Pubdate: Tue, 01 Sep 2009
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2009 O'Shaughnessy's
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Author: Fred Gardner, O'Shaughnessy's
Note: Fred Gardner is the editor of O'Shaughnessy's, a quarterly 
journal of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group.

SGT. NORTHCUTT'S POST-IRAQ NIGHTMARE:

GETTING ARRESTED FOR GROWING POT

Phillip Northcutt started legally cultivating medical marijuana to 
deal with PTSD from fighting in the Iraq. It wasn't long before the 
police and the courts caught up with him.

Phil Northcutt saw the map of Iraq on the wall and started recalling 
his time there. He'd been stationed in Ramadi, Al Anbar Province, in 2004.

Phil Northcutt: There was this main street, 'Route Michigan,' like a 
4-lane highway going through town with a 12-inch tall median painted 
yellow and black. When we first got there you could see big holes in 
the median. By the time we left, there was no median. It had been 
blown up along six or seven miles of roadway...

There were two different kinds of fighters we engaged. When we first 
got there it was like local fighters. You could tell. They were 
wearing the man dresses and flip-flops and they had old rusty AKs. 
They were like beat-up, ragged-out goat herders but with weapons. 
They didn't use squad maneuvers, they didn't use military tactics, it 
was a shoot and run kind of thing. And pretty much we killed all 
those guys or they went away.

And then the second wave came in. These dudes were wearing brand new 
Adidas, American jeans, they were wearing tactical rigs like American 
contractors, baseball hats, sunglasses they looked like American contractors.

Fred Gardner: When did that second wave appear?

Northcutt: Let's see... I got there in late August or September... 
That first wave lasted for three months and then it died down and 
then we heard, "Guys are coming from Syria." Next thing you know 
there were these new guys, and they operated in squads, it was 
obvious they'd been trained. But they didn't have the logistical 
support that we did ?supplies and weapons. So they didn't really last 
long, either.

I think they decided "This coming out in the open stuff is not 
working, let's hang back and let's do more IEDs and suicide bombs." 
That's when things got really scary. More scary than guys shootin' at 
you, now you've got people hiding and trying to blow you up.

We lost our commanding officer to a suicide car bomber like 1500 
meters from the gate. Captain Patrick Rapicault, 34. Fucking solid 
guy. One of the best officers I ever worked with in the Marine Corps. 
He got killed when a VBIED [vehicle-borne improvised explosive 
device] rammed vehicle Whiskey Six. Marc Ryan, 25, and Lance 
Thompson, 21, were also killed. Ben Nelson was seriously wounded but survived.

The psychs came out to see us. They said "We're going to do a 
screening of you guys. We want you guys to get help... They sent us 
to the Battalion aid station, which was Udei Hussein's old guest 
house. They had turned his main house into a helipad. They leveled it 
with Cruise missiles and landed helicopters there. The took the guest 
house and turned it into the Battalion CP [Command Post]. At the far 
end of it was the armory and the medical building. So we went over 
there and got interviewed by a Navy captain. That'd be a colonel in 
the Marine Corps a full-bird captain. He said, "what you have is 
called chronic post-traumatic stress disorder. It's a natural result 
of you being in combat and seeing the things you've seen, blah blah blah."

Gardner: And the diagnosis was written down in your file but it 
wasn't grounds for taking a leave or anything?

Northcutt: Not at all. They would have had to send half of everybody 
home.  And if everyone had told the truth, they would have had to 
send everybody home. "Take these anti-depressants and get some sleep. 
You'll be fine. Here's your M-16. Back to work!" And then we're out 
on the front lines.

Gardner: They gave anti-depressants to everybody in the company?

Northcutt: All the guys who didn't lie.  The questions were, "Are you 
having nightmares?" Fuck yes. Are you kidding me? Do you know what I 
saw yesterday? "Are you having intrusive thoughts?" Yes. Fucking of 
course. They went through this whole series of questions that 
obviously, if you're in combat and you're being honest, the answer is 
"yes" to all of them.

But a lot of guys say, "Well you just gotta suck it up. You're in the 
Marine Corps." That's bullshit. Some of these guys are fucking 
yelling in their sleep. And naturally everybody's so 
hyper-fucking-vigilant that everybody wakes up. (softly) Oh, okay, 
it's only Sergeant Tolson yelling in his sleep, okay, cool... 
Sometimes we'd get woken up because fucking mortars would be hitting 
next to the hooch and rocks would be crackling down on the roof. And 
you'd just be laying there like "fuck, I think I'm still here," with 
nothing but a tin roof over your head.

Basically our job was like, they would say, "Hey, there's an ambush 
set up at checkpoint 295, you guys go check it out." Okay. We'll 
check it out.  We go there and see if they shoot at us. If they shoot 
at us this is really the tactic! You've got bullets hitting around 
you, concrete flying in your face... What can you do?

Northcutt is now 36. He joined the Marine Corps in 1998, after not 
finding fulfillment as a music promoter (ska and punk bands) and 
screen printer. He went through boot camp in San Diego, excelled, and 
was made platoon guide (first in his unit). After School of Infantry 
at Camp Pendleton he trained in "Military Operations, Urban Terrain" 
at an off-the-map base in Virginia. He was stationed in idyllic 
Iceland and the Hellish Mojave Desert, didn't see combat, and 
finished his four-year tour without a scratch well before the US invaded Iraq.

In the spring of '04 he was about to start attending Santa Rosa 
Junior College when he got a call: the Marine Corps was looking for 
NCOs with his training to participate in the "combat casualty 
replacement program."

Northcutt told them, "If you guys are looking for gate guards at Camp 
Pendleton, forget it. But if a Marine can come home because I take 
his place, then I'll do it." He says, "I was seeing Marines get 
killed all the time on TV. And being a Marine I started to feel 
guilty about it and take it personal."

He signed a one-year contract, supposedly non-renewable, and got 
assigned to Two Five Second Battalion, Seventh Marines, the most 
decorated unit in the USMC.

Northcutt: They put me in a regular weapons company, infantry unit. 
We were replacing Two Four in Ramadi. They had seen more combat than 
any unit since the Vietnam War. We got there and they're like "Thank 
God you guys are here, we're going home!" A couple of them stayed 
behind to show us around.

The first day out, all of a sudden wap ping ping poong "Ambush! 
Ambush!" I start to dismount because that's what you're trained to do 
when there's an ambush, dismount, spread out, and find the bad guys 
and get 'em. "Negative! Negative! Don't dismount!" I'm just a 
corporal. There's the vehicle commander and the patrol commander, a 
lieutenant over me. "Stay in the vehicles. Button up." So we just sat 
there taking hits. Ping ting toong ting.  I'm like, this is fucking crazy.

Next thing you know a fucking football goes across the hood of the 
Humvee but it's not a football, it's a fucking RPG! [Rocket-propelled 
grenade]. I'm thinking "That could have hit this vehicle and we would 
have gone up like a box of fireworks." So I'm like "why if we're not 
dismounting don't we get out of the fucking kill zone?"

We sat there for what must have been a whole minute it seemed like a 
whole hour just taking bullets. Nobody was shooting back because the 
gunners were all down inside the fucking thing because they said 
"button up." The sergeant sitting next to me and another sergeant in 
the vehicle up in front are going "Get the fuck out of here. Get the 
fuck out of here." Trying to get the point across on the radio to the 
platoon commander.

Some lance corporal is driving but he's not doing shit until he gets 
the word from the lieutenant up front who doesn't know what he's 
doing, it's his first ambush. Finally he's like "Okay, let's go, 
let's go" and we boned out.

We get back to the rear and I'm like "I am not going to die like 
that. If I get killed, so be it. But I didn't come out here to do 
some stupid shit and get killed." So I got together with the other 
corporals and sergeants and I said, "We've got to talk to the 
lieutenant, because if that shit happens tomorrow, some of us aren't 
coming back."

So we got him and sat him down and said "look sir, I've made up a 
little playbook. We should maybe come up with some basic maneuvers 
for the different kinds of engagements me might be in. So we can 
close with and destroy the enemy. That's how you win." He said, "You 
gents are getting ahead of yourselves. We have to take baby steps here."

Baby steps? Well, he's the 'sir,' we do what he says, even if his 
decisions are going to get people hurt. To the dude's credit, he got 
his shit together later. But when he first got there, that first day, 
what a clusterfuck. Looking back, I realize what a fucked-up job [the 
lieutenant had]. I wouldn't want that job. Because you can't predict 
what's going to happen, but you have to make decisions anyways. And 
if you're making decisions in a combat zone, with combat troops, 
undoubtedly some of your decisions are going to lead to people dying. 
I think the dude was planning to pursue a Marine Corps career, but I 
heard that he got out two years later.

Northcutt's unit lost 12 men and sent more than 150 home wounded. Up 
close he saw men, women and children maimed and dead. He tried to 
lift a dying friend whose shoulder "felt like raw hamburger." He was 
wounded but stuck it out to the end of his tour.

Northcutt: I was on the 50-cal until I hurt my back. They mount these 
things on a Humvee. Normally they have a traversing mechanism for 
spinning the turret. But the turret is just a steel ring on top there 
with a post for the 50 cal. Because of these IEDs [improvised 
explosive devices] and snipers, they started bolting armor on the 
top, on the sides, but it's not designed for that. The thing gets 
turned into a Frankenstein. It's nothing like what it was designed to 
be. They look ridiculous driving down the road.

With all that weight added, my 50 cal didn't have a traversing 
mechanism on it.  I had put one on there and was ordered to take it 
off because I had stripped it off a damaged vehicle that had been 
blown up and I wasn't authorized to do it. So I was ordered to remove 
the part and put it back on the vehicle I had got it from. And I'm 
like "that's bullshit, we're going out on patrols." And the staff 
sergeant is like "just take it off."

A couple of weeks later I blew my back out and got Medi-vacced to 
Baghdad. They're like, "You're going to Germany for an MRI because we 
don't have that equipment here." I said, "I'm not going to Germany, 
I've got a squad in Ramadi.'"

I knew that I could live with a physical injury and physical pain, 
but I couldn't live with the guilt of thinking "Maybe I should have 
gone back." What if your friends die and you're not there and you 
think, "Well maybe I could have done something." I couldn't live with 
that doubt. Of course I did nothing but complicate my injuries. My 
guys helped me hide my injuries. They would carry the heavy equipment 
to the Humvee.

Gardner: Are you in pain now?

Northcutt: I'm okay. Some days it hurts. It depends on how I 
sleep.  Sleeping on the floor is better than sleeping in a bed. 
Cannabis helps. And it helps even more with anxiety.

Northcutt came back to Camp Pendleton April 1, 2005, and was put on 
"medical hold" while the Marine Corps evaluated whether his back 
injury qualified him for medical retirement.

Northcutt: The MRI showed that my L-4 and L-5 disks were bulging. 
They were pinching my sciatic nerve and causing me severe pain down 
to the back of my knees. They showed no interest in my PTSD, there 
was never a word about TBI. Three years later a VA doctor in Martinez 
diagnosed me with traumatic brain injury.

Gardner: How long were you on medical hold?

Northcutt: For a year. This is when they super-medicate me. I would 
be given a grocery bag full of really heavy shit. Hydrocodones and 
anti-depressants, Neurontin, Seroquel, anti-nightmare pills, half of 
it you get really fucking high on. I'm not much of a pillbilly but 
I've taken them all. And that is true of just about anyone I know who 
went to Iraq and has come back. They're all pill experts. How the 
fuck does that happen? You get back and they just like push 10 pills 
on you right away.

Gardner: Were you dealing with Marine Corps doctors or the VA?

Northcutt: The Marine Corps. But I was also trying to deal with the 
VA because they sent me home awaiting orders. I go to live at my 
grandma's in Long Beach and I'm chilling in the guest house while I'm 
waiting to get out of the Marine Corps. The VA Hospital is like a 
mile from my house and Camp Pendleton is two hours away in traffic. 
I'm drugged out all day long and they're like, "You've got 
appointments on this day at Camp Pendleton." I would just lie in bed 
all day, loaded. Totally fucked up. But it was cool because a doctor 
prescribed it.

The VA tells me, "you're active duty, we can't treat you." So I'd go 
to the appointments at Camp Pendleton sometimes and I'm telling these 
people, "you don't understand. I have waking nightmares. I sleep with 
a gun under my pillow." When I first got home I'd sleep for one or 
two hours a night. I'd be like I'm here with you and we'd be talking 
and (as if dozing off). And an hour later (as if startled awake) 
"Where am I? Where are my Marines? Where is my weapon?" First thing 
that comes to my head. And then it would be like: "This is not a 
dream. This is not Iraq." It's weird because your brain goes [sound 
of a car accelerating] and then it comes back. A lot of people 
haven't been exposed to severe stress and don't understand that 
severe stress makes your brain do weird shit. I knew something was 
wrong with my head but I couldn't get help.

Gardner: Did you ask to be tested for brain injury?

Northcutt: No. I was not even thinking about it. And nobody asked me 
how many times I'd been near things blowing up, or how close, or 
anything like that.  The help I needed was not pills but fucking 
counseling. I needed people who knew what the fuck PTSD was and could 
tell me: "Your life's going to change in this way." Nobody there 
knew. We were like the first bunch of guys to really come back from 
heavy combat in Iraq. They may have known about Gulf War Syndrome and 
another set of deal-ios...

Northcutt punctuated his knocked-out days with adrenaline-junkie 
jags, racking up speeding tickets. He relied on high-doses of 
Hydrocodone to suppress his back pain.

Northcutt: They just left me to my own devices with PTSD and a steady 
paycheck. So I bought a fast motorcycle and went to Utah. Went to 
Vegas. My back was so fucked up I could hardly walk, but I could 
drive real fast. I liked staying in hotels because I was drinking 
heavily and in a hotel I could go first thing in the morning to the 
hotel bar and start drinking.

I kind of avoided everybody I knew. I didn't want anybody to ask me 
"How are you?" Because what do you tell them? "I'm all fucked up?" 
You don't even know how to answer. And every time you start telling 
them it takes you back. And you're trying to escape in your mind from Iraq.

Gardner: What about your grandma?

Northcutt: I would be there like two days a week. I would barely talk 
to her. I would give her a hug and go out to the guest house and by 
that night I was gone. Or I would stop in to do laundry and visit 
with her for a minute.

Gardner: What did you drink?

Northcutt: Tequila, Newcastle, Guinness. I like really good tequila.

Gardner: Do you still drink?

Northcutt: No. Almost never.

Gardner: Did you quit through a program?

Northcutt: No. I don't need alcohol. As I'm getting older I really do 
feel it the next day. And my days are hard enough. And that's one of 
the reasons I love medical marijuana.

Gardner: How did you find medical marijuana?

Northcutt: I knew about marijuana because I was a recreational 
smoker. And I started medicating with marijuana before I became a patient.

I started realizing, "Of all the crap they're giving me, I feel the 
best when I'm smoking herb. Hmmm... That's weird. When I just smoke 
herb I feel kind of relaxed, I don't feel so stressed out, I don't 
feel the depression, I don't feel the guilt..." Eventually I 
realized: "this is real medicine."

Gardner: Did it help you sleep?

Northcutt: For sure. It helped me relax so I could sleep. That's a 
big difference. The pills just knock you the fuck out. You're just 
gone. Even if you don't want to go to sleep you're still sleeping. 
Which can be pretty dangerous. Once I decided to become a medical 
marijuana patient, that's when everything changed.

Gardner: When was that?

Northcutt: I want to say October 2005. When I went to see Dr. 
[William] Eidelman.

Gardner: How did you decide on Dr. Eidelman?

Northcutt: I Googled "medical marijuana" and started reading 
different websites. I read stuff on his website about healing and 
medicine and I thought he had a legitimate angle. People should take 
him more seriously. A lot of what he says is just common sense, like 
giving healing a chance to happen.

So I went to him and said I was interested in medical marijuana and 
he said, "I'm going to give you a recommendation, but I want you to 
quit smoking cigarettes and I want you to quit drinking." He also 
warned about the side effects of all the prescription pills I was on.

At the time he got his letter of approval, Northcutt was becoming 
enraptured with marijuana its beauty, its fragrance, its usefulness. 
"I became a connoisseur," he says.  His transition from consumer to 
provider came in response to requests from friends a very common pattern.

Northcutt: I discovered that organic herb made me feel the best. So 
next thing you know, I'm on this mission to get the best organic 
herb. I started going up to Mendo and Humboldt and meeting with 
farmers. (As if smelling a bag full of cannabis flowers) "Ah this is 
good." And it would be that kushy wet hay... There's no smell like 
it. But I would have to pay up the yin-yang.

Other patients knew that I was getting good organic herb and they 
were like, "Can you get me some?" So I started coming back with a 
couple of pounds. That's how I could afford to have good herb for myself.

So the next logical step is, "Why am I traveling all the time and 
spending all this money when I can just be growing it myself and all 
these people can learn to grow it, too?" So we got together and 
decided to grow for ourselves. How many people were involved?

Four or five of us did the growing. There were more than a dozen 
patients, including my girlfriend. We called ourselves a co-op.  I 
had the space. I had a warehouse from when I was in the screen 
printing business. I had one screen-printing machine there, a gift 
from my dad, who was moving to Tennessee. He'd gotten into the 
screenprinting business after I did. He said, "If you can make money 
at it, I can for sure." When he gave me the machine which is really 
like giving somebody millions of dollars, because you can make a 
living with it, he said, "Don't say I never gave you nothin'."

Gardner: Were you planning to go back into screenprinting?

Northcutt: I was. But as I became more health-conscious, I realized 
the health hazards involved. The chemicals are terrible for the 
environment... I'd been using the warehouse for storage and to park 
my vehicles. For growing cannabis I turned it into like an operating 
room. I made special doors so that no dust or dirt could get in under 
the cracks. Air coming into the entire building was hepa-filtered. 
The air going out was charcoal filtered. Every room was 
plastic-wrapped and could be individually sterilized. I had four 
10-by-10 tables, a separate nursery for my clones, a separate mama 
room, a drying room, a sleeping area because I'm there all the time. 
I slept under the lights. When the lights came on, I'd get up.

One of the really wild things that happened was: I became a gardener 
for the first time in my life. I was developing a love of plants and 
an appreciation of nature.  And I was developing a relationship with 
God. Instead of killing and maiming I was making things grow.

"He's military and he's got a gun!"

Northcutt was busted by Long Beach police on the evening of March 28, 
2006, while driving away from his warehouse. He had two mason jars, 
each with about 1/2 ounce of marijuana (New York City Diesel and 
Skunk Number 1). He tried to smooth-talk his way out of trouble, 
mentioning that he had a doctor's approval to use marijuana and was 
an active duty sergeant in the Marine Corps. He suspected a set-up 
when the officers said it seemed like "a lot of marijuana" and that 
it was "packaged for sale." When Northcutt informed them that he had 
a weapon, the officers vanished before he could hand it over.

In the rearview mirror Northcutt could see them crouched behind their 
vehicle, calling for back-up. "He's military and he's got a gun!" one 
yelled into her radio. She would repeat the urgent warning as 
reenforcements arrived. Sgt. Northcutt was taken to L.A. County Jail 
for booking. A warrant was issued to search his grandma's house. The 
search yielded 20 grams of marijuana, a scale, five tablets of MDMA 
(ecstasy), and an unloaded shotgun.

Northcutt: My neighbors came to me later and said, "The way they 
cordoned off the whole fucking neighborhood, we thought you shot a 
cop." Of course there was nothing to find. My cousin hears one of the 
cops say, "Hey, look for some warehouse keys."

Next thing you know, they're issuing a warrant for my business, based 
on my electric bill of $600. Which is not high in an industrial zone. 
The diesel shop next door uses three times as much. It was unreal on 
a professional level. It blew me away. But it didn't really surprise 
me. I've seen that happen to other people. Now it was happening to me.

The media had been notified in advance of the raid on Northcutt's 
warehouse, and it made the news that night. Long Beach police seized 
339 plants that he and his friends were growing by the "sea-of-green" 
method (small plants packed together). They also confiscated 18 mason 
jars containing 1.2 pounds of dried flowers, bags full of leaf and 
stalk, and a loaded shotgun.

Northcutt: They took me downtown to LA County Jail for booking and 
the whole time they're talking shit to me: "Who do you think you are? 
You think you're bad. You think you're Rambo."

Tim King says that law enforcement in Orange County has always had it 
in for the grunts.

I have some buddies who are good cops because they're good human 
beings. But these cops who are badge-heavy, who think they're 
bad-ass, they're the ones who fuck things up. They told the judge 
that I had an unregistered weapon, but one of them ran it and saw 
that it was registered to me.  They wouldn't call Dr. Eidelman.

Gardner: Did you ask them to?

Northcutt: Of course. And when they didn't, I asked them to call 
someone from Narcotics who might know the proper procedure.

Northcutt was charged on counts of marijuana cultivation (with a 
firearm), marijuana possession for sale, and MDMA possession (with a 
firearm). He spent 18 days in jail before getting bailed out by his 
uncle Bob Northcutt, who would loyally attend court appearances 
throughout Phil's legal ordeal.

Gardner: How did the Marine Corps respond to your getting busted?

Northcutt: They came to me in LA County because on TV they'd said I 
was a reservist. They wanted to get me out before it became known 
that I was on active duty medical hold and had PTSD.  A staff 
sergeant came in and said, "Sgt. Northcutt, if you sign right here we 
won't prosecute you, you'll be out of the Marine Corps in 20 days."

Gardner: With what kind of discharge?

Northcutt: General under other than honorable conditions. * 
Northcutt's discharge cost him all his military benefits. He had 
enough money to pay defense attorney Bruce Margolin 
$20,000.  Unfortunately, the Margolin associate handling his case 
failed to appear at a hearing and Northcutt was sent directly into 
custody by Judge James Pierce in December 2006. Northcutt heard that 
his lawyer eventually showed up and had been scolded by the judge. He 
figured he would be released but he was still in jail six months 
later when his trial finally got underway.

Northcutt describes LA County jail as "a gulag that should be 
investigated by the United Nations."

He was represented by a veteran public defender, Ken MacDonald, whom 
he decribes as competent in court but not knowledgable regarding 
medical marijuana law, and terminally pessimistic about Northcutt's chances.

The trial was held June 12-18 just when Northcutt's girlfriend 
Jennifer, a key defense witness, was due to give birth. Northcutt 
wondered if the date had been chosen to guarantee her absence. (Jen 
delivered a healthy baby boy, Kai, June 16, 2007).

Northcutt says he was sleep-deprived during the trial, transported by 
bus to different facilities, stashed for a few hours in overcrowded 
cells, then driven back to LA County to hit the rack for a few hours.

It was stipulated that the amount of plant matter taken from the 
warehouse was just under 17 pounds. A Long Beach detective testified 
that 339 plants were growing at the warhouse and would yield three to 
five ounces each.  Cultivation expert Chris Conrad testified for the 
defense that the "sea of green" plus the immature plants in 
Northcutt's warehouse would yield about 4.25 pounds total.

Northcutt and Jennifer had letters of approval from Dr. Eidelman that 
exempted them from the SB-420 limits on allowable quantity. Two 
participants in the grow offered to testify about their involvement 
and submit their letters of recommendation as evidence.  The others 
wanted to have their names kept out of the proceedings, and Northcutt 
says, "I understood and protected them." More co-op members would 
have come forth, he adds, if his lawyer had thought it would help.

The jury was not instructed by Judge James Pierce that collective 
cultivation is legal in California. The jury was instructed that 
California's medical marijuana laws include limits on allowable 
quantity. Northcutt was found guilty of cultivation but acquitted on 
possession for sale. Apparently the jurors thought the marijuana was 
being grown for medical use, but the paperwork was insufficient to 
justify the amount on hand.

Northcutt was acquitted on the MDMA charges because the five pills 
were found in an area accessible to many people and there was no 
evidence that they belonged to Northcutt.

After his trial Northcutt was transferred to state prison in Chino. 
He was sentenced on Nov. 8 to three years' felony probation with one 
year in jail (time served), and to pay $470 in fines.

He requested a court-appointed lawyer to appeal his conviction. At 
the time of his release, Phil Northcutt had lost his Marine Corps 
benefits, his chosen livelihood, and almost a year of his life.

Northcutt: "I lost my business, I lost my car, I lost my respect in 
the community, I lost all my money trying to defend myself. I 
literally had nothing to my name. Jennifer had moved back to Oklahoma 
to stay with her mom while I was in jail. When I got out, she came 
back, but we didn't have a place to live. Not the best strategic 
decision but we'd been apart so long, we just wanted our family to be 
together.  So there we were together but homeless.

"Luckily, friends came to my rescue. A buddy whose girlfriend owned a 
hotel let us stay there sometimes. Other people let us stay on their 
couch. It wasn't till I got to the Pathway Home that I started 
connecting with resources.  That was really critical, that turned my 
life around."

In Yountville. Run by Fred Gusman, funded by the the Tides 
Foundation. It was there that I saw other people going through what I 
was going through.  I realized I wasn't the only one with legal 
issues.There are other people who are going through this and it's 
really having an effect on their lives.

I spent a lot of time on the internet figuring out who's available to 
help veterans. I feel for guys who don't even know these organization 
exist. It's ironic You've got organizations that have outreach 
programs but don't know where to find the guys who need help. And 
you've got guys who need help who don't know how to reach the 
organizations. Or don't know they need help.

When O'Shaughnessy's took down his story May 14, 2009, Northcutt was 
heading from Calistoga, where he lives, to go to "veterans' homeless 
court" in L.A. to try to deal with $2,700 worth of tickets that could 
cost him his driver's license. He was also planning to attend the 
hearing of his appeal by a three-judge panel from the Second Division 
Appellate Court on May 19.

Northcutt said admiringly that his state-provided appeals lawyer, 
Benjamin Owens of El Cerrito, had spent more time discussing his case 
with him than any of the lawyers who worked on the defense.

We felt bad for him driving off into the night. Rosie had heard on TV 
that the hills above Santa Barbara were burning out of control. 
Northcutt said something about going through danger and finding 
success on the other side. I worried that he would not be able to get 
out of paying for the tickets, they'd yank his license, then he'd 
really be up the creek without a paddle.

A few days later Northcutt called this reporter to describe the scene 
at oral arguments in People v. Northcutt.

Northcutt: My attorney had spent a lot of time preparing what he was 
going to say. I was looking forward to hearing him argue and the 
judges asking questions. I heard a judge say, "You're not going to 
speak." And he sat down. I'm like, "What's going on?"

Then the judge said, "The attorney general can say something if he'd 
like..." And the attorney general talked about cooperatives' 
membership requirements and limits and gray areas of the law.  Then 
my attorney said, "I'm available if you have any questions." But the 
judges said "You're probably better off if we don't ask any questions."

I'm sitting in back there going, "What is that supposed to mean?" 
Then my lawyer comes back and says, "Okay, let's go." And I'm like, 
"What just happened?" He said, "The judges had already decided the 
case. I didn't have to say anything because we'd already won before 
we got there. They said you're getting a full reversal."
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MAP posted-by: Richard Lake