Cannabis patients who run into legal problems have a new online support network at MedicalMarijuanaofAmerica.com, which tracks some high profile cases.

Mollie Fry and Dale Schafer

In front of a courtroom packed with spectators Jan 25, a federal judge in Sacramento denied all of the motions filed on behalf of a medical marijuana doctor and her husband. Dr. Marion “Mollie” Fry and Dale Schafer, who both suffer severe health problems, were allowed to take a seat halfway through the reading of the ruling. As they sat attentively at the defense table, the pair watched the case continue its slow, inevitable slide towards trial. Fry and Schafer have been fighting this legal battle since a dramatic 2001 raid, in which federal agents ransacked the couple’s home and the office where Fry examines medical marijuana patients in compliance with California’s Prop 215.

---

MedicalMarijuanaofAmerica.com

---

Fry and Schafer’s case proceeds with a readiness conference at 10am on June 22, on the 15th floor of 501 I Street in Sacramento. Their trial is set to begin on July 31 and is expected to be a lengthy one. Six years in the making, it will feature myriad witnesses and last an estimated two months. With so much hanging in the balance, Fry’s concern is her minor children. ‘I just don’t want my kids to be orphans,’ she said outside court yesterday. ‘That’s what will happen if they send us to jail — they’ll be making orphans.’

Joe Fortt sentencing update

Freshly released from the hospital, a demonstrably ill Joseph Fortt was brought by wheelchair to a federal courtroom for sentencing March 5. The former Bakersfield dispensary owner sat hunched and frail at the side of his attorney, who asked the judge to observe his client’s physical condition and consider a slight reduction in the recommended sentence.

Fortt, who pled guilty to charges related to his cultivation of medical cannabis, was set to receive a sentence equivalent to time already spent in jail. But there was a problem with that plan — Fortt’s time served was still six weeks shy of the recommended 21 month sentence.

Judge dismisses 32,524 plants

There were strong words in a federal courtroom Tuesday as Judge Marilyn Patel made a series of decisions in the case of Lake County medical marijuana provider Reverend Charles “Eddy” Lepp, who runs Eddy’s Medicinal Gardens and Ministry of Cannabis & Rastafari. He has been facing charges that relate to a 2004 raid that netted an unprecedented 32,524 marijuana plants and left him in jeopardy of serving multiple life sentences. With one short declaration, however, Judge Patel knocked some of the sharpest teeth out of the case against Lepp. “All evidence seized through the 2004 warrant is suppressed,” the judge said unambiguously.

To read more about these cases, show support for patients and caregivers facing prosecution, or donate to support the project, see MedicalMarijuanaofAmerica.com.

* Nelson is the correspondent at the scene reporting on many of the key cases in Court reports from the front lines of the War on US at MedicalMarijuanaofAmerica.com