## Facts

- Kern County sheriff’s deputies received an anonymous tip that marijuana was being grown at the trailer home of Noel Spark’s mother.
- Deputies saw a marijuana plant in the backyard and, after entering the yard with the mother’s consent, found and seized two additional plants.
- Spark later contacted police, admitted the plants were his, and stated he used marijuana for chronic back pain.
- Spark claimed he had a physician’s recommendation authorizing medical marijuana use.
- The recommending doctor’s practices and licensing status were attacked by the prosecution; the defense presented another physician who examined Spark and reviewed his history, concluding Spark’s chronic back pain supported a medical marijuana recommendation.
- Spark was charged with unlawful cultivation of marijuana; he relied on the Compassionate Use Act of 1996 (Health & Safety Code § 11362.5) as an affirmative defense.

## Issues

1. Whether the Compassionate Use Act requires a defendant to prove a “serious illness” as a separate element to obtain statutory protection.
2. Whether the Act’s protections extend to illnesses beyond traditionally “serious” conditions when a physician recommends marijuana because it provides relief.
3. Whether the trial court’s instruction imposing a “serious illness” requirement improperly restricted the statutory defense and prejudiced the verdict.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeal reversed the cultivation conviction.
- The court held the trial court misstated the law by instructing the jury that Spark had to prove he suffered from a “serious illness” to invoke the Compassionate Use Act.
- The instructional error was prejudicial because the trial centered on, and the verdict turned on, whether Spark was “seriously ill” under the erroneous standard.
- The case was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the correct interpretation of the Act.

## Legal Principles

- The Compassionate Use Act’s reference to “seriously ill Californians” is prefatory purpose language and does not create an independent eligibility element for the defense.
- The Act protects a patient (or caregiver) who possesses or cultivates marijuana for the patient’s medical purposes upon a physician’s recommendation or approval.
- Whether marijuana is appropriate for a patient’s condition is a medical determination assigned to a physician, and the Act extends to “any other illness for which marijuana provides relief.”
- Jury instructions that add extra statutory requirements and narrow the medical-marijuana defense beyond the statute’s operative language constitute legal error requiring reversal when the error affects the verdict.

## Conclusion

The conviction was reversed because the jury was incorrectly instructed that Proposition 215 required proof of a separate “serious illness” element; the Act’s operative protections depend on a physician’s recommendation for an illness for which marijuana provides relief, not a jury’s independent finding that the illness is “serious.”


People v. Spark, 121 Cal. App. 4th 259, 16 Cal. Rptr. 3d 840 (Ct. App. 2004)