A Pot Professor's Day In Court
by Tom Gibb

October 08, 1998 - Pittsburgh Post-Gazette - letters@post-gazette.com

BELLEFONTE, Pa.--Centre County President Judge Charles Brown paused, delicately felt around for the right touch of understatement, then told jurors in his courtroom yesterday they were hearing "a rather unusual case."

He expected something different?

The man on trial was Julian Heicklen, retired Penn State University chemistry professor--a man so incensed by marijuana laws that he repeatedly showed up at the campus gate last winter, smoked joints and preached individual rights to lunchtime crowds.

When police balked at arresting him, Heicklen decided to stop back weekly and light up until they did.

And they did--four times, for possessing small amounts of marijuana.

So, yesterday was his day in court. And for Heicklen, it was showtime.

This was Julian Heicklen, 66-year-old iconoclast, social activist since adolescence, a gradual convert from liberalism to libertarianism.

On his suit lapel, this lanky, gray-haired man wore a baseball-size button emblazoned with a marijuana leaf and the words, "Free Julian Heicklen."

He stood at the defense table, microphone in hand, and called Brown "an inveterate liar."

He brandished sticks and Styrofoam balls, fashioned into 2-foot replicas of the molecules of marijuana's active ingredient--and quizzed a state police chemist until Brown ordered the models put away.

"This is a political trial. The state is trying to punish me for exercising my God-given right to own a vegetable," Heicklen told jurors. "Your decision will influence the future of this country, whether we become a free country or continue to live in tyranny."

It took them 25 minutes.

They found him guilty.

Heicklen warned jurors he was an old man who could be headed to prison.

Brown fined him $2,000 and put him on 120 days probation.

"This is the most trivial, minor charge you can be charged with," Assistant District Attorney Stephen Sloane told jurors. "The commonwealth doesn't want that man in jail."

At least for now.

Fresh from telling jurors that he spent nine months and $10,000 on his fight, Heicklen pledged to appeal.

And sometime between now and December, he's supposed to go to trial again-- this time for smoking marijuana during a protest on the courthouse steps.

The thing of it is, Heicklen says he doesn't even like marijuana, and he doesn't really fathom any of this hullabaloo about getting high.

He told jurors that around marijuana he is a prime "Bogarter"--a la Humphrey Bogart, waving his cigarettes more than smoking them. And he lights up only at protests, he said.

"You have the right to do stupid things as long as you don't hurt anybody else," Heicklen said. "Marijuana isn't the message. It's the messenger."

Heicklen is an internationally known chemist, a world-class bridge player, and, Rabbi Jonathan Brown of State College told the jury, an honest guy who oversees his congregation's cemetery committee and sometimes conducts services.

He's also a lifelong activist, with civil disobedience dating back to an arrest at a civil rights sit-in in California three decades ago.

So when Heicklen deemed marijuana laws an evil that were glutting the prison systems, be brought together his own band of libertarians with foes of marijuana laws.

In court, Heicklen had an entourage of about a dozen supporters, most of them near college age.

He also had the guts--if that's what it was--to confine two lawyers to the status of unofficial advisers and argue his case himself, often fumbling his way through courtroom procedure.

What Heicklen lacked in gloss, though, he made up for in brass.

When Brown decided Heicklen was getting windy and told him to end his questioning, Heicklen snapped, "This is a court proceeding. It isn't a timed event."

When it was over yesterday, Heicklen hardly seemed fazed--albeit just a trifle more cautious.

"The smokeouts will continue," he pledged. "What my role is, that's up in the air."

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