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Medical Marijuana Activist Sentenced to Prison in California

By Lindsay F. Wiley [Bio]

May 2, 2003 - Noting an unresolved conflict between state and federal laws regarding medical use of marijuana, a federal judge in California sentenced medical marijuana activist Steve McWilliams to a six-month prison term this week. “What’s really at the base of this case is a conflict between the state of California and federal law,” said U.S District Judge James Fitzgerald. “That conflict, I don’t believe can be resolved at trial courts. It will have to be resolved at the appellate level.”

McWilliams has been active in advising cancer patients and those with other medical conditions about how to obtain a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana under California’s Proposition 215, which legalizes medicinal use of marijuana. His demonstrations and public announcements about his plan to provide marijuana to terminally-ill patients attracted the attention of federal prosecutors. Federal law makes no special allowances for medicinal use of marijuana.

McWilliams, who was facing up to 40 years in federal prison on charges of cultivating about two dozen marijuana plants, pled guilty in exchange for a six-month sentence. He was also given three years of probation and ordered to undergo drug counseling and to register as a convicted drug offender.

One of McWilliams’s defense attorneys, Patrick Dudley, announced plans to appeal the conviction to the Ninth Circuit. Assistant U.S. Attorney Timothy D. Coughlin said that the six-month sentence was appropriate. “It’s very clear what the law is,” Coughlin said, “federal law makes it illegal to manufacture marijuana.”