Medical marijuana is legal in Oregon, but that doesn’t mean a grower can grow it, then ship it to states where it isn’t. A man in Oregon, who had been distributing cannabis and cannabis plants to buyers outside Oregon, lost his appeal and he will now be heading to prison to serve out his mandatory minimum five-year sentence.

Relying on the principle that federal law trumps state law when interstate commerce is involved, Judge James B. Loken of the United States Court of Appeals, writing for a unanimous court, upheld the decision of the district court and denied the appellant’s request for a new trial on July 1.

Medical marijuana was legalized in Oregon in 1998. Defendant Sonny Oliver Maupin, 62, a resident of Nevada, bought two plots of land in Oregon in 2015 to go into the pot-growing business. According to a press release from the U. S Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of Iowa, “Maupin educated himself thoroughly on the Oregon medical marijuana laws … and learned how to exploit them in such a fashion so that his illegal operations could avoid detection by local law enforcement. The evidence introduced at trial demonstrated that this conspiracy lasted for years, involved well over a hundred pounds of marijuana, and several hundred thousand dollars.”

While his two, separate operations were flourishing under the direction of two hired staff members, Maupin remained in Las Vegas. His hired growers obtained the required licenses, cultivated the land, planted the plants and began to sell their product. They were raided by law enforcement in 2017, but one of the growers continued to grow and mail their product to out-of-state customers, including Iowans who lived in a state where all marijuana was illegal.

In 2016, a task force in Davenport, Iowa, began investigating a “large marijuana conspiracy” that linked Maupin’s plants to their local sales. Maupin and his growers were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy to manufacture and distribute marijuana. Maupin was convicted at trial and sentenced to the mandatory minimum of 60 months. He applied for “safety valve” release, a provision in the Sentencing Reform Act that allows a judge to sentence a convicted person below the statutory minimums for certain non-violent and “non-managerial drug offenders with little or no criminal history.”

Maupin’s appeal had two main arguments. First, he said his prosecution was invalid because marijuana production is legal under Oregon law, and his plants were therefore planted and harvested legally. His second argument was based on public policy. He reminded the court that cannabis has been used for “medicinal purposes” since ancient times and that its prohibition “is marked and muddied by propaganda and racial discrimination,” and therefore “[p]ublic policy dictates that this Court should not permit the Government to prevail in this action.” Loken found neither argument persuasive.

The claim of protection due to local legality failed because of the Commerce Clause in the Constitution which gives Congress the power to regulate interstate commerce. In addition, precedent specifically addressed what happens when “there is a conflict between federal and state law with respect to marijuana.” In that case, “federal law shall prevail,” Loken said, quoting the Supremacy Clause.

Loken’s opinion quickly dismissed the defendant’s public policy argument as well, saying that it was “addressed to the wrong branch of government.” Again, citing several precedents, he wrote that “the judiciary may not sit as a superlegislature to judge the wisdom or desirability of legislative policy…”

Maupin also tried to get his sentence lowered by claiming improprieties in the trial judge’s response to a jury question. He said that when the jury was told that a convicted man who was on the defendant’s witness list was not called to testify, the judge said that the defendant had no burden of proof to present evidence. Maupin argued, unsuccessfully, that the judge’s comments “relieved the prosecution of proving his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, because it suggested he was hiding something.” Loken wrote that the trial judge’s answer was an “accurate statement of law.”

An additional argument also alleged that the judge misstated and misapplied conspiracy law. When Maupin tried to argue that although there might have been a conspiracy related to the selling of marijuana in Iowa, he had no knowledge of it. He claimed the other two growers were solely responsible for the out-of-state sales. The Court of Appeals opinion cited relevant conspiracy law, writing that the government needed only to prove “an overall agreement to pursue...a common, unlawful end,” not that “each participant was involved or even aware of all acts committed in furtherance of the conspiracy.”

Maupin’s final argument concerned the denial of his application for “safety valve” release. Loken wrote that the district court had properly denied a lower sentence because it had found “overwhelming evidence” that the defendant “supervised, managed, and recruited” staff for his Oregon growing operation.