| Photo: Michael Fagans/Bakersfield.com |
| Israel Cavazos, manager of Nature’s Medicinal Co-Op in Bakersfield, California, measures bags of marijuana for a patient one day after the dispensary was raided again in 2009. Cavazos has been sentenced to 42 months in federal prison, and his co-worker Jonathan Chapman on Monday got 37 months. |
A medical marijuana dispensary employee in Bakersfield, California has been sentenced to more than three years in federal prison for “conspiring to distribute and possess with intent to distribute marijuana.”
Jonathan Michael Chapman, 32, of Bakersfield, was sentenced to 37 months in prison, reports TurnTo23.com. The barbaric sentence was handed down Monday by U.S. District Judge Anthony W. Ishii and announced by U.S. Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner.
Chapman admitted that between 2005 and July 2007, he worked at Nature’s Medicinal Co-op, a Bakersfield business engaged in distributing marijuana. In 2007, federal agents from the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) seized what they claimed was more than 85 kilograms (187 pounds) of marijuana from the dispensary.
| Photo: Felix Adamo/Bakersfield.com |
| Medical marijuana patient Rex Palmer showed up at Nature’s Medicinal Co-Op but couldn’t get his medicine because of the raid. |
Prosecutors claim Nature’s Medicinal Co-Op logged $9.6 million in sales from January 2006 to September 2006, reports The Associated Press.
Five other Bakersfield defendants have already been sentenced after pleading guilty:
• Timothy Glenn Doolittle, 42, was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and five years of supervised release
• Jennifer Diane Brown, 37, was sentenced to one year in prison and three years of supervised release
• John Shanks, 62, was sentenced to 20 months in prison and three years of supervised release
• Israel Cavazos, 38, was sentenced to 42 months in prison and three years of supervised release; and
• John Wayne Wyatt, 31, was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and three years of supervised release.
Two other defendants are still awaiting trial. Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathleen A. Servatius is prosecuting the case.
The case comes as the result of a witch-hunt, I mean investigation, by the DEA, the Internal Revenue Service, the Kern County Sheriff’s Department, the Bakersfield Police Department, and the Southern Tri-County High Intensity Drug Task Force, all of which spent thousands of taxpayer dollars to lock up citizens for helping sick people.