By Aaron Zeeman
CHAPTER 1 — THE BEGINNING OF THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD
The real beginning of this story—the true long and winding road—didn’t start with THC metabolites, probation conflicts, Quantico reports, or federal intimidation. It began years earlier with the THC Ministry, the Hawai‘i Cannabis Ministry created and led by my friend Roger Christie. The Ministry treated cannabis as a sacrament protected under the First Amendment, and people came because they believed in that message and believed in Roger.
The federal government saw something different. They didn’t just see a minister handing out free joints to homeless people—which he did in the early days out of compassion—they saw a long line that went out the door, people waiting to receive sacramental cannabis. To us, it was religion. To them, it was “distribution.” Rather than address the constitutional questions head-on, they launched the largest cannabis conspiracy case in Hawai‘i history, which became known as the “Green 14.”
The case dragged on for years, filled with motions, delays, and strategic pressure. Many defendants cooperated. Roger never did. His refusal to bend became the government’s obsession, and they held him at Honolulu’s Federal Detention Center for about four and a half years without bail. Their justification was simple: they believed he would continue providing cannabis. No violence. No trafficking empire. Just the belief he would continue the ministry’s purpose.
When sentencing came, Roger agreed to a five-year term with credit for time served. His wife, Share, received a possibility of leniency through appeals. Those appeals failed, and she served about two and a half years. Out of fourteen defendants, only two besides them served real time: I served twelve months, and the only other defendant who served a few months did so specifically because it was part of the sentencing deal he struck for becoming a cooperating witness. The government’s strategy had succeeded in part—turning people against Roger—but the core injustice remained.
CHAPTER 2 — THE RAID AND THE SINGLE PARENT
At the time of the raid, I was a single father raising my ten-year-old daughter. Fourteen federal agents and local police executed a pre-dawn raid with tactical gear and semi-automatic weapons. My daughter woke up terrified. A female federal agent escorted her to school, and she spent the entire day not knowing what had happened to her father.
While searching my home, the agents discovered I was the only defendant in full compliance with Hawai‘i’s medical cannabis laws. I was under my plant limit, and most of the cannabis present was wet, hanging to dry. Under state law, “usable cannabis” means dry material. When they weighed the dry cannabis, it amounted to a quarter pound—well below the nine ounces permitted. They seized nothing. I was the only defendant who didn’t lose property to the raid.
CHAPTER 3 — THE TEN-YEAR LIE AND THE FEDERAL MACHINE
Early in the investigation, the lead FBI agent told me I was facing a ten-year mandatory minimum. I knew immediately he was lying. The actual statutory minimum was five years. It was a classic federal pressure tactic—inflate the threat and watch the defendant crack.
My pre-trial period stretched across four and a half years, during which the government prohibited me from using cannabis despite my legal status under Hawai‘i law. Instead, they forced me onto pharmaceuticals—Percocet, Ibuprofen, and others—that left me in worse condition. I still passed every drug test.
The only time I ever tested positive was after the judge allowed me to use cannabis again with probation’s permission, and even then I wasn’t using cannabis. I was prescribed Marinol, synthetic THC, which creates the same metabolite. The halfway house manager validated the prescription and even arranged for the program to pay for it. When her superiors found out she had honored a legitimate medication, she was fired. She did the right thing. The system punished her for it.
CHAPTER 4 — THE QUANTICO REPORT AND THE LAWSUIT
After the second positive test, I sued them. I wrote that lawsuit myself—thick, detailed, grounded in multiple constitutional violations and ADA violations—with help from friends who assisted with structure and clarity. Inside lockup, when inmates asked to see my paperwork and saw that lawsuit, I earned instant respect. Most inmates weren’t cannabis defendants; they were meth cases, white-collar defendants, and scattered others. But they recognized a real fight when they saw one.
My lawsuit forced probation into silence. They were legally prohibited from speaking to me directly. They could file paperwork, but no conversations, no warnings, no “come to the office,” nothing. The lawsuit itself was still active long after I completed my halfway house term and walked free with no remaining probation. I could have pursued it further—fought for federal probationers’ rights to use cannabis under state law. The legal theory was solid. The immunity defenses were beatable because acquired immunity does not apply to constitutional violations.
But the administrative process was long. Negotiation phases were mandatory. And the truth was simple: Congress and the President were clearly moving toward reform. It was only a matter of time before federal law caught up with state rights.
The deeper truth was that the whole case—every motion, every violation, every drug test, every confrontation—had one purpose: stop me from growing cannabis and prevent Roger from receiving any. That was the real motive. And in the end, rather than keep spending energy fighting a system that would soon change on its own, I decided to do the very thing they didn’t want me to do.
I went back to growing.
CHAPTER 5 — THE FOUR-MONTH FREEZE AND THE MARSHAL
Because I had sued them, probation officers were legally barred from speaking to me for four months. They collected drug test results but had no authority to act on them.
Eventually, when the government decided to force the issue, probation still couldn’t arrest me, so they sent a United States Marshal to my property to carry out the arrest. Years of forced abstinence, prescription dependence, and bureaucratic contradictions all culminated in a marshal appearing in my yard because no one else was allowed to touch the case.
CHAPTER 6 — WESLEY SUDBSBURY
Among the fourteen defendants, Wesley Sudsbury remains unforgettable. Tall, skinny, long-haired, blonde, blue-eyed, and radiating this almost surreal cheerful calm, he cracked jokes and smiled while the rest of us faced mandatory federal time. His lightness was both refreshing and irritating because he seemed to float above the gravity of the situation.
After we signed our $25,000 signature bonds, the government held only one person in custody: Roger. Their strategy was obvious—turn everyone else against him. Most defendants did cooperate. Wesley didn’t. Instead, he ran. He disappeared for years while the rest of us completed our cases, served our time, and moved on.
When they finally caught him, he spent a long stint in Honolulu FDC before being released on probation. His motions and appeals continued until his case reached the doorstep of the U.S. Supreme Court. The Court placed his petition on its docket and gave itself thirty days to decide whether to hear it. If the fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree arguments succeed, Wesley’s conviction—and potentially all of ours—could be overturned.
In an ironic twist, the smiling idealist who fled might become the key to unraveling the entire government prosecution.
CHAPTER 7 — SENTENCING, TODD EDDINS, AND THE ENDGAME
At sentencing, I stood before Judge Kobayashi and spoke plainly. I told her I smoke cannabis, I grow cannabis, and when legalization came, I intended to sell cannabis. That’s who I am. Everyone laughed—the judge, the prosecutor, my lawyer, probation. Not me. I meant every word.
Judge Kobayashi recognized the absurdity of placing a lifelong cannabis grower on probation with a cannabis abstinence order. She resentenced me to twelve months flat, with no probation whatsoever. Everyone else had years of supervised release. I had none.
The endgame was shaped by one man: my attorney, Todd Eddins—now a Justice on the Hawai‘i Supreme Court. Todd was the one who first called my journey “the long and winding road.” He understood the dynamics—legal, political, psychological, and strategic.
By the time my case approached resolution, I was the last defendant standing. The government wanted closure. A trial with a defendant who wasn’t guilty of the charged conduct—and who was simultaneously suing them—was the last thing they wanted. That lawsuit was the pink elephant in the courtroom. It had been on the front page of Honolulu and Hilo papers. Everyone knew. No one could mention it.
I told Todd how to leverage this. He hinted to the prosecution that he might persuade me to take a plea to under a kilo—the smallest federal distribution charge there is, a charge I was never originally accused of—and accept one year probation. The government wanted an ending badly enough that they accepted the idea immediately.
At my revocation hearing, Todd delivered an argument so sharp, so eloquent, that even I was surprised. I expected three months. The prosecution wanted six. Instead, I got twelve months—but no probation at all. The prosecutors literally jumped up and down with joy because they heard the number twelve and didn’t understand the significance of zero supervision afterward.
Back at FDC, the inmates were shocked at the one-year sentence until I told them I was walking out completely free with no probation. Then they understood: that was the golden ticket.
Todd earned that result. He executed the strategy flawlessly. And now he sits exactly where he belongs—on the Hawai‘i Supreme Court.
CHAPTER 8 — THE CHOICE: FIGHT OR GROW
When I walked out of custody, the lawsuit was still alive. I could have pushed it, fought through the administrative gauntlet, destroyed the immunity defense, and tried to change federal policy for all probationers. I had the legal foundation. I had the moral ground. And I had the will.
But I realized something deeply true: the ultimate change was already coming from Congress and the President. The national tide was shifting. And my deeper calling—my identity—was not to spend the next several years fighting paperwork battles.
My calling was to grow.
Seven months after release, fresh off a final month of house arrest spent at a friend’s beautiful home in Mānoa, I entered the statewide cannabis competition that would later become the Aloha Cup. And I won. First place for the Big Island. Second place statewide. That cemented my standing in Hawai‘i’s cannabis world—not just because I won, but because I never snitched.
That victory became the seed from which Big Island Genetics was born. Nearly ten years later, the long and winding road continues, not as a burden but as a path—one that keeps unfolding, reshaping, and revealing new chapters.
CHAPTER 9 — THE ROAD CONTINUES
The long and winding road didn’t end with sentencing, with release, with the Aloha Cup, or with the birth of Big Island Genetics. It didn’t end when the lawsuit faded into legislative inevitability or when the Supreme Court took notice of Wesley Sudsbury’s case. The road keeps moving, reshaping itself, revealing new turns, new battles, new victories.
And now we stand at another bend in that road.
More to come.
