Pot patient whose case went to Wash. Supreme Court is sentenced

A medical marijuana patient who lost her case before the state Supreme Court last fall was sentenced today to 60 days home confinement, after her lawyers argued that she was too sick to spend any time in jail.

Sharon Tracy, 53, said she was "overjoyed" with the sentence handed down by Skamania County Superior Court Judge E. Thompson Reynolds. She also must perform 30 days of community service and pay $3,000 to help cover the cost of her appeal.

"He could have gone ahead and let me go, but it's the best I could have gotten in a bad situation," Tracy said.

Tracy, of Hayward, Calif., was arrested in 2003 when a detective found her with about 40 grams of marijuana and four pot plants in 2003.

At the time, Tracy had been splitting her time between California and Skamania County, on the Columbia River in southwestern Washington. She suffers from coronary artery disease, congestive heart failure, diabetes and migraines, and has undergone reconstructive surgeries to repair a ruptured colon and a congenital left hip deformity. She turned to marijuana to reduce her usage of addictive painkillers such as Vicodin.

Though she presented a Skamania County sheriff's detective with a valid California medical marijuana card, the judge barred her from presenting a "compassionate use" defense under Washington's medical marijuana initiative, on the theory that the doctor who gave her the card was not licensed to practice medicine in Washington state.

She was convicted of felony possession of marijuana as well as manufacturing marijuana, and she appealed. Last November, the state Supreme Court upheld her convictions in a 6-3 decision.

Prosecutor Peter Banks asked the judge to reimpose her original sentence, 60 days in jail plus 30 days of community service, but later in the hearing said he would not object to having her serve the time at the home of a friend, with electronic monitoring.

"She's a lot sicker than she was two or three years ago," Banks said before the hearing.

A few dozen supporters, some of them medical marijuana patients themselves, attended the hearing, said her lawyers, David Schultz and Douglas Hiatt. During the hearing they passed a hat and collected more than $500 to help pay the costs of the electronic monitoring, Hiatt said.

Hiatt and Schultz maintained that Tracy should have received no jail time or home confinement because she believed she was complying with the state's medical marijuana law. They noted that three of the Supreme Court justices agreed with her.

"That initiative needs to be clearly interpreted the way voters intended it," Tracy said. "I think I was mistreated. I think I was judged unfairly."