Defendants in marijuana mansion case appear in federal court

BY MICHAEL FLEEMAN
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOS ANGELES In a fivestory, castlestyle mansion in Ronald
Reagan's neighborhood, authorities discovered a major
marijuanagrowing operation, allegedly run by an outspoken advocate
for the legalization of pot for medicinal use.

Todd McCormick, 27, appeared in federal court Wednesday afternoon on
charges he was growing thousands of highgrade marijuana plants under
artificial lights on four of the mansion's floors and on the back
patio.

McCormick and others were charged with conspiracy to manufacture
marijuana plants and with possession with intent to distribute
marijuana plants. If convicted, they face a mandatory minimum of 10
years in prison.

A judge set bail at $100,000 for McCormick. U.S. Magistrate Judge
James McMahon ordered McCormick not to use or sell marijuana as a
condition of bail. He ordered lesser bail for three others, and let a
fifth person go for lack of evidence.

Acting on information from previous arrests, authorities arrested the
group Tuesday night and seized what detectives counted as 4,000
marijuana plants with an estimated value of $25 million, making this
one of the biggest pot busts in Los Angeles sheriff's history.

McCormick is the founder of a San Diego cannabis club and an active
member of California's successful Proposition 215 campaign to
legalize medicinal marijuana. A friend said McCormick was cultivating
the pot to give to cancer sufferers like himself to ease their pain.

"He was not doing it for money," said Dennis Peron of San Francisco's
Cannabis Club. "I know this guy. He was doing it for love and
compassion. He is the most altruistic person you'll ever meet."

Peron, who said he knew of McCormick's alleged marijuana growing,
criticized the raid as a "political bust" by antiProposition 215
forces "trying to do in the jury box what they couldn't do at the
ballot box."

Sheriff's deputies, who conducted the raid on the $6,000amonth
rental mansion in BelAir's celebritylined Stone Canyon Road, said
McCormick's marijuana operation was far in excess of anything he
could use for medical treatments.

"Four thousand plants should make him very healthy," Sheriff Sherman Block
said.

Sheriff's drug investigators say they were tipped to the mansion by
information from another drug bust five days earlier in the South Bay
area. Authorities refused to give any more details about that bust,
saying they needed to protect informants.

But McCormick was wellknown for his support of growing marijuana for
what he said was medical purposes. He has said that he has smoked
marijuana since age 12 to relieve pain from a rare type of bone
cancer.

In 1995, he founded the San Diego Compassionate Use Club, which he
had described as a play that supplies cannabis to seriously ill
people.

"I'm prepared to deal with arrest and prosecution if I have to," he
told the San Diego UnionTribune when he was starting up the club.

Three months after making those statements, federal drug enforcement
agents raided his house and seized a small amount of marijuana,
authorities said.

That raid occurred while he was in a Stryker, Ohio, jail, following
his arrest for allegedly hauling 30 pounds of marijuana to Rhode
Island to start another cannibis club.

An appeals court would later rule that the Ohio trooper had no
authority to stop McCormick's car, and the drug evidence was
suppressed in the case. The outcome of the San Diego raid wasn't
immediately known.

Last year, McCormick was involved in the campaign for Proposition
215, the voterapproved state measure that legalized the use of
marijuana for medicinal purposes in some instances.

Peron said McCormick "collected signatures. He was with us. I've known him
for a long time."

In Tuesday night's raid, sheriff's investigators arrested McCormick
and another man as they drove away from the mansion. Others were
arrested as they drove away in another vehicle. One more was arrested
inside the residence.

The mansion sits on the side of a steep canyon wall about three miles
from the campus of UCLA in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods of
Los Angeles. Other homes in the area belong to Elizabeth Taylor, Zsa
Zsa Gabor and Reagan.

Resembling a castle, the mansion has two turrets, one topped by a
weather vane, a tall concrete wall crowned with battlements and a
coatofarms for the street address. Next to the mansion was even
what looked like a moat actually a catch basin for the Department
of Water and Power.

The owner of "marijuana mansion" apparently didn't know what was going on,
Block said.

Neighbor Mary Hancock wasn't surprised by the bust: "There were people
coming and going
constantly."

Inside the mansion, authorities found the plants growing from
seedlings to several feet high. The plants, under florescent growing
lights, had tags indicating their varieties.

c 1997 Contra Costa Newspapers Inc.
Jim Rosenfield