Before Rhonda Firestack-Harvey was part of a nationally watched court case that could change the course of the federal drug war, she lived quietly with her husband in their modest double-wide mobile home two hours northwest of Spokane.
Rhonda suffers from carpal tunnel and osteoarthritis. In 2011, she got a doctor’s recommendation to use marijuana for her achy joints. Her husband, Larry, also got medical authorization to use marijuana to treat pain caused by gout. Washington State was one of the very first states to approve medical marijuana, way back in 1998, and under state law, medical marijuana patients are allowed to grow their own medicine. When Rhonda and Larry started a grow on their property, Larry posted a sign with a green cross on it near the plants, hoping it would communicate to anyone flying over that this was a medical grow, not a criminal operation.
But last week in a federal courthouse in Spokane, as a jury was looking at an aerial image of the grow—an area “smaller than a tennis court,” as CNN puts it—defense attorneys were not allowed to point out Larry’s sign in the yard. It was a tiny white spot in the corner of the photograph. Nor were they allowed to say what was on the sign…
