I Have Been In More Courtrooms Than Most Lawyers, Supreme and Small

I have been in more courtrooms than most lawyers. I do not say that as a compliment to myself. I say it like a man describing scar tissue.

Some people collect diplomas. Some people collect business awards. I collected case numbers. I collected hearing dates. I collected letters from lawyers explaining what might happen next. I collected the kind of paperwork that arrives with the weight of a brick and the personality of a machine.

I have sat in small courtrooms where the walls felt too close and the air felt used up. I have sat in county courtrooms where prosecutors talked about medical marijuana like the voters had never spoken. I have watched lawyers argue over laws no one had clearly interpreted yet. I have watched the government turn uncertainty into a weapon.

And now, buried in my files are two very different Supreme Court documents. One came from the early medical marijuana war in Michigan. The other came years later, after the IRS turned the same war into tax math.

That is the strange arc of my story. It began with patients and caregivers, registration cards and local inspections, voter-approved law and local politics. It ended with federal tax code, restitution numbers, appellate opinions, and a petition asking the highest court in America whether the government can keep using a marijuana classification that no longer matches the country around it.

The First Supreme Court Filing: Clinical Relief and the Law Nobody Could Explain

Before cannabis became polished retail, before giant signs, celebrity brands, and corporate dispensaries, there was the beginning. In Michigan, that beginning was messy, dangerous, political, and legally unclear.

Clinical Relief operated in Ferndale during the early days of Michigan’s Medical Marihuana Act. The law had been approved by voters. Patients had cards. Caregivers had cards. People believed the state had opened a door. What no one knew was how fast police and prosecutors would try to slam that door shut.

The Michigan Supreme Court application from the Clinical Relief case framed the core question plainly: whether the trial court correctly dismissed charges where the defendants’ pre-Redden conduct was based on a reasonable interpretation of the voter-initiated medical marijuana law and where no clarifying interpretations had been released at the time.

That is lawyer language for something simple:

How can the government make criminals out of people for failing to predict court decisions that did not exist yet?

The filing described the legal environment at the time as a storm of uncertainty. The argument was not that people should be free to ignore the law. The argument was that the law had not yet been clearly explained, and ordinary people should not lose their liberty for failing to predict how future courts would later narrow it.

The filings described Clinical Relief as a Ferndale medical marijuana dispensary that provided marijuana to patients who possessed medical marijuana cards. They also described undercover Narcotic Enforcement Team officers entering the facility and making purchases. Then came arrests, charges, motions, appeals, and the kind of legal machinery that can swallow years of a person’s life.

One of the arguments in that case still matters today because it captures the trap of early legalization. The defense pointed out that the first judicial decision interpreting the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act had not been released until after the arrests. That meant people were being judged by interpretations that came later.

In the courtroom, this became a fight about due process, fair warning, the rule of lenity, and whether future judicial interpretations should be applied retroactively. In real life, it meant something more brutal: people were told they had a law, then punished for not knowing how courts would later rewrite the edges of it.

The Offer of Proof: Local Approval, Counterfeit Cards, and a Trap Door

One of the most important pieces in the Clinical Relief filing was the offer of proof. It said the defendants could present evidence that they relied on local guidance and believed they were acting within the law.

The offer of proof said the defendants had information involving Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson and the question of whether dispensaries could operate as a matter of local control. It said the facility had been inspected by local police. It said the Ferndale mayor had approved the facility. It said the defendants demanded medical marijuana cards from patients and had them complete medical questionnaires.

Then came the part that tells you everything about that era: the offer of proof said police used counterfeit medical marijuana cards and falsified information on medical questionnaires to conduct purchases.

That is why I call it a trap door. You are told to build carefully. You are told to comply. You ask for cards. You ask questions. You create procedures. Then the people enforcing the law come through the front door with fake cards and fake information, and later the courtroom asks whether you were the one who failed to follow the rules.

This was not a normal business environment. It was not even a normal criminal environment. It was the first generation of Michigan medical marijuana operators trying to survive in a state where voters had moved forward, but law enforcement had not accepted the result.

The Second Supreme Court Filing: The Pot Tax Goes to Washington

Years later, the courtroom story changed shape. The battering ram became a tax calculation. The raid became a ledger. The drug war learned to speak in spreadsheets.

The United States Supreme Court petition in Ryan Richmond v. United States centered on IRS Code 280E. Section 280E denies ordinary and necessary business deductions to businesses involved with Schedule I or II controlled substances. In the cannabis world, that meant a state-authorized marijuana business could be taxed unlike almost any other business in America.

The question presented in the petition asked whether 26 U.S.C. § 280E may constitutionally be applied to a state-authorized marijuana business when, in the decades since Gonzales v. Raich, Congress and the states have moved away from a uniform federal prohibition and marijuana’s Schedule I classification no longer fits the Commerce Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, or Congress’s taxing power.

Again, strip away the legal language and the question becomes simple:

Can the federal government treat state-legal medical marijuana like a criminal enterprise for tax purposes while the country has already moved on?

The petition described my federal case as involving convictions for corrupt endeavor to obstruct or impede the administration of internal revenue laws, tax evasion counts, and willful failure to file a tax return. It described the sentence as twenty-four months in prison, one year of supervised release, restitution of $2,777,684.49, and an assessment.

Behind every one of those numbers is a larger issue: 280E was never just accounting. It was punishment with a calculator.

From Raids to Receipts

When people think about the war on cannabis, they picture raids. Police lights. Dogs. Guns. Cash laid out for cameras. News anchors saying “marijuana bust” like the words themselves are a conviction.

I lived that version.

But there is another version. It is quieter. It does not always make the evening news. It happens in audits, amended returns, deduction disputes, restitution charts, and courtroom arguments about whether expenses that every normal business needs to survive should be denied because marijuana remains trapped in Schedule I.

The U.S. Supreme Court petition argued that the assumptions behind Raich no longer fit the modern cannabis landscape. It argued that the federal government’s current approach to marijuana bears little resemblance to the “watertight” national prohibition that once justified broad federal power. It argued that Congress and the states have created a contradictory system where marijuana is tolerated, regulated, taxed, and punished all at the same time.

That contradiction is the story. It is the hidden architecture behind legalization.

Small Courtrooms Count Too

The Supreme Court filings sound grand because the word “Supreme” is printed across the top. But anyone who has been through the system knows the smaller courtrooms can do just as much damage.

The small courtroom is where your day disappears. It is where your family waits in the hallway. It is where your lawyer whispers that the judge may or may not be in a good mood. It is where a prosecutor holds a file with your name on it like it belongs to them. It is where the government’s version of your life becomes the official one unless you fight hard enough, long enough, and expensively enough to complicate the narrative.

That is why I say I have been in more courtrooms than most lawyers, supreme and small. Not because I wanted to be. Because once the machine chose me, court became the language I had to learn.

I learned that the courtroom is not always where truth wins. Sometimes it is where power explains itself in a way that sounds reasonable on paper. Sometimes it is where yesterday’s political panic becomes tomorrow’s legal precedent. Sometimes it is where the people who were first in a new industry get treated like criminals so the people who come later can call themselves pioneers.

Why This Matters Now

Cannabis is legal in more places than ever. Dispensaries sit on main roads. Politicians cut ribbons. Municipalities collect licensing fees. Investors talk about market share. The same plant that once brought task forces through doors now sits under bright retail lights.

But history has a cost, and that cost did not fall equally.

The early operators carried the risk. Patients carried the stigma. Families carried the fear. People were raided, charged, prosecuted, taxed, and imprisoned while the legal system tried to decide what legalization meant after voters had already spoken.

That is what Capone Of Cannabis is about. It is not a celebration of marijuana. It is not a dispensary success story. It is a record of how legalization gave way to raids, corruption, federal pressure, and the IRS.

The two Supreme Court documents in my files are not just legal filings. They are mile markers. One shows the early fight over whether Michigan’s medical marijuana law protected people who believed they were following it. The other shows the later fight over whether the federal government can keep using 280E as a financial weapon against state-authorized cannabis businesses.

Between those two filings is my life.

The Story They Do Not Put in the Press Releases

Today, cannabis legalization is often sold as progress. And in some ways, it is. Patients have access. Adults have choices. Entrepreneurs have opportunities. Communities have tax revenue.

But the press releases leave out the people who were punished before the rules became profitable.

They leave out the courtrooms. They leave out the fake cards. They leave out the raids. They leave out the families. They leave out the IRS. They leave out the years spent explaining that a voter-approved law was not supposed to become a trap.

I have been in the small rooms and the Supreme ones. I have seen legalization from the patient counter, the defendant’s chair, the appellate caption, the prison paperwork, and the tax table.

That is why I wrote Capone Of Cannabis.

Because before cannabis became an industry, it was a battlefield. And some of us are still carrying the paperwork to prove it.