United States v. Christie

• Decision Date: 14 June 2016
• Docket Number: No. 14-10233, No. 14-10234,14-10233
• Citation: 825 F.3d 1048
• Parties: United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Sherryanne L. Christie, FKA Sherryanne L. St. Cyr, Defendant-Appellant. United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Roger Cusick Christie, Defendant-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

825 F.3d 1048

United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee

v.Sherryanne L. Christie, FKA Sherryanne L. St. Cyr, Defendant-Appellant.

United States of America, Plaintiff-Appellee

v.Roger Cusick Christie, Defendant-Appellant.

No. 14-10233

No. 14-10234

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted October 16, 2015 Honolulu, Hawaii

Filed June 14, 2016

Thomas M. Otake (argued), Law Office of Thomas M. Otake, Honolulu, Hawaii, for Defendant-Appellant Roger Cusick Christie.

Georgia K. McMillen (argued), Law Office of Georgia K. McMillen, Wailuku, Hawaii; Lynn E. Panagakos, Law Office of Lynn E. Panagakos, Honolulu, Hawaii, for Defendant-Appellant Sherryanne L. Christie.

John M. Pellettieri (argued), Attorney, Appellate Section; Leslie R. Caldwell, Assistant Attorney General; Sung-Hee Suh, Deputy Assistant Attorney General; United States Department of Justice, Criminal Division; Florence T. Nakakuni, United States Attorney; Michael K. Kawahara, Assistant United States Attorney; United States Attorney's Office, Honolulu, Hawaii; for Plaintiff-Appellee.

Before: Diarmuid F. O'Scannlain, Richard C. Tallman, and Milan D. Smith, Jr., Circuit Judges.

OPINION

O'SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge:

We must decide whether the federal government may criminally prosecute two ministers of the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry who admit to using and distributing large quantities of cannabis, but who claim that in doing so they were merely exercising their sincerely held religious beliefs.

I

The Reverend Roger Cusick Christie founded the Hawaii Cannabis Ministry in the year 2000, in Hilo, a city on the Island of Hawaii. Rev. Christie envisioned the Ministry as “a community wherein Cannabis could be celebrated as a sacrament.” Sherryanne Christie was received into the Ministry in 2007, and in 2008 she was ordained a minister, eventually joining Rev. Christie as a sort of “assistant manager.” Sherryanne ran the Ministry by herself for several months in 2009 while Rev. Christie recuperated from a broken ankle. The two wed in 2012.

A

According to Rev. Christie, “[t]he consumption, possession, cultivation and distribution of Cannabis are essential and necessary components of the THC Ministry,”¹ which distributed cannabis both to its members and to medical marijuana users. As Rev. Christie put it, “[n]o truly religious person would turn a blind eye to those in need.”

Rev. Christie boasted of winning the Ministry 2,000 to 3,000 converts on the Island of Hawaii, and another 62,000 worldwide. His charisma consisted, in part, of his promise that those who joined his flock would be delivered from the reach of federal drug laws. For instance, he was enthusiastic about advertising the Ministry's slogan: “We use cannabis religiously and you can too.” Similarly, the Ministry's website prominently displayed an assurance that members would know neither “arrest,” nor “prosecution,” nor “conviction of ‘marijuana’ charges ... starting as soon as you sign up.”

Signing up was not difficult. There were two primary paths to membership. Those who wished could come to downtown Hilo and meet with Rev. Christie at the Ministry's physical home, called the Sanctuary. Rev. Christie would often insist on a “donation” of fifty dollars, and while he reserved the right to turn hopefuls away, one of the Ministry's former employees could not recall anyone ever being rejected. To the contrary, Rev. Christie even boasted of enrolling people who “come in on a cruise ship and they, you know they are just here for a day and they need... you know?” Alternatively, one could join the Ministry by purchasing a so-called “Sanctuary Kit” for $250 through the Ministry's website. Sanctuary Kits included one or two blank membership cards; information about the Ministry, and about laws governing religious cannabis use; and various cannabis-related items (but no cannabis itself). The Ministry's website made clear that there was no minimum age to join, and that even minors could become members.

The Ministry obtained its cannabis from various sources, including from a black market in and around Hilo, and distributed cannabis in two primary ways.

First was during “communion” at Sunday services, which took place every week for approximately two hours at a time. At the start of each service Rev. Christie would ask those present to introduce themselves and explain why they had come, in order, he testified, to “weed out” (his pun) “any visitors or members who seemed insincere.” There is no evidence of how he went about doing so.

Second, during the week Rev. Christie and other Ministry employees would distribute cannabis to members who came in person to the Sanctuary, again in exchange for a suggested donation price. As Rev. Christie explained, members could choose from a broad menu of cannabis products to pick up and to take away with them: “packets,” “live plants,” “clones,” “seeds,” “candy,” “brownies and chocolate chip cookies all with cannabis,” “holy anointing oil,” and “tinctures.”²

The Ministry's distribution protocol required those who wished to obtain cannabis during the week to appear in person and to present a membership card or a state-issued medical marijuana card. Prior to the Spring of 2009, recipients were also required to meet privately with Rev. Christie. By April 2009, the Ministry was distributing more than half a pound of cannabis among approximately sixty to seventy people daily, “most everyday.”

It was around this time that the Christies instituted a more efficient distribution method, dubbed the “express” procedure. Its purpose was to allow individuals to receive cannabis from the Ministry without first having to meet privately with either Sherryanne or Rev. Christie. Instead, each person would order a specific amount of cannabis from a Ministry staff member, hand over his or her Ministry ID card, tender the corresponding “donation” price—which could be more or less expensive depending on the quality of the herb—and wait while the staff member retrieved the requested cannabis from Rev. Christie or Sherryanne. The express procedure eventually became the “primary way” the Ministry distributed cannabis, and it was so popular that it often generated a line stretching out the Ministry door and onto the sidewalk.

The Christies were proud that the Ministry achieved such a high profile, and they aver that they operated the Ministry in an open and non-secretive manner throughout its history. Rev. Christie was something of a public personality, for instance, speaking candidly about the Ministry's activities in various news media and even running for mayor on a ticket pushing marijuana reform. Over the years Rev. Christie also met several times to discuss the Ministry with various representatives of state and federal law enforcement.

The Christies wrote down a handful of rules nominally designed to ensure that cannabis went out only to Ministry members or medical marijuana users. But in practice these rules were little more than parchment barriers.

Specifically, the Ministry “did not confirm that persons who came to the express service were who their Ministry ID card identified them as,” and the employees administering express “did not confirm that the person named on the Ministry ID card was actually a member.” In addition, the district court found that Ministry employees “never advised people who came through the express service that there were restrictions on what ‘members' could do with the sacrament. For example, they never told customers that the sacrament was only for religious purposes or that ‘members' could only use the sacrament on Ministry premises or that ‘members' were prohibited from distributing the sacrament to non-members.”

B

In response to these concerns, the federal government opened a criminal investigation into Rev. Christie and the Ministry. Investigatory results included 284 marijuana plants which law enforcement officers found in July 2009 on a farm run by friends of the Christies, whom the Christies had recruited to cultivate marijuana to be distributed through the Ministry. In June 2010, a grand jury indicted Rev. Christie, Sherryanne, and various of their associates, charging them with a handful of crimes including numerous Controlled Substances Act (“CSA”) violations. See 21 U.S.C. §§ 841(a)(1)

, 841(b)(1)(B), 846, and 856(a)(1). After the district court denied four of their pretrial motions, Rev. Christie and Sherryanne ultimately pled guilty pursuant to plea agreements. Rev. Christie pled guilty, as relevant here, to one count of conspiracy to manufacture and distribute 100 or more marijuana plants, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(a)(1), and 841(b)(1)(B). For her part, Sherryanne pled guilty to one count of conspiring to manufacture and distribute fifty or more marijuana plants, in violation of 21 U.S.C. §§ 846, 841(a)(1), and 841(b)(1)(C).

Rev. Christie was sentenced to sixty months in prison, to be followed by four years of supervised release. Sherryanne was sentenced to twenty-seven months in prison, to be followed by three years of supervised release.

The Christies timely appealed their convictions. The district court had jurisdiction under 18 U.S.C. § 3231

, and we have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.

II

The Christies first claim that their convictions violate their rights freely to exercise their religion, as guaranteed by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 107 Stat. 1488, 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb et seq.³

A

RFRA supplies a rule of decision in cases where a person finds himself in the unfortunate position of needing to choose between following his faith and following the law. “In general,” RFRA provides, sincere religious objectors must be given a pass to defy obligations that apply to the rest of us, if refusing to exempt or to accommodate them would impose a substantial burden on their sincere exercise of religion. 42 U.S.C. 2000bb–1(a)

.

But this rule is not absolute. “The mere fact that [a person's] religious practice is [substantially]...