in the weeks leading up to his trial he said he had faith in the justice system we were breaking state law we weren't we weren't trying to rush to harm anyone we were trying to design a system that operated well within state law i would hope that they would look at it on those issues and not prejudge just on the fact that it was a medical marijuana issue williams now faces a mandatory minimum of forty five years behind bars when asked to  scared to go to prison he answered airily that you know i'd be separated from my son and lookers in the u s district court helena tell me williams was taken away in handcuffs the jurors must return tomorrow morning to finalize their verdict a sentencing date has not yet and got hold of justice for life we begin with a medical marijuana exclusive eighteen months ago the state's medical marijuana industry was brought to its knees and those in the eye of the storm have weathered a grim debate between state and federal law for some that means watching your loved ones go to prison i had an opportunity to sit down with the daughter of montana if a picture is worth a thousand words and kristen floor has quite the story to check out federal agents with guns drawn r for here christian whose father passed away in jail in federal court person right yes he did so this is all the live today we're going to cover all day we're going to cover some very important things about the jury nullification yes is that right forty four years but when my father got to mention that that they kind of just forced him to plead out because he said he couldn't take his case to trial he wasn't supposed to get any jail time because he got sentenced to five years and they took him right away despite how sick he was and they put him in so they put him in a medical facility for four months in this post to go to a medical facility but instead he sat in general population in a private prison for four months where the nurses accused him of faking his illnesses and his illness just got really bad he broke bones he he he grew cancer in his colon and after four months they were even taken to a hospital or anything like that so i came on the show about a year and a half ago just after he passed to talk about how he died and how they neglected him and i'm here in a few years later as a national leader for a group called the human solution because when my dad did die i was shackled to a hospital bed and i had to take him off life support and ever since then i've realized about all the prisoners that he's left behind and all the defendants that can't possibly be prisoners and so i've been fighting for them ever since last time i was on the show and so today we're going to talk about how we can pick people out of prison and we've got some defendants here who are facing thirty years in prison right now would like to tell their story and how you guys can help them we're going to talk a little bit about our state laws i want to bring up a few prisoners so everybody knows what it's like to live in prison because for our planet right now we know of over one hundred fifty people who are in prison serving long long sentences about fifty of them are serving life sentences and those people serving life sentences will never see fredo and they'll never get out and they'll still die in prison so we have a few cases we want to talk about and we want to talk about how to end prohibition two thousand and fourteen and how the jury nullification can help with that and we would also like to talk about some some other things they will get to later who isn't here today but he's also facing thirty years in this is poppy who was of hauling tear for martin's collective and she came to our country and she volunteered at this collective because she believed in our plan natural natural where you can heal people and so she's got in trouble by the by the city because the city you know believes in the federal laws and in the united states of america right now we have state laws and we have  caregivers who risk everything and they go after them and prosecute them turning them into defendants and then possibly if they go to prison they turn them into prisoners and you know none of our none of our caregivers are criminals none of them ever hurt anybody they're all innocent following state laws we actually have people in prison that's been in there since the seventy's and people who will never get out of prison and we fight for that because we believe the human solution of this is sharon marcel just their core support  and we believe that the human solution that nobody deserves to go to prison for a plan and of course we believe that nobody desires to die over a player and we also have my dad here i brought him and i brought some of his ashes because he goes with me everywhere and we don't anybody behind because he's very important term his actions his actions are actually sprinkled at the white house a little bit so hopefully that can help us find some justice some day but i would like to let you guys know right now that  also going to talk about william kurtz who's just a little bit older a man and we most of us here we've all been to his his court cases and he's in a wheelchair and they want to put him in prison and they want to conviction we're going to talk about you know  how nobody deserves to go to jail for a plant and these convictions if we stop the convictions that's how we can go to how that's how we can stop prohibition two thousand and fourteen likes after my dad died they took my mom to prison and they would even let my mom out after my dad died and his business partner chris williams had five business partners and his business partner chris williams took his case to trial and lost because the jury had no idea that he was a caregiver for how many people have they helped he helped because they did not allow state laws in federal court so we're going to talk about some of our prisoners who went to trial a little bit later and how jury nullification could a save them and we're going to talk about her during all fish acacia campaign the puppy and i are launching and sharon and anybody who wants to be included our campaign to educate people throughout washington to stop prohibition to stop convictions from happening so you guys i want we also talk about state law so first of all i would like the bellingham three here to talk about what's going on with them and how you what you can do to help them mark you want to start sure start by telling your story well it started about two years ago i've had the store open for over three years now and we were raided on march fifteenth i believe two years ago and the court case is still so still pending there are two  farm to some of my volunteers they did inside the shop there was actually twelve volunteers working at the day we were really really busy it was a thursday so it was a furlough day for them so they knew if they raided us on this specific day then we'd have to spend the four days instead of the three days in jail or maybe it was three days in jail but what was it like for you to be in jail with like the murderer it was pretty crazy to even see some of the people who were in jail when i was booked into jail who i had known from before and i was quite appalled to be in there there's actually even cops are using and fighting amongst themselves while we were being booked in about you know just the controversy of why they're even raiding us and it was it was you were following the laws we were following the state law as tight as we could possibly be on every level the city just didn't like what we were doing and i doubt that all three potshots were doing something wrong like they've said that they were you know everybody was following the state law joint collective was also one of the one bellingham with their court is up on their they're still waiting for an appeal to come up so we're also waiting on their appeal so we can kind of see where we're going to go with this but we are going to take it to a jury trial this is a state court this is not a federal court we have believe we have rights in state in the states and we're hoping to see our public officials step up and do the right thing for the people well you know one thing i want to say is that we've passed these laws to save marijuana is legal and so a lot of people celebrate that and the lot of people don't realize about all the people who are actually being cross prosecuted and really busy day there is about twelve volunteers ontarian that day and i walked in from the back and i want to add to the friend with a whole bunch of cops trying to come in through the front door and they came in through the front door and they all told us to get on our knees and i mean you look over to your left and you see jars the medicine being smashed you see they were just mashing them they were smashing glass while they were grabbing you know all the paraphernalia like the pipes and in the edibles and all those kind of things they were gathering those while they're you know questioning us and i got taken in the back by a detective and i just remember looking at this detective being like why do i know him why do why does he look so familiar and as soon as they recognized his face i was like you know he was he came into our shop i was scared for my life coming into he was actually a first time patient so the first time patient gets a free edible so a free brownie or a free cookie so i don't know how his life was in danger  hundred and five i was a police officer and the only other person who could have been helping him was jeremy who's in a wheelchair too so i don't know how his life was a major or how he felt like that but he also had to sign an agreement saying that you know he wasn't a cop and the judge asked him why didn't you read over the agreement and he said oh i didn't have time because i felt that my wife was in danger so yeah so with that it's basically government hotman they committed a crime they falsified you know the identifications along with their medical marijuana authorizations in order to pass these crimes on us so the second i recognized him i asked him are you taking me to jail and he told me yes and unfortunately that was the night before my finals for you know fall court and it just kind of we spent the night in jail and the last thing i remember is the cops being confused while they were booking us but i just remember crying because i was like you know that's the last every fresh breath of air that we get this is life and then we get to the middle world so so confusing because for instance here in seattle there are over two hundred dispensaries in bellingham at the time there was maybe three or four so with the king county being more liberal we thought you know the rest of the state was going to be like this we've had a medical marijuana hundred eighty there access points all over the state there are patients who are accessing their medicine what was so different about us having an access point helping cancer patients helping people with crazy illnesses helping m s patients helping people with their a seattle a lot of these people can't drive all the way to seattle they have got to have a safe access point downtown which is exactly what we've created a safe access point downtown it's not out in the sticks it's not  this drive by people and when i know people can see what it is and it's like you know we thought we were at the point of our society of having medical marijuana not being a taboo i mean the voters just legalize marijuana supposedly last november's there was like you know why is this taboo still here so poppy i'm wondering like you're a volunteer so what we're led you to being a volunteer what led you to the norm across collective i met so i was actually majoring in social and my goal was to become a mental health social worker and i either want to become a therapist or do social work in so i know my in for quite some time and so when the opportunity arises to volunteer i you know ticket and do that volunteering i made a lot of friends and the volunteers that i worked with and i also worked with a gentleman named ken who has had m s for the last twenty one years and i was a registered c n a at the time so i was also helping him while volunteering and being a full time and they're not snitching on each other and that's one thing that happened in my father's case is his business partner went to trial and there was five partners in my dad's case and three of them medical marijuana tourney and a lobbyist who got the last past told on them so these guys are like doing a really good thing here for our movement and trying to bring prohibition to an end by standing up to the government and taking their cases to trial a lot of times the government offers you please in exchange for testimony or in exchange for a smaller sentence which they  father of a three year old little girl he's just the most down to earth person you could ever possibly meet and he's my manager and he's one of my best friends and i just can't believe it and i feel bad about unity that's the only way we can beat this whole prohibition war on drugs is by unity and by us standing up letting the egos go we're going to talk about unity to here as far as the community goes and the biggest thing right there is egos you know like basically when you have all you're looking at is thirty years in prison i mean ego kind of goes away because you don't know what to expect tomorrow you don't know what to expect next month we're sitting here two years later and we're still awaiting trial and so i mean our egos have gone out the window and we can do nothing but just live our lives day by day and i mean in in the medical marijuana community here in washington state egos are the number one thing they i've noticed a lot in the way i and look at the big picture of what we need to get accomplished here what i like to mention is that our government and our police and our prosecutors and our judges and our informants and all these people they're actually get paid a lot of money to keep prohibition existing and they're getting paid not to have they have unity because they're getting paychecks and get paid lots of money so they all fight with each other they have a job to do and any kind of a plea is a win in their book any kind of a plea whatsoever i weapon and i might just remind everybody that the federal government they have a ninety eight percent i know what the state government has but the federal government has a ninety eight percent conviction rate and i want to ask you guys how has this affected your li should have been done with my masters looking into going and you haven't even been convicted no we're still it's just pending charges and the thing about that is even when i try to go get a job in the real world a criminal background check you know it says you know it's messy for convicted jail let alone given how bright it so right down in jail not knowing what was going to happen i suffer from p t s d from that and is just it's so hard i mean i never could wish jail or prison upon anybody but we're going to talk about what it's like to talk about that so how has this affected your personal life or your life here well where do i start it's affected the store it's affected my life it's affected my child's life it's affected the whole family's life it's affected the whole medical communities life up in the bellingham and skagit county area everything is based off of me up north  i don't like that i'm not a person who likes to be in the limelight of anything i would much rather be left alone and help patients and be out of the limelight but i don't have a choice but to stand up for myself and stand up for my patients and my people who have stood up for me this is just an issue i've spent over ten thousand dollars in the last six months just on being able to see my son over the reefer madness of this whole thing i can't believe c p s is willing to take your child away from you for marijuana much quicker than heroin or meth and i want to say you know like our children are victims of our drug war and they're prisoners as well when they go off to c p s and you know we had we had a little girl over in spokane billy fisher's daughter who was taken and was being taken care of by a three year old man for quite some time and actually tax but they're also i'm the only one that they're kind of going after on the tax thing too there's three hundred collectives going and they're pushing me into making a decision and going into federal court on a tax issue at this point which is i don't like but we have no choice and it's just there's just so many things coming at me from every which  way you can look up a lot of these if you want to look up a lot more of this to the northwest leave something about it every issue's been coming out and believe there's another one in this you know about it but i think we really need to look into i guess the big thing that we need to start looking at different scheduling the scheduling the scheduling scheduling is a huge thing because we can't get a lot accomplished in the federal courts without some sort of a disco joining scheduling of some sort  talking about the scheduling let's talk a little bit about the five people in spokane who are facing sixty years in prison and if sentenced to sixty if they're found guilty if their trial if they're sentenced to sixty years in prison there is a de facto life sentence even though they were sentenced to life they will spend the rest of their life in prison on one yes and larry seven years old yes and they're all family members and when they arrested larry for the first time he went in in a walker and came out in a wheelchair they did not take care of him they didn't give him his message just for three or four days he suffered very very badly and well we say that you know the federal government they put out what's called the ogden memo and they put out something called the cold memo every carlists of the ogden in the cold memo they have overstepped their boundaries disrespected you know all of our state laws and they're going after these five people and next next week on september twelfth to the sixteenth oh may we're in they now to their trial they're not even allowed the state laws and so the jury is not even to be aware of the fact that they were caregivers or how many people they helped so we would like to bring some attention to that case and anybody who watches this  please just if you can show up to court next week that would be really great yes there is a google doc online and you guys can actually find any of us on facebook and we can take you in that google diet if you want to carpool out there there's lots of ways you can get out there and why we're talking about this i want to mention you know that my dad's business partner took it to trial and i've seen this before so i know that they're not allowed state laws of federal court that motion just got thrown out yesterday so  his case to trial they didn't even know his character over how many people he helped and they didn't even know he followed state laws ok this is chris williams yes he's still in prison and he'll be out of prison in five years but he refused to accept a plea deal unlike the other partners who did accept a plea deal and then we also have these guys here i want to show you guys a little bow we've got who are serving eighteen and twenty years and they were caregivers down in california and they followed all the state laws and the jury didn't know they were caregivers either and then i want to talk a little bit about a look here we all know eddie live he's in colorado right now but he's serving a ten year property that his son grew on and they took their case to trial in michigan because the federal government a couple years ago did the same thing in michigan that they did to montana and in fact right now there's thirty seven people being indicted in one single case regardless of their state laws in michigan to cost him one point two million dollars to take care of him well and he's in a medical prison and jason nelson took his case to trial and i also want to mention aaron sandusky who took his case to trial and all these trials i'm talking about all of them had snitches they all had people to say hey they did this wrong and they all had you know basically other people in our medical marijuana community they handed the government told the government information so they got less jail time so you know one thing we can stop in prohibition right now is by stop giving the government convictions one is by not snitching the other one is by knowing our jury rights and  this is my documentation that represents my natural born right to stay should tell you how to think you have a conscience if you want a brochure go ahead you can take it on my  can't say not guilty to the accuse one person could hang a jury in addition even a grand jury you could not you don't have to indict him if you believe what that person did was illegal on his natural born right my motive is to stem the tide of tyranny by forming the good folks that are going to serve on a jury of what their their duties and their obligations are their fellow citizens and in fact what their rights are in judging the law so that they are not just judging someone as to whether or not they broke unjust law but whether or not the law itself is just and so that they will use the full power that the jury  unless you know we flex our rights and we know the laws and we have forced the law of the land and not the law government knows best people that want to control every facet of our lives and protect us from ourselves and i believe that personal responsibility and self government   talk a little bit about our prisoners and what happens after they send our growers in our caregivers in our patients to pray that you know my dad died of course in federal custody so i know a little bit about what it's like can you hear me ok cool  so my dad you know when he died he was he was given he wasn't given any medical care he wasn't given his medicine when he died he was on twenty eight and when he went to jail he was on twenty eight different medicines and he died he was away on three so he wasn't being taken care of at all  nurses accused him of faking it and he was in prison with a lot of bad people and you know how can you say colon cancer when that's a cause of death so when he died i took him off life support i realized at that point you know are so many people that he left behind to suffer and the people that we have in prison it's like my dad died in a private prison and what happens in private prisons is they have contracts and they make these contracts with the top one percent of our nation and they pay our private prisons to have our prisoners make things for them like mcdonald's cups and just just stuff like that in they they pay them less than twenty five cents an hour and are in our federal prisons we have over seven hundred  fifty people who are incarcerated for victimless crimes meaning they never hurt anybody and a lot of them are drug crimes or immigration type crimes there you know some of them are marijuana crimes and you know we don't think our people should be living in prison and when they're when they're in prison they're shackled all the time and they live in a little little tiny jail cells where they can hardly move and sometimes they have roommates in the toilets in the room with them and they only let them out a couple times a day to you know take showers and eat and work for them so it's called slave labor it's kind of all the top one percent stays rich off of the whole entire war and when we go through this war and we lose our people to it the real news doesn't really show that so we don't really know what exactly is going on so guys got to pay attention because a lot of the rabbet to give you some  about how all lot of these prisoners could have been saved just by us knowing our rights and the light of the some of the rights of our prisoners you know when their government doesn't allow the whole story to be told to the jury and then the jury makes convictions off of what the government allows them to hear and then we just go to jail and our stories wasn't even told it's not very fair and we have a caregiver by the name of luke starr mazel and he's in prison for twenty years him this part her fault all the state laws showed you guys all his sign here earlier yet here's lou and this is ricardo and their fathers they have children that they left behind that if they don't get out of prison their kids will be grown up without their dads and they've been growing up without their dad now for a few good three or four years and luke went into the hole a couple months ago and while he was in the hole and he's an activist for a plant he wrote i've been in the hole for over a month i have about forty more days left the conditions are deplorable they feed you such a small amount of food you stay in a perpetual state of hunger being being locked in a small concrete cell for such an expanded extended period of time can be mentally trying but what but what they don't know is i can endure whatever they can do to me they can never lock me up my mind or my spirit only part i'm just but the only part i'm disheartened about is not being able to see my daughter for a year they took my visits for one year and my phone for six months plus they added forty one days to my sentence i'm appealing it but it's an uphill battle to put slightly i have forty days left it's all good week we keep pushing and that's comes from look for mazo and when i think about it you know luke never hurt anybody and you know we have nine people right now we're going to talk about william kurtz in a second in washington there are heroes that are making the ultimate sacrifice for all of us and so we want to make sure that this doesn't happen anymore and to make sure it doesn't happen anymore it's through your no one your jury rights we have it could have saved five that means that they are recognizing that there is no victim in this crime there is no you know or the state laws do not make sense and far as the crimes are pushed so for instance here in the state of washington in two thousand and twelve november two thousand and twelve the state had legalized marijuana so prosecuting medical marijuana patients is still going on so if a juror in our case ordered the spokane five case or any of the cases that are currently going on in washington if one juror said when who you're telling us that we are you guys are trying to convict these medical marijuana patients in a state that wants to legalize marijuana in a state that's had medical marijuana since one thousand nine hundred eighty but we are you guys are trying to send these people to prison well the jury can say no this law is unjust it's not fair and i know five and then with that option basically those people will not go to jail and so with that information they could have saved you know krist talked about all these prisoners they could have saved them if the jurors what a new their rights and it could save you know potential people that might be going to prison and another case that you know kind of has something to do with that is the william critz case and i'll pass that over to sharon so she can kind of explain what's going on with that william kurtz is an elderly gentleman he's in a wheelchair has several medical conditions and they he did not have his recommendation at the time of his arrest he went and got it later and they the prosecutors just said they weren't going to do anything and they just left the case but then the day before i believe it was the day before the statute of limitations was up the prosecutor decided to go after him again and so we're dealing with that right now going to see his court his court is coming up necessity basically gives a medical marijuana patient patient the right to use medical marijuana in their treatment and so basically the higher courts have said yes he is a patient he can use medical marijuana that no you don't have medical necessity they can't use the state medical marijuana program and it doesn't work and those are all those people who are being convicted over there remember those people are from or area employees and microsoft employees do yes they are very important people to our movement as well i want to mention you guys that regardless of even if they did break any laws if it's a bad law and we have a lot a jury nullification can help with a lot all of our bad laws if you think the laws are bad or should not be applied in particular case you have the right to say not guilty you could say you know you can refuse to send these guys to prison for thirty years it's up to us and one thing that's very important when these people go to trial and they go to court cases it's while our movement they continue they work go to work every day and they celebrate it you know on fridays we have parties and we have these big celebrations and when we go to court and there's only like ten people i've noticed in court rooms we're not necessarily maybe we don't know but for some reason we're not supporting our our caregivers as is their fallen or our patients so i want to bring a lot of attention to court support because if we we we flood the court rooms on court days and it shows them that they can't do this to us anymore and it shows the jury as they see people standing out there what's going on you know it gives the government it gives people a chance to see what the government is doing in these trials that we have us how much it helps when they show us how much it hurts them right at the court case when they try to make our court cases at seven thirty and eight thirty in the morning so you can try to get nobody to show up so that it's  definitely they they have all their ducks in a row you know and we have to have all our ducks all of our ducks in a row so we make sure we're one step ahead of them on every level because we're not at this point we can get a million people to show up at him fast and we get ten people that something's wrong with that a really step it up and make it to core support keep these people from going to prison because if they go to prison that just means you didn't go because if it wasn't then it would be you it would could be any one of us and it could be any one of us in the future and if you were put in the position and you were innocent and you were just had other going to say your heart you're trying to help people you know no you shouldn't you should have your community backing you one hundred percent so you know like in a state especially like this where we call it legal we really need to be standing by each other that was one more thing about luke is that luke was saying if everybody just stood up for him in a court room that that would have made a huge difference as well as his daughter who he adores is being told that he's a bad man for doing what he did and so that's what he's asking us to do to help him is to spread the word he's not a bad man and we don't believe he's a bad man you know we have james roman's durch monte on oh they just got adopted we have an adopt a prisoner program so as are characters that befall and you know a lot of people don't know a lot about them we're trying to get our collectives in our in our communities all across the nation to take care of them and look at fundraisers in the commissary money so the c e o have first they've taken it upon themselves to adopt james james romans in georgia so now when they have their celebrations and they celebrate legalization and they celebrate their have their parties they're also collecting money and they're loading these prisoners books and they're advocating for them we also have richard to lisi in arm alfre it is and charles kind of they're all certain license in charles kind of he got in trouble back in ninety nine hundred ninety one thousand nine hundred ninety one and he's been in there for it's week to figure this out on the way here twenty three days a year for twenty three year and he's serving a life sentence and he says he's had no contact with anybody for the last thirteen you know nobody any money on his books he had to get his shoes out of the trash can yes that's how we that's how some of our planet prisoners are surviving the recall or some of the laws you know there are bad laws and it's been a schedule one drug is a bad law and that's why he is in prison so we can't forget about our people who have who have paved the way for us and lost everything for us that's very very important to us they're like the good fight for us yes and we have got  especially remember people who are in our private prisons and are in our state prisons it's it's prison life is is a nasty place to be at and we have a woman by the name of irma alfred and she was sentenced to twenty six years and she's  twenty six year sentence and she's fifty six years old so we got to the scheduler tried like martin was saying earlier today we have pepys boyfriend harmon here carmen you want to come up here first second i have a couple  how does it feel to to know that your beloved girlfriend poppy might have to might have to actually go to prison for thirty years anyways pretty heavily on me and i bet i know you know she really superb support of i have to be support definitely it's pretty serious charges she's facing and so yeah it's a lot of responsibility future state and current state depending on what the outcome is will be a lot of responsibility on my shoulders to make sure that her name is honored definitely and not used for commercial purposes for somebody else's fame to be a lot of things so i have to worry about that i worry that currently that i see currently in the community how people treat her so it's tough i don't want to think that it's a possibility for her i tend to be an optimist and a pessimist i don't really look at the glass as half full or half empty i'm just thankful that it has liquid in it so when it comes to poppies status we take it one day at a time even though it's hard for her and we have positive mindset and positive thought you know she has to look at all the options in the angle so she can prepare herself i don't really hold it as a reality i can imagine them putting her in prison but if that's the case i can't fathom the feelings i can't get in touch with it ok so you guys pop in a puppy and martin they are against our planet but real fast i want you guys to talk about what's going on with our state laws you guys are huge advocates for them and that is no really where we have five five five zero two coming into place which is coming into play so rather you're for her you're against it i here and we have a lot of other things going on with our medical we need to make sure that we're saving our medical cause our medical is a huge part of these patients the patients have a hard time paying over ten to twelve dollars a gram as it is so i have a hard time seeing i'm paying twenty five dollars a gram as it is so there's a lot of things coming on to play with taxes i'm going through a tax issue right now that we're taking to federal court to  ask a couple questions i think a lot of people want to ask so yes far as that goes we have a lot of different laws that are up and probably going to be changing within the next year so i'll see everybody back down in olympia here soon i'm with that if you can get us there being support be having a support group for these people is one of the biggest things i know it makes a huge difference in my in marty increases case and i know it does for everyone else yeah and i just want to reiterate no one should go to jail for this plan you know so we're using for medicine it's kind of silly since especially we've all voted it in and it's suppose a positive for this state yet it's still being used against us  remember it's a victimless crime and nobody we have too many people who did never hurt anybody going to prison for a plant here so no victim no crime can always say not guilty and spread that knowledge after you're done watching the show make sure you tell your friends you tell your neighbors everybody needs to get educated watch over your right media at least so these guys these are our heroes and there are people at the front lines of this war and we can't allow them to go to prison you guys thank you for watching our show today and have a wonderful day