SACRAMENTO, CA -- Plumas County medical marijuana defendants Jeffre Sanderson and Alice Wiegand were sentenced to prison terms in Sacramento federal court today. Sanderson, who is currently in custody at the Sacramento County Jail, received a 24-month sentence. Wiegand was sentenced to six months but permitted to delay her surrender until December 1st. This provision was granted because the couple’s two young children are being returned to her by Child Protective Services on April 28th, and Wiegand must keep them in her custody for the next six months in order to prevent them from being adopted out. The family home and farm has already been lost to forfeiture, and Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. said that he didn’t want the family to also lose their children to adoption procedures.
The case came after a local task force raided Sanderson’s 10-patient caregiver garden in August 2006. Both Sanderson and Wiegand were arrested and then bailed out, but their infant son Jamie was taken by Child Protective Services. Sheriff’s deputies testified to finding 64 outdoor marijuana plants and more than a hundred smaller plants in the basement of the home. Whether these were clones or unrooted cuttings is a matter of some dispute, but the issue quickly became moot – likely due to the large size of the outdoor plants, the defendants were charged by plant weight rather than plant count.
A recent evidentiary hearing revealed that the Plumas County District Attorney did not want to prosecute the case, and so it was handed over to federal prosecutors. The couple was then re-arrested on federal charges and again released soon afterwards. While fighting their federal case, Sanderson and Wiegand regained custody of Jamie and also welcomed a new son Jahson. In October 2007, however, the couple lost both sons to CPS when Sanderson was arrested for cultivating a new crop of marijuana while on supervised release. He has been in jail ever since, in spite of his efforts to defend his grow on religious grounds.
In November 2007, both defendants accepted plea deals. Sanderson pled guilty to cultivating an amount of marijuana determined to be under 80kg, thus freeing him from a mandatory minimum sentence. Wiegand made a guilty plea on conspiracy to cultivate and agreed to the forfeiture of the family’s home. Their sentencing was scheduled to go forward months ago, but it hit an unexpected delay when the prosecutor held a three-day evidentiary hearing to determine whether Sanderson could receive a safety valve reduction at sentencing. The government claimed that Sanderson had lied during debriefing by saying that he never sold marijuana and therefore did not qualify for the safety valve. Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Beckwith presented a series of witnesses on this issue, but Judge Damrell ultimately found that these witnesses were not credible. However, the hearing brought up another pivotal issue – testifying in his defense, Sanderson revealed that he had made thousands of dollars in poker winnings. Since the defendant didn’t report these earnings when discussing his income at the debriefing, the judge ruled that Sanderson had indeed been untruthful during the debriefing and therefore did not qualify for the safety valve.
Sanderson’s attorney Tim Zindel opposed this ruling and requested an evidentiary hearing on Sanderson’s truthfulness about gambling income. When the judge denied his request, Zindel made an oral declaration of his intent to appeal the case. “The ruling on the safety valve was nutty,” Zindel said, expressing his optimism for the appeal. He also added, “It’s a medical marijuana case – you have to keep plodding along and plodding along to get some justice.”
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Sanderson’s attorney Tim Zindel opposed this ruling and requested an evidentiary hearing on Sanderson’s truthfulness about gambling income. When the judge denied his request, Zindel made an oral declaration of his intent to appeal the case. “The ruling on the safety valve was nutty,” Zindel said, expressing his optimism for the appeal. He also added, “It’s a medical marijuana case – you have to keep plodding along and plodding along to get some justice.”
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