Washington's voter-approved medical marijuana law inched toward clarification Monday in a Stevens County case against a man whose attorney calls him a "self-appointed pioneer."

Arthur "Ocean Israel" Shepherd Jr. won a couple of points in his battle to provide marijuana to a Colville man with spinal and emotional problems, but not enough to avoid conviction.

However, the 50-year-old Shepherd may avoid more time in the county slammer because of a prosecution agreement to recommend he be sentenced Friday to time he's already spent in jail.

Shepherd wouldn't have been in jail pending trial except for his reluctance to promise, as a condition of release, not to use marijuana. "I do sometimes pray with the herb," he said in an interview. "It's my religious conviction."

He said he considers methamphetamine, cocaine and heroin to be dangerous drugs. But he thinks marijuana is one of the "herb-bearing seeds" with which God blessed the Garden of Eden.

Shepherd, who is known as Ocean everywhere except in court, is a former member of the counterculture Love Israel family that venerates marijuana.

After voters passed Initiative 692 in November 1998 to allow medical use of marijuana, Shepherd said he asked Stevens County authorities early last year to tell him how he could legally supply marijuana to an ailing Colville man.

He wasn't charged when deputies seized three mature plants and 11 starters at his cabin in the Kelly Hill area north of Kettle Falls, but Superior Court Judge Larry Kristianson ruled he couldn't have the plants back. Kristianson said Shepherd didn't qualify for an exemption under medical marijuana law because he didn't have a valid caregiver relationship and the patient's medical condition wasn't adequately documented.

Shepherd raised the same defense last September when sheriff's officers seized what they said were 30 mature plants and 27 starters. When that case finally came to trial Monday, Judge Rebecca Baker ruled the caregiver relationship was valid and that the patient's medical need was adequately documented in a note by Colville osteopath Gregg Sharp.

After his arrest in September, Shepherd refused to swear off pot as a condition of release, and served a week in jail. Then, he said, "they came in and asked if I wanted a second chance to lie to get out, so I lied to get out."

Jailers probably were glad to be rid of him. Shepherd said his orange jail suit made him feel like a criminal, so he took it off and wore his bed sheet and pillow case instead.

"They started cracking up, and they wouldn't let me out of my cell," he recalled.

Shepherd was glad enough to get out, considering that jailers wouldn't serve him the hemp seed diet he demanded, but he met an inmate he wanted to go back to visit at Christmas. When authorities told him he couldn't visit because he had recently been an inmate, Shepherd said he pulled out a joint and held it up to the security camera outside the jail.

He said he told officers, "If you'll send a lighter out, I'll smoke it for you, but I have possession with intent to use."

That got him in to visit his friend, but wouldn't have kept him long if he hadn't again refused not to light up if released. Shepherd went a month that time before changing his mind, and he spent most of the time on a hunger strike.

He said he had nothing but water and "some frosting off a brownie one time."

Baker ruled Monday that Shepherd failed to meet Initiative 692's requirement that supplies be limited to quantities that can be used in 60 days.

Sheriff Craig Thayer believes the 20 to 31 mature plants Shepherd admitted having when he was arrested last September are much more than a 60-day supply.

"They were handsome plants that towered above Ocean," Deputy Prosecutor Al Nielson quipped. "He was very proud of them."

Estimates by a Drug Enforcement Administration expert indicate that's enough weed to keep someone puffing in almost every waking moment for two months.

Still, defense attorney Frank Cikutovich said he will appeal. He said his client "is hopeful to have a crop in the ground by Memorial Day weekend."

Nielson was not optimistic that the appeal will produce much clarification without the medical testimony Baker insisted upon. But this case, and similar ones working their way through trial courts, collectively may shed some light.

Meanwhile, Nielson said - and Baker agreed - Initiative 692 provides only a narrow exception to the state's drug laws. It is up to defendants to show they qualify for the exception.

Shepherd insists the law needs further liberalization. Urban medical marijuana users can't realistically grow their own plants, he said. And farmers such as himself have to grow more than a two- month supply because they are limited to one outdoor crop a year, he said.

Pot grown indoors just isn't as good, Shepherd said.

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