U.S. v. Schaefer (9th Cir. - Nov. 8, 2010)

You're living in Cool, California.  Which is cool on every possible level.  You're a local attorney.  Life's good, but making ends meet on the law front isn't especially easy.  Particularly after your wife gets breast cancer and you have to help out a bit.  Not a crushing amount of business in Cool.

So you start growing a little marijuana for your wife.  Now here's a business that makes sense in NoCal.  So it takes off.  You start selling a lot.

But all good things must come to an end.  For Dale Schaefer, that end is the statutory minimum sentence of five years in prison.  And watching his doctor wife get the same sentence as well.  Convictions and sentences that are then affirmed by the Ninth Circuit.

Circle of life.