June 18, 1996 Rev. Tom Brown 04808-010 P.0.B0X 4000 Springfield, Mo. 65801 Dear Friends, Well, I got good news, and bad news, and lets get to the bad news first. On April 29, 1996 the Supreme Court of the United States refused to certify my petition for review of my conviction. That means that as far as the court system in the United States, there is nothing wrong with my conviction and that no change will be made in the near future. As you can imagine, when I learned this on May 3, 1996, I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach. As much as I had tried to prepare myself for this eventuality, the reality of it almost beat me into the ground. The fact that I had taken the position that the court system could be trusted to follow the Constitution and the Law, that the corruption of Judge Waters and his involvement with Don Tyson in smuggling cocaine into this country to finance Tyson Corporate expansion, Waters’ corruption in covering up the CIA drug smuggling and assassination programs at the Mena, Arkansas airport would be uncovered and dealt with, and that the system just needed an honest opportunity to work on this, put me in the position to be deeply hurt and disappointed by the courts refusal to even review the case. Now to the good news. One of the best things about my experience here has been that the Truth of the holy teachings of a dozen cultures is real and available to those who seek it. This Truth is that God is real, that we can reach out in our lives and bear incredible pain and sorrow - not through our own strength, but through the intercession of something beyond us, something that leads us to a higher understanding of life, a better way of knowing it. Unfortunately, one must climb the mountain in order to see from the heights, and that climb is often uncomfortable and inconvenient. But the view from the heights is not just of a pretty sunset. From the heights I have seen vision and realized a plan of which we are a small but vital part. Let me explain. Each of you receiving this letter knows of the persecution of those of us who use herbs and plants to better know and understand God. Each of you knows something of how those herbs and plants are also food for our body and medicine for our illness. Each of you knows how much pain and suffering have been caused by the government’s refusal to obey the laws of God and man, and why and how they profit from their corruption. Now I see more clearly than before how my life fits into war, and how to take the next steps in this particular battle. Enclosed with this letter is a copy of a photo-item from the New York Times. It is of a Catholic nun who was beaten, tortured and raped by Guatemalan military personal acting under advise of U.S. CIA operatives. She is picketing the White House, trying to get the government to admit to and stop this despotic activity on the part of the CIA and military intelligence operatives. Of course we know of Mena, Arkansas and how the drugs smuggled into Mena went to pay for these same murders and tortures. Our Church is deeply involved in pulling down these rogue operations. My place here is simply not comparable to this nun’s service to the poor of central america, and the torture it cost her. We are however waging the same war, and with God's help we will prevail. Every time I think of her, of Archbishop Romero murdered in his Church, the Jesuit Priests of the University in El Salvador murdered along with their housekeeper in their front yard, I realize how small a price I have to pay to place myself on the path of Truth along with them. Please offer a special ceremony and prayers, each in your own tradition, in the memory of these martyrs and in hopes that our fight against this EVIL may change the balance enough to end it. It is true that I have been beaten up pretty badly so far. The corruption of the Federal Judge Waters in Fayetteville, Arkansas, has poisoned the possibility of defense to these charges, and his corruption is covered by Reagan/Bush appointees to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals, and now by the Supreme Court itself. All is not lost however. I am now preparing a motion to the court to overturn my conviction due to a lack of Federal jurisdiction under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. Congress has the power to regulate commerce between the states and between this nation and other countries. Commerce within a state is under state control, and non- commercial activities are exempt entirely from Federal Controls. I have been convicted of growing plants in violation of federal law. I have not been accused of engaging in any commerce whatsoever, and Hemp is not an item of interstate or intrastate commerce at this time at all. Therefore the Federal government lacks jurisdiction to enforce a prohibition law forbidding my growing of a plant. In addition, The very first line of the Declaration of Independence invokes Natural Law, the law given to us by God as a part of our creation. "When in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them to another, and to assume, among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to Which the laws of Nature and Nature's God entitle them. . ." So here in the first official document of our nation, the document which explains why our forefathers had to murder the legal representatives of their King, in order to end his despotic reign over them, this document begins by invoking and declaring the Natural Law of God. This is the same Natural Law that Judge Waters would not allow me to present to the jury. This Natural Law is not written down, it is the law which God made the Universe to operate under. For instance if you take a green plant into a dark room, it will die, because it needs the Sun in order to live. This is not a law passed by a congress and written down, it applies everywhere in the Universe, and all God's creation is subject to it. Sometimes a man has understood this law, and has written it down to teach others. One place we find this is in the Bible in Genesis - the teachings of the beginning. In Genesis, Chapter 1, Verse 29, God address Adam, the first man, and says, "Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of the Earth. . . and it shall be for your meat." Today, of course, the Federal Government says it has the right to prohibit us from growing and using the plants God has given to us. This was foretold in the first letter to Timothy written by St. Paul, Chapter 4, Verse 1, where Paul reports the only direct spirit teaching of all the epistles, saying, "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, and giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils; speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their conscience seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry and commanding to abstain from meats which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the TRUTH." We of Our Church know of the TRUTH of the food, medicine, the spiritual MEAT that Hemp Flowers are, that the peyote cactus is, and we know of the documents that show that the government knows this TRUTH also. And we know how the government, in the form of Judge Waters and Prosecutor Bill Cromwell, have conspired in secret meetings to stop us from showing a jury these same government documents. But while they exercise POWER, it is not their right, just their opportunity. They only have the right to exercise power within the confines of the Constitution and Federal Law. They have the opportunity because they are presently government employees whose orders other agents are willing to follow and not question. And we have stood up to them, we who have no power but the right of God and the recognition of the TRUTH we have forced them to flagrantly violate their own laws in order to defeat us. This places us in a very strong position. If we continue to persevere in this TRUTH, with our words and our lives, we will take the high ground, and our rule will be in Truth and not in their Lies. I am asking each of you to do a few things for me in the next month or so. Write to your local paper and point out how our own government was founded on natural law, the Law of God, how this present government is violating that law of God by prohibiting any of us from growing the plants God has given to us all as our birth right. Point out that whenever a government has gone against the laws of God, it has fallen. There are some questions that may be arguable, but possession of the plants God created when He created us and gave them to us with a contract written down in the Bible, is not arguable. Then send a copy of that letter to each of your congresspersons. Tell them how we have gone forward in a non-violent way, notifying all responsible parties of our each and every move, and of how the court of Judge Waters has perverted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and is denying us our right to exercise our religion. Remind them that Thomas Jefferson himself warned us that it might be necessary to spill the blood of tyrants to protect the Constitution and our rights from an abusive government. Plead with them to reconsider their position of attempting to prohibit us from growing any plant given to us by God - as a matter of moral principle. Promise them that we will continue to attempt to inform them in a moral and non-violent manner. Warn them that in light of Waco and Ruby Ridge, that obvious corruption like that of the plant prohibition laws and the drug smuggling at Mena by government agents, will act as a corrosive acid on the fabric of our nation and may end up burning those who try to wrap their corruption in the flag of our Nation. Keep up your praying and gathering in the Sight of God. We are right, on the facts and the law. We will prevail against this corruption in time. We must be willing to invest that time in the fight. I am, and I call on you to commit that investment also. In February of this year, in U.S. v. Bauer, 75 F.3d 1366 (available at your local law library), the Ninth Circuit overturned a conviction identical to mine. The Supreme Court has refused to review my case, but I believe that they are reviewing Bauer, and that when they do I will be able to use it to overturn my own conviction. If that happens all that I have lost will come back to me except the time I have spent in prison. I may gain an equal amount of time to live just because of the justice we will achieve and be able to live under. I am now filing a lawsuit to get marijuana here for our Rastafarian Church. More on that later. Take care - - LOVE Dear Carl, Thanks for Greg Peck’s appeal brief. It made for interesting reading. It looks pretty good. I thought it was weak on the RFRA'93 issue, that there is a lot to be demanded in the way of the Yoder and Sherbert decisions being the examples of correct adjudication - as I attempted to do in my Supreme Court brief. You got that didn't you? But, it's all there, and any reasonable man must agree that Greg gets a new trial or whatever and a decision on the merits of the issue and not some judge’s fantasy of what he wants the issue to be. I just got the decisions on the three civil rights lawsuits against the county jail and the civil forfeiture of the Our Church of Antioch property. They turned then all down. The civil rights issues included the right to religious services in the jail in the same manner as the other churches got, access to religious texts and documents which included the DEA rescheduling petition and the DOT reports on marijuana and driving, access to a law library for a pro per indigent defendant, and overcrowding. All the case law both in and out of the circuit including Supreme Court said I had the law library, the documents and the church services for sure. The civil forfeiture issue was whether or not the State could deny a transfer of title to an unincorporated church, without consideration of the RFRA'93. The court said no problem, the state could do anything it wanted, and the RFRA'93 wasn't worth shit. Neither was any of the other Eighth Circuit precedent. Needless to say they have not published these decisions even though they are cases of first impression in the Circuit and the Country for that matter. So this is the way they bury the death squad victims, no public notice, no public notices! You warned me about the unlikelyhood that the court would do justice in this case. You are right. Next time be sure to advise the sucker that the circuits don't give a shit about what they have previously decided in the same issues and that they just don't publish the case so no ones the wiser. I am real mad about this, I had no expectation that they would fix the game this way, what a fool I am. Now, how the fuck am I going to pull this one out of the hat. Well I already know that I won't, in all the cases where I have gotten myself into this kind of fix, God took a hand, or at least some force beyond my control. Now let's watch, I got a feeling this is going to turn around, but for the life of me I don't know how. They got all the advantage and I got nothing they seem to care about. I am filing for rehearing and will go to Supreme. Will it do any good? I am also working on the jurisdiction issue, and got some good stuff. Will send it to you soon. Take care and remember your prayers, boy I got nothing else.