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Written by Vanessa Nelson
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Tuesday, 24 April 2007 20:25 |
 Bryan Epis embraces his daughter Ashley after being released from prison in August 2004
He's also a living example of the dangers of dreaming.
A medical marijuana patient with a penchant for projections and proposals, Epis had no idea that a simple document he created in his Chico home would lodge itself into the heart of his legal case and haunt him for over a decade.
On its face, Exhibit 27 looks like an ordinary document.
It's a spreadsheet of expenses and production yields for a marijuana grow whose base figures were only loosely grounded in reality. After all, the search and seizure of Epis's operation yielded hundreds fewer plants than the document outlined. Even law enforcement officers testifying for the prosecution have conceded the document is untenable, calling it everything from "speculative" to "very optimistic."
Yet the content was weighty enough to land Epis with conspiracy charges in a trial held five years ago, when he stood accused of intending to grow over a thousand marijuana plants.
Although cultivation of medical marijuana was made legal in California under Proposition 215, its continued prohibition on the federal level prevented Epis from mounting a medical necessity defense at trial.
The verdict set a disastrous precedent for California's medical marijuana patients.
The jury, intentionally deprived of evidence demonstrating medical use, was sufficiently convinced of the seriousness of Epis's spreadsheet and found him guilty on the conspiracy charges.
 Author Vanessa Nelson holds a sign behind Bryan Epis during a press conference following his release from prison
In 2004, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled favorably for medical marijuana defendant Angel Raich, and her case went up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Epis became one of many federal prisoners released as a result of the appeals court's decision, and he was freed the following August. The resulting reunion with his young daughter Ashley was a feel-good media moment that scattered warm fuzzies across newspaper pages and television screens nationwide.
For all its sweetness, though, the celebration was short-lived.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against Ms. Raich in June 2005, and federal prosecutors in many districts of California hustled to file for resentencing of released medical marijuana prisoners. Epis quickly found himself back in court and, once again, the infamous spreadsheet would wrangle its way to center stage.
With Judge Frank Damrell Jr. refusing to reconsider the verdict, Epis pinned his hopes on qualifying for the so-called "safety valve," a legal mechanism that would allow the judge to sentence below the mandatory minimum guidelines.
To qualify, Epis participated in a debriefing at the Sacramento federal courthouse and answered a series of questions regarding the evidence in his case. Predictably, the inquiries hit a snag when the issue of the spreadsheet was raised yet again.
Epis said that Exhibit 27 had nothing to do with his Chico grow operation, and insisted it referred only to his plans to expand into Silicon Valley.
On a recording played for the court on February 23rd, 2007, Epis laid out his assertions very clearly. "What Exhibit 27 is, is part of a marketing plan," Epis explained on tape. "It's all part of the Silicon Valley proposal. It doesn't have anything to do with Chico."
Assistant U.S. Attorney Samuel Wong, however, disagrees. He accuses the defendant of lying on this subject, a charge that could disqualify Epis from safety valve consideration and diminish the possibility of him receiving a lesser sentence.
In light of the conflicting claims, the solution would seem simple -- a close examination of the exhibit might yield the necessary clues. After all, the exhibit is a document, with content laid out in black-and-white on paper for the world to see.
But Exhibit 27 is a nightmare of a document, and a puzzle from any perspective.
First of all, it has seen better days physically.
DEA Special Agent Ronald Mancini testified that it was seized from Epis's home during a 1997 bust, found printed out and lying on the coffee table. How it fared there is anybody's guess, vulnerable as it would be to beverage spills and other casual stains.
It is evident, however, that the document's first official trauma came early in its existence, and has had a permanent impact -- it still bears the smeared ink from an initial investigatory effort by law enforcement.
"I tried to get fingerprints off it to find out who might have handled it," Mancini told the court, explaining the smeared sections of the document.
After that came a nearly endless series of poorly-executed photocopies that, along with the ravages of a decade's wear, inched the document ever closer to visual obscurity.
It was enough to spin judge, counsel and witnesses into confounding exasperation during a recent evidentiary hearing.
"Unfortunately, all of the copies have gotten bad over time," defense attorney Brenda Grantland said apologetically as the court drudged through Exhibit 27 last February.
It's certainly no model of archival preservation, but the trouble with the document is more than skin deep. Its content was never substantively lucid in the first place. The subject matter has been the topic of countless hours of debate in the case, as both sides have attempted to weave a plausible story out of the meaning of its vague cost and yield tables.
How much can be proven on their basis, either way, is dubious at this point.
"Once I saw Exhibit 27, I said 'Whoa, this stuff is way off,'" Judge Damrell recounted during the February hearing.
"Mr. Epis testified it only applied to Silicon Valley at trial. You're saying it applied to Chico too?" the judge continued, questioning the prosecutor with a cynical tone.
"Yes," Wong said plainly, his confidence solid even as the judge silently shook his head. "It pertains to all the marijuana that was marketed."
"The same document pops up in two proposals," the judge continued, seemingly perplexed. "We need to establish which document pertained to Chico."
But five hours and two witnesses into the hearing, there wasn't even a hint of clarity on the matter.
"Your honor, I didn't think I was going to be here answering these types of questions," said former Butte County Deputy Sheriff Michael Shane Redmond during a confused and confusing cross-examination on Exhibit 27.
An entire day of testimony made only one thing clear. In both its form and its content, Exhibit 27 is an enigma -- no more comprehensible or concrete than the mathematical doodling of any inspired daydreamer.
Spreadsheets aside, the more damning evidence may be in the prosecution's claim that Epis lied on record about his involvement with Proposition 215 author and dispensary pioneer Dennis Peron.
Agent Mancini testified that, at the time of the 1997 bust, Epis had documents attached to his door that declared him to be a designated primary caregiver that provided medicine to a cannabis club in San Francisco. The documents concluded with instructions for contacting Peron, whom Mancini described as a "problem for law enforcement."
During the February 2007 hearing, Mancini elaborated on his opinion.
"He operated openly, advertised," Mancini said of Peron. "He probably sold marijuana to thousands of people at a very elevated price under the auspices that it was medicine."
If Mancini was perturbed by the price of Peron's pot, he was certainly not the only one with this complaint.
 Dennis Peron, chief author of California's medical marijuana initiative and operator of an early San Francisco dispensary
Though collected from the same area and attributed to the same author, Exhibits 27 and 102 are remarkably dissimilar documents. What Exhibit 27 lacks in specificity of content, Exhibit 102 certainly makes up for...and then some. The sentiments are demonstrative, the subjects are clearly identified, and the references are easy to follow.
And it's that lack of ambiguity that the government is counting on. Prosecutor Wong claims that Exhibit 102 clearly contradicts statements made by Epis during the November 2005 hearing, when the defendant claimed he never had a contract with Peron.
"When I brought in 8 ounces for $1400 (instead of $2000), I told you and Chris I wanted the medicine distributed for only $40 or $45," Epis wrote to Peron in Exhibit 102. "Did you ever lower the price for the customers? If not, this is yet another way the contract has been broken."
To show that the word 'contract' had not been used lightly or on a whim, the prosecution pointed out a section of Exhibit 102 where the word appears in nearly every sentence.
"I am very offended when someone breaks a contract with me, and I think of ways to assert my rights," wrote Epis to Peron. "It is not easy to get out of a contract with me."
It's language that flies in the face of statements made by Epis under oath during his safety valve hearing. At that time, Epis absolutely denied any official contract with Peron.
"When I brought him clones, I said, 'Maybe I'll supply you,' but that never actually happened," Epis says on page 45 of the hearing transcripts, when asked about Peron. "I never had a contract with him."
Even when pressed on the matter, Epis stood firm on his denials. "I didn't have an agreement with him per se," Epis insisted during the safety valve hearing. "I said, 'If I have some access, I'll supply it to you,' but that never actually happened. After that, I opened my dispensary, and things all happened so fast."
That might be the only time the word 'fast' could be accurately used to describe anything involving the Epis case.
The next step of the evidentiary hearing requires Epis himself to take the witness stand and answer to charges that he made untruthful statements during his safety valve hearing. Currently convalescing from a debilitating foot injury, Epis displays no eagerness to testify. Control dates for the hearing have been moved twice over the past two months, and the case is currently in a scheduling limbo.
But it's all par for the course, and part of the predictable unpredictability of the Epis saga. Observers never know what to expect while navigating the frequent twists and the complexities of the case.
And it's precisely this kind of intricacy that fascinates the defense attorney. "What's amazing is the issues in this," Grantland said during a break in courtroom testimony. "I can't think of another criminal case that has this many Constitutional issues in it...or actually any kind of issues. It's really amazing."
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Last Updated on Friday, 21 September 2007 13:20 |
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