable investigatory teams.
In the case of the Oakdale collective, it took the task force only two months of investigation before it decided to go ahead with the bust. It chose July 31st, 2007, as the day of action, raiding multiple locations and placing a total of eight individuals under arrest. Searches were conducted at the collective and at the homes of various employees, but law enforcement is remaining incredibly tight-lipped about what those searches yielded.
“They came in with guns drawn,” DeMoura described, “but they didn’t find anything. Nothing. Just medicine.”
Addison DeMoura - Photo by Vanessa Nelson
The former dispensary operator related this story while standing on a corner across the street from the courthouse. As he spoke, a police car quietly pulled up right alongside him and waited at the red stoplight. DeMoura peered in at the driver’s seat for a minute, then looked away and sighed. “They can tear your house apart and throw your wedding pictures in the sink, but they can’t look you in the eye like a man,” he said with a shake of his head.
This is a disappointing situation for many residents of Oakdale, which was once a place of promise to medical marijuana patients in California’s Central Valley. The little town, known for its rodeo days and its cowboy culture, was something of a last frontier – within Stanislaus County, Oakdale was the city that held out the longest on enacting a moratorium on medical marijuana dispensaries.
Although medical marijuana was legalized by California voters in 1996, a senate bill passed several years later gave a large degree of discretion to each county with regard to setting quantity guidelines for cultivation and possession. This bill also included language allowing for caregivers to be compensated for costs involved with the provision of marijuana to legitimate patients, and many interpreted this language as giving a green-light to open storefront marijuana dispensaries. Individual localities reacted in varying ways to this phenomenon, some cooperatively regulating dispensaries, others banning them, and still others attempting de facto bans by stalling their way through the moratorium process.
Modesto protest - Photo by Vanessa Nelson
The problems faced by medical cannabis patients and providers extend far beyond the local sphere, of course. One of the most formidable challenges is the fact that marijuana is still considered illegal on the federal level. Prosecutors for the U.S. Attorney’s Office have stuck doggedly to the claim, widely disputed in legal circles, that the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 gives the federal government the jurisdiction to prosecute any and all drug-related cases. It’s a situation that has put medical marijuana providers on a high-wire act, allotted only the weak safety net of state-level legal protections. To make the act even riskier, the frequent cooperation between local and federal law enforcement agencies shakes the tightrope and yanks away the safety net. Such cooperative actions ensure funding grants for the local police departments, while the federal government receives forfeiture booty and other benefits of scoring criminal convictions.
Medical marijuana providers are easy prey in this political landscape, but they are certainly not the only people who suffer from the bust of a medical marijuana dispensary. The lesser-seen victims are the patients, who end up with limited access to their medicine. In this case, Stanislaus County residents with medical marijuana recommendations will be forced to travel far out of town or to navigate the black market in order to get their medicine. Both of these options pose challenging problems for those who are ill and have limited mobility.
“We took good care of our patients,” DeMoura insisted, and it only required a peek outside the courthouse to see evidence of the community support. Nearly thirty people gathered to protest the arraignment, carrying signs and banners to display at different street corners as the busy lunchtime traffic in downtown Modesto reached its peak.
Modesto protest - Photo by Vanessa Nelson
“Rep. Cardoza Hates Sick People” declared a sign that poked at Dennis Cardoza, an area representative notorious for opposing the efforts of medical marijuana activists. “Regulations, Not Raids,” begged another sign, subtly hinting at the community benefits that might be gained by taxing and regulating dispensaries.
Not that there was time to see any such benefits from the Oakdale collective. “We were shut down before our first business quarter ended,” DeMoura chuckled cynically. The dispensary did, however, make a human impact, and this was evident in the impressive turnout for the protest. To make such a showing, patients and supporters braved the intense heat of the valley summer, which edged near triple-digits during the afternoon.
And the environment got even hotter after the court appearance concluded and supporters were left to reflect on the significance of what had happened – or, more accurately, what had not happened. Some were content to conclude that the D.A.’s office was simply on summer break and needed more time to finalize the charges. Many of the protesters, however, made more suspicious predictions. As they packed up their signs and banners, they whispered to each other about whether the Stanislaus County D.A. was planning to hand the case over to the U.S. Attorney for prosecution at the federal level.
It’s an omnipresent threat faced in state medical marijuana cases, and the Oakdale defendants are certainly no exception. But whatever jurisdiction they end up in, the one sure thing is that they won’t have to go it alone. For better or worse, these young men have a dedicated following of community supporters who are ready to stand up and be heard. Their message is undeniably clear: Safe Access in California’s Central Valley won’t be eradicated without a fight, and a fierce one at that.
Medical cannabis supporters protest raids - Photo by Vanessa Nelson
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