It has all the elements of a Hollywood movie thriller. A dying famous author, a mansion in Bel Air with 4,000 marijuana plants, even an escape to another country by an innocent young woman. But it's very real, and the story is already rife with tragedy. Canadian justices will rule in the coming year whether to return Renee Boje to America to face a mandatory ten to life prison sentence for being present at a medical marijuana grow operation, or whether to grant her political asylum in response to the severity of America's cannabis laws. She fled the U.S. in 1998, at the advice of her lawyer.

Renee Boje is asking her fellow American citizens to urge Canada to grant her petition for refugee status. In a letter American actor Woody Harrelson recently wrote to the Canadian courts he said: "Please, please, show some compassion for Renee, and don't allow her to become a another statistic in a money making hypocritical war against good citizens". He went on to call her a "wonderful lady, who has never been violent or hurt anyone, who simply believed what was going on in that house in Bel Air was legal".

Boje was a hired professional freelance artist in 1997 when she met Todd McCormick, who's suffered bone cancer and radiation treatments since he was a child. McCormick had hired Boje to do art for a book on medical marijuana he was writing with his publisher, famous Author Peter McWilliams ("Life 101", "Ain't Nobody's Business If I Do").

McWilliams, also a patient, was suffering from full-blown AIDS and Cancer, and the pair had converted a mansion into a cannabis research lab. They claimed they were doing clinical research testing strains of pot for effectiveness in treating the symptoms of diseases including AIDS, Cancer, and chronic pain. They assumed they were protected by California's Proposition 215, approved by California voters, & allowing the growing of medical marijuana. But a federal judge ruled out any mention of medical necessity in the case, so jurors couldn't even be told that McWilliams and McCormick were seriously ill at all.

Renee Boje is charged with watering and moving some plants. Boje admits she had knowledge of the operation but denies assisting in it, and thought it was protected by Prop. 215 as well. However, U.S. federal authorities that snagged her leaving the residence right as they were starting a raid on the home claim she made a statement admitting guilt. She says that just isn't true. She is facing a staggering ten-year to life mandatory sentence in federal prison. Amnesty International decries violence that women have to endure in her would-be prison as the worst in America.

Peter McWilliams was denied his "herbal appetite" by federal judge George King, and died before his sentencing while choking on his own vomit in his bathroom. But not before Boje made a courageous offer to turn her-self in if the charges were dropped against the dying McWilliams. Bone cancer and chronic pain patient McCormick is serving a mandatory five-year prison sentence on aptly named Terminal Island. Now the attractive, diminutive artist Boje is a refugee from her country, and has been branded a dangerous criminal by U.S. authorities. And time is running out for her.

Canadian appeals lawyer John Conroy (http://www.johnconroy.com) says that support from fellow Americans, and more importantly, American media coverage, is what Ms. Boje will need if she's to persuade Canadian authorities to deliver her a victory in such a precedent setting case. Boje, who has given over 300 print, radio and television interviews in Canada, is now asking the America media and public to participate in her call for justice. Washington State NORML Director Vivian McPeak calls her case: "a bellwether poster-child example of the cruelty of America's war on cannabis". A Glamour Magazine article asked whether she was a "drug Queen-pin or an innocent victim?"

She considers the cannabis plant "a healing herb", and can't understand how her own government can incarcerate sick and dying people in its jails and prisons over it. Her goal is to stay in Canada, where she wants to open a holistic healing center. She sells her art in cards and certificates to help raise money for her $250,000 defense. For the meantime she will live in exile, uncertain of what the future may bring.