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Upper Lake - Eddy Lepp, awaiting federal prosecution for growing marijuana, has reportedly begun a fast to protest the government's case against him.
Lepp, free on bail after being arrested last August by officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration ( DEA ), was quoted in an e-mail saying that he intends to fast "until the charges are dropped and the government stops targeting me and my family.
"For me this is both a spiritual and political action," Lepp stated.
Lepp openly grew more than 30,000 marijuana plants on his 40-acre Upper Lake property before the DEA, aided by local law enforcement officials, destroyed it while placing him under arrest in mid-August.
The plants were grown at Eddy's Medicinal Gardens, the name that Lepp, who identifies himself as a Rastafarian minister, calls his property.
The e-mail regarding Lepp's plans to fast said that he had stepped down from his ministerial post to focus on his pending trial in San Francisco and to assist with a program of intervention of gangs in south central Los Angeles.
Lepp charges that his freedom of religion has been violated by the DEA's action. He has maintained that state Proposition 215, a law permitting cultivation and use of medical marijuana in California, takes constitutional precedence over the federal laws he is accused of breaking.
Additionally, he has continuously insisted that the marijuana grown on his property belonged not to him but to sick and terminally ill patients, who paid for its planting and cultivation.
Lepp's attorney Dennis Roberts, who said he was unaware of his client's fast, plans to file motions in federal court preliminary to his trial on Feb. 7.
Source: Lake County Record-Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Record-Bee
Contact: editorial@record-bee.com
Website: Lake County Record-Bee
Lepp, free on bail after being arrested last August by officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration ( DEA ), was quoted in an e-mail saying that he intends to fast "until the charges are dropped and the government stops targeting me and my family.
"For me this is both a spiritual and political action," Lepp stated.
Lepp openly grew more than 30,000 marijuana plants on his 40-acre Upper Lake property before the DEA, aided by local law enforcement officials, destroyed it while placing him under arrest in mid-August.
The plants were grown at Eddy's Medicinal Gardens, the name that Lepp, who identifies himself as a Rastafarian minister, calls his property.
The e-mail regarding Lepp's plans to fast said that he had stepped down from his ministerial post to focus on his pending trial in San Francisco and to assist with a program of intervention of gangs in south central Los Angeles.
Lepp charges that his freedom of religion has been violated by the DEA's action. He has maintained that state Proposition 215, a law permitting cultivation and use of medical marijuana in California, takes constitutional precedence over the federal laws he is accused of breaking.
Additionally, he has continuously insisted that the marijuana grown on his property belonged not to him but to sick and terminally ill patients, who paid for its planting and cultivation.
Lepp's attorney Dennis Roberts, who said he was unaware of his client's fast, plans to file motions in federal court preliminary to his trial on Feb. 7.
Source: Lake County Record-Bee (CA)
Copyright: 2005 Record-Bee
Contact: editorial@record-bee.com
Website: Lake County Record-Bee
