As Kidwell is also prohibited from speaking to the media, including HIGH TIMES, it was left to his appellate attorney, Ronald Richards of Century City, to make the definitive statement regarding Judge Matthews' controversial ruling: "The probation restrictions clearly violate the First Amendment, the freedom to express ideologies. Probation conditions shouldn't be used to preclude advocating of policy."

"There's no remedial purpose in telling someone they can't promote pot when the crime was just cultivation. What crime is the probation trying to prohibit?" Richards demands.

'Medical?' 'Recreational?' It's Just POT!
Kidwell was arrested on August 10, 1998 by the LAPD after a cop spotted cannabis plants in Kidwell's office on Lincoln Boulevard, where he and another patient were cultivating their medication, as clearly provided for by California's Compassionate Use Act of 1996: the famous "Proposition 215," an unchallenged provision of the state health code for three years now. Ten plants were found on the roof, and four more inside the office building; all were beyond seedling stage at an average of 2' tall, though none had started budding at the time of the raid. Kidwell was charged with cannabis cultivation and possession of pot for sale--though there was absolutely no evidence of the latter charge.

Though the jury acquitted on the sales charge, they convicted on cultivation, even though the state medical-marijuana law clearly allows patients and caregivers to grow pot. Despite testimony from Dr. Fred Hakmeet, who testified that he recognized Kidwell's use of marijuana to alleviate his arthritic condition and lower-back pain, the jury wound up ruling that Kidwell had been growing strictly for recreational purposes.

Attorney Richards attributed the jury's evident confusion to the "inherently flawed jury instructions" given by the judge, who combined possession, cultivation and transportation into one instruction, thus preventing the jury from distinguishing between cultivation for medical and recreational use.

Judge Matthews also violated Kidwell's constitutional rights when he banned him from smoking marijuana anywhere outside his own home, Richards insists: "This is a deliberate attempt to prevent Mr. Kidwell from showing the public his use of his medicine. If you're allowed to smoke marijuana, it shouldn't matter if it's in public."

Promoting Better Order In The Courts
Ronald Richards' comments are reflective of his unique and colorful relationship with his client. Having represented Kidwell for free in six previous rabble-rousing confrontations with the law, each with a victorious outcome, the Century City attorney couldn't financially afford to provide his services pro bono for the latest trial. He did, however, present expert testimony as to crop yields of cannabis at this trial, and after the judge helped cheerlead the prosecution to a conviction, Richards adopted the appeal.

Kidwell and Richards have been "testing" the Compassionate Use Act since shortly after its passage in January of 1996. The objective was evidently to have Kidwell and other legal medical smokers get busted often enough to clog the court calendar in West L.A. Municipal Court; and then, since attorneys like Richards would invariably demand a full jury trial instead of a routine plea-cop, the police would learn eventually that they'd do better to divert their attentions to genuinely violent criminals, and genuinely harmful and addictive drugs like crystal meth and ketamine. Ideally, the LAPD Pacific Division would come to appreciate the efficacy of a medical-marijuana ID card, similar to the system used in upstate Arcata Thereafter, patients entitled to use marijuana would avoid arrest by displaying the cards to suspicious officers, and the West L.A. courthouse would be free of prosecutions for senseless, tax-wasting petty pot cases.

So Joe Kidwell made a point of visibly smoking his medication around colorful Venice Beach, accounting for his previous unbroken track record of acquittals for petty busts, often on really preposterous police pretexts. In just the last year and a half, Kidwell has been charged with, among other things, "brandishing" a pot pipe fashioned out of a deer's antler, which the cops tried to call a "weapon"; with offering an undercover narc a joint, and for smoking pot on Santa Monica's Third Street Promenade, even though the police record clearly showed he had no pot on his person at the time! The cultivation bust of his Lincoln Boulevard office is the first case he's lost, thanks to a judge who appears bound and determined to put a stop to any further political activities on Kidwell's part.

Systematically Silencing Drug-War Dissidents?
On the surface, there might appear to be similarities between Kidwell's story and a long-standing legal episode in Hawaii involving hemp activists Aaron Anderson and Roger Christie Indicted in 1992 for a felony known as "second-degree promotion of a dangerous drug"--specifically, 25 pounds of sterilized commercial hempseed they'd imported from North Dakota, for a decriminalization hempfest--Anderson and Christie were offered a plea-bargain by Hawaii County prosecutors, which would have involved pledging to forego any future political activity in exchange for lenient treatment in court. Of course they refused, and last spring the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals specifically condemned the prosecution's offer as an infringement of their First Amendment rights to free speech.

Attorney Richards of L.A. points out that in this Hawaii case, the prosecutors had merely made an improper condition in attempting to force a plea, whereas "the Kidwell case is much more monumental. This is probation that has been ordered by a judge!" Asked if he thought the two cases may indicate a trend by which terms of plea-bargaining or probation will be used to try to silence drug-law reform advocates, he replied, "Each case is unique, but there is a concerted effort to repetitively charge the most vocal marijuana activists. The trend is that the courts are harassing medical-marijuana patients."

Kidwell and Richards are appealing both the conviction and the terms of probation. The conviction is tainted, they charge, both by the judge's flawed jury instructions and his disallowance of Kidwell's recommendation to use marijuana from a second physician. The terms of probation are challenged as flatly unconstitutional infringements of Kidwell's rights to free speech and political action as an American citizen. Oral arguments are due in the California Second District Court of Appeals in October.

While acknowledging that appeals cases are notoriously difficult to win, Richards says he's been encouraged by media attention given this one so far, and also by some political developments. Shortly after the conviction, he says he received a call from state senator Tom Hayden, expressing concern over Judge Matthews' restrictions and Kidwell's right to use medical marijuana.

The concern of politicians such as Hayden, and the uniformly sympathetic treatment he's gotten from the California media, indicates that even when he's stifled by the courts, Joe Kidwell still manages to get the rest of the world to take note of his pro-pot crusade and all that it respresents.

July 29, 1999
http://www.hightimes.com/ht/new/9907/judge.html