SPRING TRAINING DAILY REPORT

Forced to admit that he cultivated pot for profit, medical marijuana advocate Todd McCormick was sentenced Monday to five years in federal prison in a deal with prosecutors.

McCormick, a 29-year-old cancer survivor, was arrested in 1997 after drug agents found more than 4,000 marijuana plants growing in a house he rented in Bel-Air.

With financial help from actor Woody Harrelson, McCormick waged a defense against the charges and barraged the news media with press releases portraying himself as a victim of government harassment.

But McCormick and co-defendant Peter McWilliams, 60, ultimately were forced to plead guilty last year, after U.S. District Judge George H. King ruled that they could not use medical necessity as a defense at trial.

McWilliams, who has AIDS and is in a wheelchair, is scheduled to be sentenced May 22.

In exchange for allowing the pair to plead to a lesser charge, prosecutors insisted that they admit they grew marijuana to make money. The agreements made no mention of cultivating pot for medical use.

According to documents introduced by the government, McWilliams once confided that he hoped to become the Bill Gates of marijuana growing.

He paid McCormick more than $120,000 to oversee pot cultivation at the Bel-Air home.

Prosecutors said McCormick and McWilliams tried to sell their crop to the Los Angeles Cannabis Buyers Club, which has dispensed pot since the state medical marijuana initiative was approved in 1996. The federal government does not recognize the initiative as legally binding.