Luke Scarmazzo is back home in California after serving more than 14 years in federal prison for helping to run a nonprofit medical marijuana collective – an everyday business under state law but forbidden, then and now, by the U.S. government, which classifies the weed as one of the most dangerous drugs on the planet.
Even so, a federal judge ordered Scarmazzo’s release last week, citing his fine behavior in prison, including volunteer work and legal aid to other inmates, and the “changes in the legal climate” in the last two decades. The federal government now rarely charges marijuana users and sellers whose actions would be legal under state laws.
“It feels like a dream,” Scarmuzzo, 42, said from his parents’ home in Modesto after being freed from federal prison in Mississippi, his fifth home behind bars during what ended up being about two-thirds of his 2008 sentence of 21 years and 10 months.
In prison he earned a college degree, helped to establish a legal aid clinic for other inmates and a program to keep them crime-free after their release, published articles and poems, and wrote a memoir, “High Price,” that he says is being considered for a televised mini-series.
Luke Scarmazzo wrote a memoir while in prison for operating a medical marijuana collective.
Stephen Lam/The ChronicleAnd while the terms of his release don’t allow him to work for a…