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Six months & 25 days out -- the day after Groundhog Day

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All of you -- my extended family -- know that I have been engaged in a five year legal struggle related to my involvement in medical marijuana in Tennessee. In November, 2005, I was sentenced to four years of probation (and no fine) for growing medical marijuana for four sick friends and myself. From 11/05 until 5/07, I resided in a federal Bureau of Prisons halfway house in Nashville as part of that four year probation sentence. Although I have been "out" of the halfway house since May, I still was scheduled to be on federal probation until November, 2009. That fact has required monthly status reports, unannounced urine screens, the necessity to make formal requests before traveling outside middle Tennessee (for any reason) and a prohibition against voting as long as the probation lasted. The thought of missing out on the impending 2008 elections was depressing but it has not kept me from staying active to obtain election integrity here in Tennessee and the nation. It has also not kept me silent on the need to re-establish a medical marijuana program here in Tennessee. (See these two recent editorials in the Nashville Tennessean supporting that position, which appeared in last Friday's paper)

http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071130/OPINION01/711300428/-1/ARCHIVES
http://tennessean.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071130/OPINION01/711300425/-1/ARCHIVES

Last night, around 5:00 pm, I stopped by Kinko's in Nashville on my way home from yet another election reform meeting. Among my emails was a one word message ("congratulations") from my attorney, which included an attachment. The attachment was a signed order from my federal judge granting our motion for early termination of my probation. As of yesterday, December 4, 2007, I am (once again) a free man. The judge effectively cut my four year probation sentence in half with this decision. I am not only grateful to be free again, but I think the judge's lenient decision also bodes well for my position as a spokesman within our medical marijuana effort here in Tennessee.

Thanks to all of you for your prayers, good thoughts and shoulders of support over the past five years. Thank you for your long emails, your short poems, your voices on the other end of the line, your faces fleeting and steadfast, your paintings and photographs, your books, your bountiful concern. Your selves. I could not be happier than I am at this moment, to be free and to know all of you -- most (but not all) of you on sight.

The next happy moment will come later this morning when I apply to have my voting rights re-instated. That is possible now for ex-felons to do in Tennessee once our probations are completed, thanks to the hard work of some of you.

This is all happening in the "right now" so I am still a little breathless. But I am thankful and appreciative and serene and so re-committed to saving our democracy and winning this country back. So that Science, Common Sense and Compassion can once again trump Social Control in this, our country. In these, our bodies.

I started yesterday morning as Federal Bureau of Prisons # 16502-075.

I am moving, freely, today in my quiet, cool home as Bernie Ellis. Peace out.

PS: "It is one of the superstitions of the human mind to have imagined that virginity (physical or political) could be a virtue." -Voltaire

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