He says he had just enough to ease his girlfriends' pain

By Ann Bancroft

San Francisco Chronicle, Thursday, October 21, 1993

Georgetown

El Dorado County

A 74-year-old man who admitted growing marijuana to ease his girlfriend's chronic back pain was sentenced yesterday to four months in jail and two months of house arrest, with possible random drug tests and searches of his home.

Byron Stamate, who said he believed that he was eligible for a drug diversion program when he pleaded guilty last month to cultivation of marijuana, said he will appeal the sentence by El Dorado County Superiore Court Judge Eddie Keller.

He also is appealing the loss of his home and life's savings - $177,000 - seized by the Sheriff's Department and held since 1990 under the state's drug asset forfeiture laws.

Stamate was arrested in April 1990 after a squad of armed officers raided a cabin he owned outside Georgetown and found 164 four-inch marijuana plants and $26,000 in a locked box.

Stamate, raised in the Ozarks when marijuana was grown as a cash crop for making rope, said he learned early that the plant could be used as an herbal pain reliever. He grew pot to ease the pain pf his wife's cancer before she died in 1980 and again when his girlfriend, artist Shirley Dorsey, was suffering from severe back pain.

Dorsey committed suicide after Stamate's arrest, saying she did not want to be forced to testify against him.

Stamate said the crop that led to his arrest contained just enough potent female plants to produce a year's worth of marijuana butter for Dorsey's pain control purposes and his own occasional private use.

Prosecutors, however, insisted that Stamate was growing the marijuana for sale, and Keller agreed that the cash box provided the appropriate evidence.

Stamate grew up during the Depression and said he has always kept large amounts of cash on hand in the event that the economy should again collapse and banks fail.

Stamate's supporters, including the publisher of the Georgetown Gazette, contend that he was singled out by law enforcement not for his crime but because of his assets. Stamate's assets amounted to a bonanza for financially strapped county law enforcement departments. Under asset forfeiture laws, authorities may seize property suspected of being purchased with drug profits.

POTTED JUSTICE

What possible interest is being served in putting a 73-year-old man who grew potted marijuana plants for therapeutic consumption in jail for nine months and seizing his life savings of $177.000 in cash and securities?

That is the strangely disproportionate punishment meted out this week by a Superior Court judge in Placerville to Byron Stamate a retiree who freely admits that he grew marijuana in his guest house and used it for the relief of hiw own and hiw woman companion0s back pains.

Convinced by the size of his bank account that the couple was growing marijuana for sale, El Dorado County's zealous law enforcement authorities resorted to the controversial asset seizure laws for major drug racketeering. They slapped a lien on his house, grabbed his savings account and liquidated $106,000 in stock securities - a total estate which does not seem unduly large after a lifetime of hard work.

That wasn't all Stamate lost. His woman friend, who lived with him, committed suicide a year after his arrest - a tragedy that Stamate blames on harassment by county authorities.

Stamate already served six days in jail after his arrest. Unless the authorities are holding back very damaging evidence of big-time racketeering, that would seem to be more than enough to meet the dubious requirements of the law. At the least, his seized property and financial assets should be returned to him so that he can live out his retirement in the financial (if not physical) ease that is his due.