Home > The Diaries > (20)

The Diaries

One year, 5 months & 10 days in -- how this all began

Previous | Next

Good morning, all. It is now five days to the "Save Bernie's Farm" benefit at the Belcourt (April 25) and 19 days until my release date (May 10). I do hope to see many of you at the Belcourt (though I have not yet received permission yet from the "house" director to attend the benefit myself ). It is shaping up to be a fantastic evening of music and mobilization for medical marijuana in Tennessee. Please order your tickets today by calling 615/383-9140. If your budget is tight these days and you might have a hard time buying tickets, PLEASE EMAIL ME BACK and I will put you on the guest list to attend without charge. All of you have been very supportive of me for the past (almost) eighteen months and this is the least I can do to repay all of you.

The media attention on my case will greatly increase in the next week. It appears that the (Nashville) Tennessean will make my case a story in their Sunday edition (published on April 21) and then next week, the Nashville Scene will make my case their cover story (on April 25) with a 3,000+ word article. As potentially risky as this considerable media coverage may be, I know that my case provides an opportunity to inform Tennesseans (and Americans in general) about the harsh penalties associated with being involved with medical marijuana and about the double jeopardy that medical marijuana providers face with both criminal and civil penalties (including the still-unresolved potential loss of my farm).

For these reasons, I have cooperated fully with these local media (and with Robert Koehler, whose column published two weeks ago is now on 60+ Internet sites.) In that regard, the Scene writer, Jeff Woods, wrote to ask me to describe the day of the raid and the feelings that came with it. After I sent Jeff my response, I realized that many of you had not heard this story. So here it is -- an encapsulated description of August 28, 2002 -- truly the first day of the rest of my life. I would say "enjoy", but there's not much here worth celebrating. That is, until the very end. I have grown to love happy endings, and still hope (with your continued thoughts, prayers and support) that this story will end well.

I hope to hear from more of you about what my experience, and these "house" diary entries, have meant to you. I will share your comments with each other on the day I am released from the "house". So please share your thoughts with me, so I can share them with the other 450+ of you who have been along with me on this ride.

One last reminder: Join me on my farm on May 19 for my "coming home" party. Details to follow.
--------------------

On August 28, 2002, I was up early, trying to beat the heat of another hazy, hot August day in northern Maury County. It was the day after my 53rd birthday. I was up on the ridge mowing the grass between my blueberry rows when I felt heavy vibrations that were not coming from my muffler-less tractor. I looked up to see a large, green, military-style helicopter flying very low (maybe 25 feet above the tree-line) to the south of me, over my farm. I realized immediately that the helicopter was circling above some of my cannabis plants. So I left my tractor on the ridge and walked down toward my house. Shortly thereafter, I came upon two Task Force officers riding on 4-wheelers on one of my farm roads.

They said that the helicopter had spotted cannabis growing on my farm and they told me to wait for them at my house. I went to my house and removed some small cannabis plants that were growing in my garden, placing them under a footbridge in front of my house (where they would be found shortly thereafter.) After a short time, the two officers drove up to my house, indicated that the helicopter had indeed seen cannabis growing on my farm and asked permission to search the property. I signed a permission form
allowing them to do that.

>From that point on, more and more Task Force members began to arrive on 4-wheelers and in trucks while I was told to wait on my porch in the company of one of the officers. I am unsure how many officers were on my farm during the raid but there seemed to be many of them (between 10 and 15 would be my best guess.) The first helicopter circled overhead continually and at one point, a second helicopter (smaller and painted black-and-white rather than green) arrived to join in.

After an hour or so (it was hard to keep track of time while I was sitting and sweating on my porch, a mute witness to the raid), two Task Force supervisors arrived. They did not speak with me immediately though they did appear to be overseeing the search operation from inside my home. Throughout that time, I noticed one of the supervisors making a number of phone calls from my house. The officers began taking boxes of stuff from my house (books, papers, my computer, my hunting rifles, etc) and loading them into one of their trucks. They also took a small amount of cannabis (under one ounce) that I had drying in the house, since the harvest had begun and I was already distributing cannabis to the four people I was helping at the time.

I was not shown what they were taking, though I was later given a partial inventory of what they had seized. I learned afterward that they had also taken farm equipment (irrigation lines, planting equipment, etc.) from my barn and other buildings on the farm. Much of that farm equipment was used in my berry operation to start and grow berry plants for transplanting on the farm, rather than to grow cannabis. For example, even though the Task Force confiscated all my irrigation equipment and supplies, none of the cannabis growing on my farm was being irrigated with irrigation lines or equipment. Again, they loaded up quite a bit of material without asking me ahead of time about any of it.

The search of my farm continued throughout the afternoon while I sat on my porch. At one point, one of the helicopters left to refuel and then returned to the farm. Officers kept coming and going, with several searching my home thoroughly. At some point, I noticed them reading the proposal on my computer desk that I had prepared for the State of New Mexico recommending that the state's planned medical marijuana program include the capacity to provide cannabis immediately to patients in need. I also saw them searching through all of my filing cabinets, my bookcases and my work files. They were very thorough.

Late in the afternoon, the two Task Force supervisors called me into the house. We sat on my sun-porch while they interviewed me about the cannabis, what I was doing with it, etc. As I remember, the interview took over an hour, toward the end of which one officer left to make additional phone calls. I answered their questions as best as I could, though I was clearly in shock from the day's events. I let them know that I was providing cannabis to a number of sick people (and had done so for a while) and that those people might be willing to speak with the officers at some point. They asked me about some money they had found in the house and I told them that the money had been saved to buy 10-12 cows and a bull from one of my neighbors (from whom I had always bought cattle with cash, as he preferred) and that I could provide documentation for that money in short order. (I subsequently provided my first attorney with that documentation within a few days after the raid.)

At the end of the interrogation, I was told that the Task Force was done with their search. I asked them what the next steps were, thinking that I would be arrested, taken to jail and given my one phone call. (Having never gone through this before, I was relying on my view of the process " ... as seen on TV...." ) At that point, one of the Task Force supervisors told me that they would be packing up and leaving my farm and that I would be going to bed. I was surprised at that answer, but the supervisor said that since I had cooperated with them, had given them permission to search my property, and had answered their questions, they did not feel that they needed to arrest me. He also said that in his phone calls checking on me, no one had given him any reason to believe that I needed to be arrested that night. The supervisors did indicate what the process to follow would be – presenting evidence to a grand jury, an indictment, etc -- but again they indicated that they felt no need to arrest and detain me that evening.

As they were packing up (by now in the dark), one Task Force officer arrived with hamburgers and drinks to feed the other Task Force members. They invited me to join them for dinner, which I did since I had not eaten or had anything to drink for the 8-10 hours they had been there. It seemed surreal to be standing around the hood of one of the Task Force trucks, eating burgers and fries and joking with the same people who had thoroughly turned my life inside out in the course of that day. But throughout the process, all of the officers had been businesslike (and in most cases pleasant) in their dealings with me, and that first dinner of the rest of my life was no different.

Two things stood out to me as they were getting ready to leave. I asked the Task Force supervisor how soon I would be able to get my computer and work papers back since all of the consulting projects I was working on for my Wyoming and New Mexico clients at the time were in that computer and I needed it back to get that work done. I was told that the Task Force would simply copy my hard-drive and that I would get the computer back within just a few days. (It would later take more than a year to finally get it back.)

Also, the Task Force supervisor who had conducted most of the questioning told me that they had found more than 500 plants on my farm. I was dumbstruck at that statement and told him, respectfully, that I had nowhere near that number of plants on my farm. Because I had added two people to the small group I was helping after I had planted my cannabis earlier in the year, I had taken cuttings from the plants in June and had rooted them to increase the size of my expected harvest. (That accounted for the number of small plants -- between 6 and 12 inches tall -- that I had on the farm.) However, I told the supervisor that, even with the small plants they had found, their count was seriously inaccurate and that unless they were badly mistaken or they had found plants on a neighboring farm that they thought were mine, there was absolutely no way they had found anywhere near that number of plants. The supervisor said nothing in response. (I later learned that, on the day of the raid, the threshold guideline for a marijuana cultivation case to become a federal matter was 500 plants.)

When the plants were later inventoried at the state lab, the plant count dropped almost by half immediately, and I still believe that even this lower, amended lab count might be double the actual number of plants that were growing on my farm. (I have admitted having between 20-25 plants of any size on the farm (from four to six feet tall) and a larger number of smaller plants (most under twelve inches), with the total count exceeding 100 plants -- the charge to which I pled guilty in 2004.) To this day, however, we have never been allowed by the government to either weigh or count the plants ourselves. But if we accept the government's inflated view of the evidence as provided by the state lab, and use the DEA's own calculations for how much useable cannabis the reported weight of those ready-to-harvest, completely intact plants (with stalks, branches, rootballs and dirt still attached) would have yielded, the amount of cannabis that the Task Force seized from my farm -- in total -- would have yielded between 7 and 8 pounds of
useable cannabis (to be distributed among four sick people, with some left over for me).

That is an average of under 1/3 of an ounce of useable cannabis per plant. The larger plants would have yielded two to three ounces of useable cannabis apiece and the small plants would have yielded less than 1/4 ounce apiece, taking over 60 of those plants to equal a pound. Since the raid occurred at harvest time, this should give you some sense of just how small most of the plants were that the Task Force found, if indeed the plant weight and count that has been provided to us by the lab is even close to accurate. Again, we have yet to independently weigh and count the plants, which we can do before any trial occurs in their continuing effort to confiscate my farm. When we do, we expect both the actual plant count and the weight of the evidence against me to drop significantly.

After the Task Force left me alone that night, my dark hollow home became as quiet as always. But for the first time, the silence, the dark, was no longer protective and comforting. I walked around inside my house for a while, looking at my possessions -- clothes, books, files, papers, dishes, everything -- lying about in the middle of the floors of my five rooms. I tried to figure out what had been taken. But I did not call anyone that evening. Instead, I just sat on my porch swing in the dark for hours, with my dogs lying close by my feet, thinking about what the day had brought and how much my life had changed (forever) in a matter of 12 hours.

Throughout the day of the raid, lots of thoughts had run through my head, along with feelings of sadness, fear, uncertainty, confusion, a deep sense of immediate and impending loss. For some reason, four sets of thoughts kept coming up. I was really concerned about the four people I had been providing cannabis to, knowing how sick they were and that now there would be little cannabis available to give them from this year's planting. (The year's harvest had already started but I had just begun providing them cannabis -- the bulk of what they were to receive was now being loaded on the Task Force truck getting ready to leave my farm).

I also kept thinking about my consulting projects and clients out in Wyoming and New Mexico, wondering how I would get those projects completed (some of which were due shortly) and how I would explain my imminent arrest and detention to those clients (before I found out later that night that I would neither be arrested nor detained). I kept worrying about my two dogs, Annie and Duke, who had run in confused circles all day long not knowing what was going on during the raid, concerned what might happen to them if I was no longer there to take care of them. And finally, I kept thinking about my nine nieces and nephews, my brothers and sisters, my many other relatives, my neighbors and friends, my professional colleagues around the country -- and what I would say to them about all of this.

With all of those thoughts (and fears), a palpable weight of sadness settled over me. I knew that my life was changing forever that day, though I really had no way of grasping immediately (nor for some time to come) just how much it had changed and would continue to change. That sadness, those fears, the uncertainty of what was to come next and what I needed to do in response, was lightened a little by the politeness of the Task Force officers that day and their decision not to arrest or detain me. But that night was the first of many (many) nights where I could not get to sleep, where I lay in bed wondering (fearing) what would come next. During the 3 1/2 years between the raid and my entering the federal Bureau of Prisons halfway house in November, 2005, I would have many of those nights.

The day after the raid, I walked around my farm, looking at what the Task Force had taken. I was surprised to find that in some of the small cannabis patches on the edges of my pastures, the Task Force officers had taken some (but not all) of the plants. While I expected them to perhaps miss some of the small patches I had planted around the farm, I couldn't understand why they had left some plants still growing in the same patches where they had taken others. So I got my camera and took pictures of those patches and the remaining plants, most of which were 12 inches tall or shorter though they were almost ready for harvest. I left them growing for about two weeks, then I pulled the few plants that remained, gave most of the cannabis that was ready for harvest to the sick people I was helping and saved some for me.

After walking around the farm that morning, I went to visit the sickest person I was helping, a local man still in his 40s who by that time was a resident in a local hospice. I told him what had happened and that I would likely only be able to get him a small amount of cannabis from what the Task Force had left on my farm. That person told me that he would be happy to be interviewed by the Task Force or to give a taped deposition to anyone about the fact that I had provided cannabis to him for several years without charge while he was undergoing treatment for cancer, which by then had spread to four organ systems. Despite that person making this offer several times, he was never interviewed or taped before he died a few months later. I then went to meet with a local attorney who was recommended to me by this person.

From that day forward, my life became heavily focused around the process of negotiating a plea agreement with the government. Once I was informed that the federal government would be bringing the case against me (rather than the case remaining a state matter, as I had hoped), I hired another attorney (Peter Strianse) who specializes in federal cases. Peter has been my only attorney for over three years now and has given me excellent representation. I have every confidence in Peter and in his advice and counsel in the continuing effort by the federal government to confiscate my farm.

Although the uncertainties of my prosecution made it impossible to take on additional paid epidemiology assignments for my previous clients (since the timing of my prosecution and the subsequent plea negotiations were unclear and required that I stay close by in Tennessee), I did occupy my time providing consultant services (in most cases at no charge) to try to help the clients I had worked with in the past, as well as to serve a few new clients that I provided pro bono work for during this time. (Those projects are summarized at www.saveberniesfarm.com under the heading "about Bernie" and further under "Consulting Services Provided from 2002-2004".)

For the next three years, it was just a matter of wait-and-see (bait-and-switch) with the government's plea negotiations, of trying to provide useful consultant work to whoever needed me and of putting one foot in front of the other as I moved toward the unknown resolution of this case. I remain thankful that I was allowed to be home for the 3 1/2 years it took to decide the criminal case and that my judge saw fit to sentence me to time in a halfway house that has allowed me to work in order to pay my legal fees, to attend my church and to be of service however I could. I hope that the farm home I return to in three weeks will remain my home, but that depends on the government, on my judge and perhaps ultimately on a jury.

Only time will tell how all of this will end. Until then, I have learned that staying in the moment, trying to do good with whatever opportunities are in front of me and appreciating all that I still have left (including the hopes, prayers and abiding friendship of all of you) can be quite sustaining. I have learned a lot from this experience that I hope will be useful to others in the future. But the main thing I have learned is that people who doubt the power of prayer have never been prayed for.

For the past five years, my life has truly been gently borne by kind people who care. I hope I have the chance to give back to them (to you) and to others, to repay the kindnesses given to me by so many for so long. As hard as it seems sometimes, I am where I am supposed to be. And, like all of you, I must make the best of it.

Take care. As always, let me know what you think and feel about all of this. I hope to see many of you next Wednesday, April 25, at the Belcourt, and at my quiet hollow home for the "coming home" party on May 19.

'Til then, breathe deeply, exhale slowly (and repeat).

Previous | Next