She prays for those “tangled” in the drug war, like herself, she is charged with commercial promotion of a detrimental drug, namely marijuana, along with two counts of paraphernalia. One of Harris’ paraphernalia charges is for glass pipes, another for gardening pots.
The church crop is not only used in religious ceremonies, but it is also provided to those who are sick and too ill to grow marijuana themselves.
Authorities aren’t buying such a defense. To them, the religious claim for marijuana is just that, a claim. In their eyes, marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug and the federal law against marijuana trumps the state statute allowing for medical use of marijuana.
In the year-plus since police raided the Sacred Truth Mission, a majority of Hawaii Island voters opted for a county ordinance deeming marijuana a low enforcement priority and calling for police to turn away federal marijuana eradication funds that total more than $500,000 annually.
“You do know that Prosecutor Kimura asked the attorney general’s office for an opinion?” said Police Chief Harry Kubojiri of the voter-approved county initiative. Prosecutor Jay Kimura could not be reached by press time for comment.
Kubojiri said he hadn’t seen anything come down the pike from the attorney general’s office yet. He shared the need for such an opinion, given the discrepancies at the county, state and federal level.
“In reference to the initiative (to make marijuana a low enforcement priority), the ordinance does not legalize marijuana,” Kubojiri stressed. “That’s where there’s some confusion there. The officer has the option of making marijuana the lowest enforcement priority. Part of our concern is the federal and state pre-emption. A county ordinance cannot override federal and state law. For a small amount of marijuana in possession, an officer has the discretion on enforcement. Therein lies the pre-emption issue. Officers have a duty to uphold the law, including federal and state laws.”
In the meantime, while they await the attorney general’s opinion, Capt. Randall Medeiros said police are “respecting the contents” of the county ordinance.
“That is the quandary,” Medeiros said. “People, as evident with the vote in the last election — whether they made a well-informed decision is not for me to say — the decision was made by a majority of the voters to make marijuana the lowest enforcement priority. It was a decision of the county.” The state law, meanwhile, makes promoting a detrimental drug a felony and lists marijuana as a detrimental drug, he noted.
“The quandary is whether to comply with the county ordinance and then state law. We’re trying our best to respect the ordinance.”
The ordinance specifies that marijuana should be deemed a low enforcement priority in cases of “adult personal use,” Hilo VICE Lt. Richard Sherlock explained. The ordinance defines an adult as being over 21 and specifies that the marijuana must be consumed on private property. The amount of marijuana considered to be adult personal use is not to exceed a pound and a half or 24 plants, Sherlock noted.
Had the county ordinance been in effect when Harris’ church was raided, she would have been over the limit 
for adult personal use. “If there are 124 plants, that’s well beyond the stated low enforcement priority.”
“They were pitiful looking plants,” Harris conceded, adding that the church had a “good crop” but it was taken in a December 2006 robbery she didn’t report to police because she believed it was “rogue police officers” who did it.
Medeiros said police are “seeing evidence” that medical marijuana patients are not keeping within their allowable amount of marijuana — three mature and four immature plants and a processed ounce — and, in many cases, don’t just have dozens more, but hundreds more.
In Harris’ case, she said the marijuana that police seized was used for church sacrament along with providing hemp oil for six other medical marijuana patients.
Among them was a man with the initial “R.P.,” who did not want his name in the newspaper for fear of retaliation from police. At the courthouse with Harris that Thursday, R.P. said he suffers from liver and lung cancer and cannot smoke marijuana. Instead, he takes hemp oil in capsules. He believes the hemp oil has staved off his death. Last August, he was told he had between two to four months to live, and he was released to hospice care.
“Honest to God, I don’t know if it cures it, but it has prolonged my life,” R.P. said.
Rev. Nancy Harris and her lawyer, Gary Zamber, that Thursday offered evidence to support their “motion to suppress for constitutional violations.” The 10 a.m. hearing didn’t get under way until shortly after 11 a.m., and the defense spent most of the 45-minute hearing establishing with their witness, church member Ken Slaughter, that the church had a no trespassing sign and a locked gate at the church.
“The cops who came to Sacred Truth Mission were probably rogue cops,” Harris maintained. “They would have probably robbed and left if we had not called 911. So, when the cop showed up after the 911 call, they went to get a search warrant after the fact, so to speak. We have been trying to prove that they weren’t behaving in a normal police manner.”
With the hearing continued until June 3, the defense will continue to argue its motion to suppress for constitutional violations.
“The other issue is the constitutional issue, the First Amendment, religious, speech and assembly violations,” Harris said. “We’re telling the court they have to apply a test called ‘Strict Scrutiny.’ If Judge (Glenn) Hara grants this, there are requirements on both sides. We have to show that the application of the drug laws to our church ‘burdens’ my ‘sincere religious exercise’ and the prosecution has to show that there is a ‘compelling interest’ and that this is the ‘least restrictive means’ of serving that compelling interest,” Harris said.
“Two churches that use ayahuasca, or hoasca, (containing the substance dimethyltryptamine (DMT)) have been given this test and in both those cases, the government failed to prove a compelling interest,” Harris said. “There have been some Rastafarian cases, and we have won some small victories, but thus far we have not won our religious rights in a clear victory to practice our religion like the Christian sects that use alcohol, or the Native American Church that uses peyote, or the O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal and the Sainto Daime churches that use ayahuasca. But there are quite a few Rastafarians all across the country that are working for this, so it is only a matter of time.”
As Harris’ case makes its way through legal proceedings, the police and prosecutors wait on the attorney general opinion on the voter-approved county initiative and marijuana enforcement in general.
February 2008 was the last eradication mission, according to Sherlock, providing the statistics to prove it. On the east side of the island between July 1, 2007 and April 2008, 21,000 marijuana plants were eradicated, Sherlock said. Between July 1, 2008 and April 2009, 3,100 plants were eradicated, he said. On the west side, meanwhile, between July 1, 2007 and April 2008, 6,701 plants were eradicated, according to Lt. Miles Chong of Kona VICE. Between July 1, 2008 and April 2009, 4,065 plants were eradicated, he said.
Elsewhere on the web:
http://www.myspace.com/sacredtruthmission
June 3rd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
I wonder how the police would reconcile what they say here about no eradication missions since February with the information in this article about a recent pot bust:
http://www.hawaiitribune-herald.com/articles/2009/06/03/local_news/local06.txt
According to the article, the bust resulted from what appears to be a recent aerial reconnaissance mission.
June 3rd, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Count me asconfused. The nexus of story is that court is having a trial because state AG has not acted. But AG is far lesser than the courts. The judge can drop, convict or comment with or without a Lindy Lingle opinion. (AG is alter ego of the gov since he serves at her pleasure.)
Something in this equation is amiss, like most things in our state these days.
June 3rd, 2009 at 10:48 pm
Sounds like a call to the lieutenant for clarification is in order, Dave. My only thought at this point is, could the aerial observation been over a year ago… ???
June 4th, 2009 at 8:56 am
Dave, just in: Police do aerial surveillance, which is totally separate from eradication and has a different operating procedure…
June 4th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Sounds to me like they’re splitting hairs.
You can’t have eradication without surveillance (except, say, for occasional tips from the public or encountering plants while executing a warrant), and if you’re supposedly not doing the eradication, why have the surveillance?
June 4th, 2009 at 3:33 pm
I find it amazing that voters simply refuse to grasp the hierarchy behind County, State, and Federal Governments. Did they actually get there GED’s?
Just because County voters approved bill # 1 last year does not automatically mean the State or the Feds are obligated to follow it.
The same issue ‘rule of law’ often appears with the Posse-Comitatus in the North Central part of the US. They refuse to acknowledge any authority greater than County Sheriff. Needless to say they repeatedly loose in court.
Hey can we face facts? These people want weed legalized period in order to ‘distribute it’ however they are bent.
If it were solely a medical issue, what they are allowed legally 7 plants plus an 1 dried oz, is plenty, plenty, plenty. Why fight for hundreds of plants?
June 5th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Anon, if indeed that is your real name, I try not to be a spelling Nazi, but since you’re such a supporter of education, it’s spelled “their GED,” not “there GED.”
Most people are not complaining about the lack of cooperation from the feds or the state, but about the apparent reluctance by the county police to follow the mandate passed by voters of Hawaii County regarding priorities. It remains to be seen if supporters of the Hawaii County law “loose” [sic] in court. Until that happens, what we have here is a legally passed ordinance.
As for the medical marijuana law, it widely believed to contain flaws, one of which is the lack of a clear definition of a mature plant. Many also question whether the subjective limit it sets provides a realistic amount, especially when compared to amounts allowed in some other jurisdictions. Since you’re such an expert on the needs of medical MJ patients, maybe you could volunteer your services the next time legislators work out some of the bugs.
June 6th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
“Authorities aren’t buying such a defense. To them, the religious claim for marijuana is just that, a claim. In their eyes, marijuana is a Schedule 1 drug and the federal law against marijuana trumps the state statute allowing for medical use of marijuana.”
We have some amazingly ignorant prosecutors and law enforcement people working for us. They do not need a state AG opinion at all. The “federal law trumps state law” meme regarding medical marijuana has not been valid since the middle of May. The U.S. Supreme Court would not hear an appeal by two California counties that had defied their states order to set an ID system for medical marijuana patients:
“Last year, a state appeals court upheld the California medical marijuana law and said it was not rendered void by the federal drug law. The California Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal from the two counties.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-court-marijuana19-2009may19,0,4902661.story
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:42 pm
[...] month I shared with you the story of a rastafarian, the Rev. Nancy Harris, who is charged with commercial promotion of a detrimental drug, namely marijuana, along with two [...]
October 29th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
The whole thing is nauseating. I wish MJ was just leagalized across the board. So sad.
November 20th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
[...] of a detrimental drug, namely marijuana, and two counts of paraphernalia. Click here and here and here for background. Email letters to [...]