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Kubby gets early release due to jail overcrowding, then sent back in |
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Written by Tristin Coffman
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It was neither judge nor jurors that freed Steve Kubby from jail
temporarily on March 6; it was overcrowding at the Placer County
facility. Judge John Cosgrove, who presided over Kubby’s 2001 trial,
had rejected a request for a hearing to modify Kubby’s original 120-day
sentence only days before his release.
Then, on March 14, Kubby turned himself in to serve
a 60-day sentence for failure to appear in court. The situation
underscored the outspoken reform advocate’s point that America has
better use for law enforcement than to persecute cannabis users. His
rare adrenal cancer can cause life-threatening blood-pressure spikes
that his doctors say are controlled by use of up to an ounce of
cannabis per day. Kubby and his wife, Michelle, were targets of a
high-profile medical marijuana case that began with a raid on the
patients’ basement garden on Jan. 1, 1999.
Michelle was acquitted of all charges, and jurors
hung on the charge that Kubby was growing to sell; but he was convicted
and sentenced to four months in jail for fragments of peyote and
mushroom.
Kubby, active in the Prop 215 campaign and a
Libertarian gubernatorial candidate in 1998, fled to Canada with his
family five years earlier but Canada deported Kubby, his wife, and
their two young children to the US, where he was promptly arrested.
Judge Cosgrove denied Kubby’s request to use medical
marijuana behind bars, but did authorize marinol, a pharmaceutical
synthetic-THC product.
 Steve Kubby in front of the Bulldog in Oaksterdam. Photo by Jaime Galindo |
Volume Two 
