(Call to Order of the Court)
                                                              
THE COURT:  Good morning.

MR. MILLER:  Good morning, Your Honor.

MR. SHULL:  Good morning, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  This is a hearing that we have set in two cases.  The caption in each case is United States of America v. Dale DeWitt.  The first case is United States of America v. Dale T. DeWitt and Ronald D. Lanq.  The number there is 94-00016-01/02-CR-W-9.  The second case is United States of America v. Dale T. DeWitt.  The number is 94-00054-01-CR-W-8.
The situation with the - - trying to think of which one was the one where we had the plea? Does anyone remember?

MR. MILLER:  Fifty-four, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Fifty-four.  The situation as I understand it with No. 54 is that Mr. DeWitt had entered a conditional guilty plea in that case.  The plea was conditioned upon preserving, at some later point in time, an issue concerning his alleged religious beliefs and how that might implicate the charge contained in No. 54.  That plea having been taken by Judge Gaitan, and my understanding, although I wasn't there, was that Judge Gaitan had asked the parties to submit the record by way of affidavits and in written form for him to look at the issue in that fashion, rather than conducting a full blown evidentiary hearing.  When the matter came before me in connection with the companion case, No. 16, which was set for trial on the joint accelerated criminal trial docket, the question of the religious belief issue was raised during that pretrial con¬ference, and a number of questions came to my mind.  Most important, whether or not there was going to be an effort to preserve any issue in the 16 case with regard to religious belief.  And if there were going to be efforts to preserve any issue with regard to that, that we needed to get something on file in that case and, at least in my judgment, conduct some sort of a hearing on that matter.  It also seemed to me, at least, that it made a certain amount of sense, rather than to have a hearing before me in the 16 case and a different record, perhaps, a written record being made before Judge Gaitan, that it might be in everybody's interest if the matters were consolidated and presented before me for whatever evidence needed to be taken on this issue.  I then went and discussed that with both Judges Gaitan and Bartlett.  They agreed.  And my understanding is that Judge Gaitan has transferred his case to Judge Bartlett.  The whole matter has been referred to me for this evidentiary hearing. So that is the reason why we are here this morning.  That is, to take whatever evidence there is on the application of the statute.  Let me make some preliminary remarks about the concerns that I have had.  And if any of this doesn't comport with anybody's recollection, I would expect that you would let me know.  At the pretrial conference in the 16 case, I directed Mr. Shull to file a motion to dismiss, because although I was not familiar with the statute that he was referring to, it seemed to me that he was alleging a violation of the Constitution.  And, clearly, in my opinion, that needed to be raised in a pretrial motion as a potential violation of the defendant's first amendment right.  The question then arises as to how this matter might be played out in front of a jury.  That is, whether or not, I'm assuming, we didn't dismiss the indictment, whether or not the defense would be appropriate to raise before a jury.  The question becomes even more difficult when you then turn to what has occurred in the companion case, No. 54, since there had been a conditional plea in that case.  And at the conjuncture that I took the matter on, there had been, obviously, no record made and there wasn't about to be a trial in that case.  So, as I mentioned to Mr. Shull on the record, I don't believe that he has preserved anything with regard to the 54 case as it might be implicated in terms of the trial. Because, frankly, if you plead guilty, you're preserving some issue that I would assume is a legal issue that is not an issue for a jury to decide. So, that's the main reason why I directed the filing of the motion to dismiss.  Although Mr. Shull has made it clear that he has been reluctant to do that, because he believes that this is a jury question.  In any case, having looked at the statute in the meantime, and having done what I consider to be some extensive research in the area, I don't find a great amount of direction in either the statute or in the decisional law as to what process should be taken in preserving these issues.  And so, my sense of it is, though, that having conducted a fair number of jury trials myself, that whether this be properly formulated in a motion to dismiss for a constitutional violation, attacking the statute under which Mr. DeWitt is currently charged, or whether this be preliminary proceedings to determine whether or not this evidence would go before a jury, is - - it seems to me to be appropriate, under either situation, to conduct an evidentiary hearing before we would allow this matter to be presented to a jury, and at least give the judge a report and recommendation on what - - if there are implications in terms of the statute that would require the dismissal of the indictments, or if it would allow or disallow Mr. DeWitt's ability to present the matter to a jury.  It's appropriate for us to conduct this hearing in advance of whatever trial might occur.  I say that just so that it's clear that, although I have tried to lock down the process that should be followed in this case, I think the safest course is the one that I am taking.  That is, to take whatever matters we have in advance of it being presented to a jury.  Now, first of all, let me turn to Mr. Miller, who's here representing the United States.  Does that pretty well flesh out the history of this case and the reasons why we are here this morning?  Is there anything that you wish to add to it or take exception to?

MR. MILLER:  No.  I think that's fair statement.  Although it's the government's position that this is not jury issue and that it's a legal one to be decided prior to - -

THE COURT:  I understand.

MR. MILLER:  - - given the nature of the test that's involved.

THE COURT:  Mr. Shull.

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, one point of clarification. Of course, it's our position that all of these are factual questions.  And, certainly, while we recognize this is a difficult challenge as to how this matter should be handled, we would ask the record reflect that we are continuing to protect our right to have these issues raised at a jury level, regardless of what the Court may or may not decide.

THE COURT: Well, let me ask you about that, because I do not understand how you can preserve this as a jury issue, if you've entered a conditional plea in the 54 case.

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, my recollection of the 54 plea and I think that this will be borne out by the actual transcript, was that the issue was placed before the judge as part of a pretrial brief.  The Court directed, then, that we submit a motion to dismiss, which has, in fact, subsequently been filed.  And the Court indicated, then, that in connection with the motion to dismiss, that we would submit affidavits so that the issues and so forth would be framed in front of him. Then, if need be, he would hold a hearing on the question, at which I understand that if there were some evidentiary questions to be raised, that they could be brought out.  They were still factual issues, but in that particular case, we basically had agreed that in 54, we would allow the judge to act as the fact finder, not waiving the fact that they were factual issues.  We were just waiving our right for a jury to make that determination.  And, in part, that was as a result of the entering into the plea and the dismissal of some charges by the government.  Since we've been unable to accomplish that here, we continue to maintain that they are fact issues, but we're not prepared to allow the Court to decide them.  We believe they should be submitted to the jury.

THE COURT:  Then you've lost me on that point.

MR. SHULL:  Okay.

THE COURT:  At one point, it was your position that this was a matter that was appropriate for a jury to take up, but you were prepared to waive your right to a jury and allow Judge Gaitan to decide the issues.

MR. SHULL:  That's correct.

THE COURT:  Now, how have you suddenly backed off of that?

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, we have two separate cases.

THE COURT:  I understand what the other case is.

MR. SHULL:  Okay.

THE COURT:  Let's just talk about Gaitan's case.

MR. SHULL:  We believe that, of course, the jury is the finder of fact.  At that point, we waived the right of the defendant in that case to make the factual determination necessary with regard to the religious creed.  We have not made that determination in this case.  Now  --

THE COURT:  Right.

MR. SHULL:  - - if the Court believes that by waiving our right to a jury trial on those issues in one case, we have waived it in another, then, in fact, we may have erred.  But we're simply saying - -

THE COURT:  No.

MR. SHULL:  - - we're allowing the Court to be a fact finder in one, but we believe the jury should be the fact finder in the 54.

THE COURT:  Okay.  I don't think your - - the waiver of the jury in 54 necessarily causes you to waive a jury in 16.  That is not what I'm saying.

MR. SHULL:  Hum.

THE COURT:  You are prepared to move forward, though, with the district court and myself reviewing the record in 54 to determine whether or not, as a factual matter, that this defense would be appropriate.

MR. SHULL:  That is correct, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Okay,,  And then on 16, if there is a legal question decided either as to the motion to dismiss on constitutional violations that is adverse to you, or as to what potentially you might raise before a jury in a defense in 16, however that is played out, that record would be preserved. You would have the right to go to trial on 16 and have a jury trial on 16.

MR. SHULL:  That's correct, Your Honor.  That's exactly - -

THE COURT:  Okay.

MR. SHULL:  - - our position.

THE COURT:  Okay.  Well, I don't have any disagreement with that at all in terms of the reasoning that you've brought to this.  I don't think you've waived anything in 16 by virtue of what you've done in 54.  And I assume that that's your position as well, Mr. Miller.

MR. MILLER:  Correct.

THE COURT:  Okay.

 MR. MILLER:  His actions in 54 have no effect on 16.  No.

THE COURT:  Okay.  Okay.  I think now we're ready, then, having made somewhat of a convoluted record here, to take whatever evidence we need to take on the question dealing with Mr. DeWitt's religion.  And so, I turn, first, to you, Mr. Shull.  Any evidence that you want to present?

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, we would ask that the Court accept and take judicial notice of the affidavits that have been filed by Mr. DeWitt in both the 16 and the 54 cases as a summary of his religious beliefs.  We also would propose to call Mr. DeWitt briefly at this time.

THE COURT:  Okay.  Now, let me make sure that - - do you have copies of those there?

MR. SHULL:  I have the ones with regard to 54, Your honor.  I don't believe I have 16 in front of me.

THE COURT:  How many are - - how many affidavits are we talking about?

MR. SHULL:  They are just a separate affidavit for each case, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Okay.  I've got the one in 54, which was filed as an attachment to the defendant's suggestions in support of defendant's motion to dismiss, filed on September 27, 1994.  Mr. Miller, is there any objection to my judicially noticing that affidavit?

MR. MILLER:  Yes.  Judicially noticing it, yes.

THE COURT:  Okay.  What's the problem?

MR. MILLER:  Because it's not something that's capable of being judicially noticed.  Other than its filing, which can be judicially noticed.  But the contents there, yes, I would.

MR. DE WITT:  That's not what he was mentioning.

THE COURT:  Well, Mr. DeWitt, let's let the lawyers deal with this.

MR. MILLER:  We can judicially notice commonly held facts or commonly known facts, things of that nature.  This goes to the heart of what we're doing.  So, in that sense, I don't know that we can judicially notice it.

THE COURT:  Okay.

MR. SHULL:  Perhaps, Your Honor, it would be better if I ask that the Court - - that we tender that as a proffer - - an offer of proof and that the Court accept that as what Mr. DeWitt's would be if called to the witness stand.

MR. MILLER:  I object - -

THE COURT:  We're go - -

MR. MILLER:  I object - -

THE COURT:  We're going to - -

MR. MILLER:  - - to that.

THE COURT:  Pardon.

MR. MILLER:  I would object to that.

THE COURT:  Okay.  What's your basis of your objection to that?

MR. MILLER:  It's hearsay.

THE COURT:  Well, I understand.  But this is a pretrial hearing, too.

MR. MILLER:  Correct.  But what we have here is this person has to establish that what it is is a religion.  And I think the government and I think the Court should be able to question him concerning that.

THE COURT:  I assume, though, that Mr. DeWitt's going to be on the stand here.  Correct?

MR. SHULL:  That is correct, Your Honor.  Mr. Miller's argument raises a second question, however.  It was my understanding from the order that was presented by the Court that the sole issue that the Court is going to review today is whether the statute substantially burdens the defendant's exercise of religion.  Now, there is a twofold - - or, threefold issue under the statute.

THE COURT:  I'm going to take - - I have read the statute, guys.  I'm taking all the evidence on all the issues this morning.  And I'm not carving at - - we're not doing this in piecemeal.  We're going to take all the evidence this morning.  So, if your client is going to be on the stand, I will -- and subject to cross-examination about these affidavits, I will accept those affidavits as part of his testimony.

MR. MILLER:  I will withdraw my objection if he's going to testify.

THE COURT:  Okay.  Is that the - -

MR. SHULL:  Oh, good.

THE COURT:  - - approach you're going to take?

MR. SHULL:  Yes, sir.

THE COURT: Okay. Then, let's make sure that we're clear, then. Well, let's first, then, get Mr. DeWitt on the stand, and we'll move on from there.

MR. SHULL:  All right.  Your Honor, I need to clarify a question.  I understand the Court has read the statute and is familiar with it.  I'm a little concerned about what the Court is going to do as far as considering all of the issues surrounding this.  With all due respect to the Court, it's kind of broad brush.  And I need to know to make sure that I had prepared in accordance with what I thought the order said and not what the Court - -

THE COURT:  Well, what are you reading from?

MR. SHULL:  - - feels its going to cover.  The order that I received, Your Honor, was the - - it shall be on the limited question of whether the statute with which the defendant has been charged substantially burdens the defendant's exercise of religion.  My initial interpretation of that was that he Court had assumed, based on the affidavits, that the defendant had a sincere, personal belief, and the sole question was whether the government's activities, in fact, burdened that belief.  I guess I now understand the Court's saying that we must first establish what his personal religious belief is, and then whether or not the government's actions regulate that.  Is that correct?

THE COURT:  Yeah.  I'm going to take evidence on the whole question this morning.  And that includes whether or not
- - I want to know what his religion is.  I want to know what the - - whether or not I need to make a decision.  I have not agreed or stipulated that he has a sincere religious belief. I've not made that judgment.  I need to know whether or not the question of his exercise of his religious belief, if it is a religion and he does have a sincere belief, is substantially burdened by the enforcement of the statute.
       And then we move on to the other questions.  What is - in that - - you know, Mr. Miller's.  Is this the least restrictive way to handle the situation.  And furthermore, if there's a compelling interest.  So, I'm going to take the whole load.

MR. SHULL:  Okay.

THE COURT:  And if that's a problem, then you need to let me know.

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, I believe we're prepared to go forward on the first two questions:  what is Mr. DeWitt's belief, and, in fact, whether or not his religion is burdened by the government's regulation?  I has not prepared to go forward today, obviously, because I've not had any discovery from Mr. Miller on this question of whether or not they're alternative means of control and so forth.

THE COURT: Well, let's go ahead and see how far we get. We've got the affidavit identified in the 54 case. Is there a different affidavit in the 16 case?

MR. SHULL:  I believe there is a slightly different version of that, Your Honor.  I believe, in fact, it's a much shorter one.  And then the one in the 16 case is an expanded version.

(Off record talking)

THE COURT:  I can't find it here. (Off record talking)

MR. MILLER:  The government never got one in 16, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  I can't seem to find one either.

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, I believe that was the motion to dismiss that we filed before the Court at the Court's direction.  And that was the one that we preserved and raised the question that we believed that it was a factual issue.

THE COURT:  I've got defendant's motion to dismiss.

MR. SHULL: And are there suggestions in support of that?

THE COURT:  Do you have it there?  I've got suggestions in support of defendant's motion to dismiss filed on September 19, 19 - -
MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, then - -

THE COURT:  - - 94.

MR. SHULL:  - - I may have misspoke.  There may not have been an affidavit attached to that, because I'd understood that the Court was going to review that and determine whether some type of an evidentiary hearing was necessary.  So, I apologize to the Court.  The only affidavit, therefore, would be in 54.

THE COURT:  Okay.  We've only got one affidavit, then?

MR. SHULL:  That's correct.

THE COURT:  All right.  Okay.  Are we ready to proceed?

MR. SHULL:  We are, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Good.  Thank you.

MR. SHULL:  Mr. DeWitt, would you take the witness stand, please?

THE COURT:  Mr. DeWitt, raise your right hand, please.

MR. DALE T. DE WITT, PLAINTIFF'S WITNESS, SWORN

THE COURT:  If you'd take the stand, please.

MR. DE WITT:  I might point out that I'm sorry for interrupting as I did.

THE COURT:  That's all right.  Go ahead.

DIRECT EXAMINATION BY MR. SHULL:  

Q.  Mr. DeWitt, would you state your name, please?
A.  Dale Thomas DeWitt.
Q.  You are the defendant in this action that's been brought against you by the United States.  Is that correct?
A.  Yes.
Q.  And there are two cases pending against you.
A.  Yes.
Q.  And you understand that the offenses with which you are charged deal with the possession, manufacture and related offenses involving various controlled substances.
A.  Yes.  Combined.
Q.  What is your educational level, Mr. DeWitt?
A.  High school, 3.0; bachelor's in science, 2.8.
Q.  What was your major in college in your bachelor's degree?
A.  Chemistry.  Didn't I mention?
Q.  And then have you done some post-graduate work in the field of chemistry?
A.  Just three graduate classes.
Q.  Okay.  Where did you take those graduate classes?
A.  Let's see.  Two at University of Missouri, Kansas City, and one at KU.
Q.  Okay.  Now, you understand that we have raised a defense in connection with both of the criminal cases pending against you, that you have a very strong personal religious belief, if you will, concerning the use of hallucinogenic and psychedelic drugs.  Is that correct?
A.  Yes.  They've been - -
Q.  Are you a member of an organized religion?
A.  No.  I've disdained organized religion, since I ever got into the Mormon church.
Q.  Have you, in fact, been a member of other churches at some point in your earlier life?
A.  I've sauntered through various religious organizations. But, technically, in terms of the law, I'm only a deacon in the Mormon church.
Q.  Okay.  What other religions or churches have you sauntered through?
A.  There was the Chuck Smith Revivalistic Christian Organization in Costa Mesa, California, which was before they paved their parking lot.  I went in for a six-month stint, basically, conjoining with their religious practice - -

THE COURT:  You're going to have to speak up louder -
MR. DE WITT:  - - which - -
THE COURT:  - - so we can all hear you.  You don't need to worry about speaking into those things.
MR. DE WITT:  Oh, okay.  Just - -
THE COURT:  They'll pick you up.  Just - -
MR. DE WITT:  - - speak up loud for you.  Okay.
THE COURT:  Um hum.

A.  And then there's various other - - well, basically, in terms of organized religion, there was Eckenkahr (phonetic), the ancient science of soul travel, which I put in a bunch of time in terms of my musical talents and my desires in terms of the specialized techniques involved there.  And then there's the various types of literary discoveries I've made in terms of the cult literature that's out there. And if you just go through any metaphysical book shop, you'll pretty much know what I'm talking about.
Q.  And I think you also said at one point, you had attended the Mormon church.
A.  Yeah.  I was basically raised in it.  My parents were, essentially, of that faith.
Q.  Okay.  What was the reason that you attended these churches or sought out their beliefs?
A.  To further my capacity to - - to be what I am and to actually do it.  And you notice that silence right there.  Most people would accept that as silence.  But if you're going to do something, you want to be able to do it effectively.  And when you need to be able to do it, you need to effectively do it. And so those were the reasons I exercised within the disciplines that were available on this planet in terms of the organized human efforts involving religion or the - -
Q.  And when you say, the disciplines, are you referring to more - 
A. I'm referring to the organized ones that I mentioned previously.
Q.  All right.  Why is it important to know who you are?
A.  Well, it's a paradox, because you never really actually do not know who you are.  It's just a matter of the ability in which you can express it, essentially.  I mean, if - - well, let's stick to your question.
Q.  Were you able to find the answers to your questions based on the traditional disciplines that you have visited and explored and read about?
A.  In terms of the one facet that I was primarily interested in, being in an actual sense, like I'm sitting here at this table understanding what's happening two miles away in terms of the concept of out-of-body travel, the answer is no.  I haven't had any success with those other disciplines.
Q.  Why is outer body travel or this out-of-body experience important to you?
A.  Well, to answer the question with the least amount of sophistication, it's just a curiosity.
Q.  As a result of this curiosity, do you feel that it will lead to some type of spiritual or internal personal benefit?
A.  It's obvious to me that that is the correct assumption.
Q.  All right.  Now, many people would feel that a curiosity is simply some type of sense of inquiry.  Does the term curiosity have a stronger or deeper meaning for you?
A.  As I said when we first met today, curiosity I liken more in terms of the child being amazed at the fact that he has eyes and can see and can perceive the world around him.  That, to me, is the essence in which describe and mean the word, curiosity.
Q.  Would it be a fair statement to say that curiosity is - -
A.  It's not - -
Q.  - - in your mind more an active pursuant of truth or knowledge - -
A.  Right.  It's not just - -
Q.  - - as opposed - -
A.  - - like pulling up a girl's dress and, you know, that type of curiosity.  No.  It's more an actual comprehensive undertaking of satisfying every aspect within the scope of your, well, curiosity and questioning going together, so to speak, the answering of that question.
Q.  Do you know or do you have an opinion as to why the organized disciplines were not able to satisfy this pursuant of knowledge and truth?
A.  Well, no, not really.  Because from what I know of other people, they've had no problem with these types of demand satisfactions.  They have pursued the rigors of those particular disciplines and have, essentially, by the way they've expressed to me, attained some success.  That is, people that I associated with in Eckenkahr, for instance, the tenants of that  religion.  Basically - - well, it wasn't a religion.  It was just expressed as a religion due to the IRS function.  The abilities just were not evident in the way that I perceived and worked my particular body.  I've always been interested in trying to attain that state.  So that's basically where I've always been in terms of the bottom line, so to speak.
Q.  Well, after trying to receive the disciplines that we've talked about - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - after your reading and experimentation with these various groups, did you feel like you had not had your personal and spiritual needs met?
A.  Let's just say that in terms of analysis alone of the potentiality of these disciplines versus psychedelic consumption, the answers were never forthcoming.  They were alluded to, but very insubstantial in quenching the actual curiosity as to how these compounds function, whether they were effective, whether they had any particular problems with them associated through their alleged use for this particular attainment of an out-of-body consciousness.
Q.  Would it be a fair statement to say that you had found the organized religions and churches and disciplines as, perhaps, superficial in their approach - -
A.  No.
Q.  - - at meeting your needs?
A.  No.  I've always had the general rounded out idea towards my fellow human beings that if it works for you, then I'm all supportive, even though I may not technically like it.  It's as simple stating as just, you know, well, if you like that color clothing, wear it.  It may not turn me on, but your clothing is fine for me.
Q.  So while it may have met other individuals' needs, they were not able to meet yours.
A.  That is the correct assumption there.
Q.  After you were unable to meet these spiritual needs or deeper needs from these other religions, what did you do?
A.  Well, this is a concurrent sort of thing.  I never strictly stopped using psychedelic drugs.  I was initially attracted to them and concurrently exploring these other disciplines.  When I went through the disciplines, I would basically lower my interest level.
And I use the word, interest level as - - in lieu of consumption level, because I don't feel that my consumption had any particular dictum in that there was no particular regularity or desire just to, you know, throw the body into a chemical exposure.  It was more just if the time was appropriate.  So the actual use wasn't superseded by any rational scheduling, so to speak.
Q.  What is it that you hope to achieve through the use of psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs?
A.  Well, my first essential curiosity was the exploration of the psychic travel, as it's been alluded to in the various disciplines as out-of-body consciousness.  That's been my main thrust in terms of exploring that state and whether it's a realistic fact is debatable within the minds of all the people sitting here today.  But for me, it's a known consequence. Whether it will last to me to the grave is a debatable issue in all the bodies in this courtroom, including me, of course.
Q.  How does the use of psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs affect your personal spiritual beliefs?
A.  The best way to answer that would be to kind of get a gist of how my mother would probably look and respond.  And that is, under the influence.  I showed her what it was like once.  And giving an idea that when you're under the influence, you can make a lot of assumptions as to what the person is - - is in terms of an effective person, whether he's being disadvantaged, so to speak by the influence of said drug.
The actual end result is what I'd be looking at.  The short term result of the duration and the analysis by an objective observer would be another result that you'd look at.  But the net result, which I'm alluding to at this point, from my discursion (sic) there, would be the mix between non-drug and drug control over this particular object of desire, the out-of-body state, so to speak.  So that the drug is not an end result.  That is, I'm going to consume the drug thinking, and I use the word, thinking, that it's going to be the only particular way of making sure that I'm able to attain that state.  But it's just at this point, and point as in not this second, but a broad period of time, a way of attaining that state and then consequently, the understanding of its relation to the human body.  And that as just a side product of the quest itself.  So that it would become known for the rest of humanity that this was the way they acted, these are the net effects, aside from the academic biochemical factions that have been doing their research for the time of this century.
Q.  You've referred, on several occasions, to this state or that state.  What do you mean by that?
A.  State?
Q.  Yes.
A.  Well, it's - - the only way of ascertaining that to oneself, not myself describing it to you, is just look outside your eyeballs and see what you're seeing and observe and then say that that is a state in which you deal with and that's a state of consciousness.
Q.  Does a state of consciousness include an out-of-body experience in many cases?
A.  Oh, you mean when you take - -
Q.  Yes.
A.  - - a psychedelic drug?  Is that what you're - -
Q.  Yes.
A.  I would say not.  I would say it's dependent and based upon the inclination of the person.  Conversely, the desire of LSD, when he first took that particular drug accidentally, the way he described it was such that it forcibly ejected him from his perceptual focus at the flesh level.
Q.  What is that you are able to achieve through the use of psychedelic drugs that you're not able to achieve without them?
A.  Well, not digressing to my affidavit where I explain that the nature of the rational, cognizant mind being up and operating while the dream is occurring, so to speak, since I use the word dreaming as the analogy for the concept of hallucination. And everyone knows that in dreaming, you have some degree of fixation upon something that isn't there, so to speak.  But what it is I'm able to accomplish - -
Q.  Yes.
A.  - - in the state versus not being in that state.
Q.  Or, why is it important to achieve that state?
A.  Well, the importance, as I alluded to originally, is the very simplified form, satisfying that curiosity in the broadest and the most inclusive use of that term, curiosity.  But to be specific about it, which you all are interested most likely in, would be to actually get an ability to comprehend the life that I have, comprehend it, from that distant, not distant, but larger perspective.
But, essentially, my life has been based upon the nature of perception, and psychedelics modify that nature of perception in the most simplistic, crude form that I can say right now. Modification of perception.
Q. Now, throughout various motions and pleadings and so forth, we have indicated that this is a religious belief of yours. Is that correct?
A.  Right.  I might just add that when the onset of this occurred, I had no need to use the word, religion.  So, I felt compelled to figure out the meaning of this word.  So, I looked it up in the Latin dictionary and found that, essentially, it was based upon two components, the more casual and then the sanctified version.  And I've tended to understand it from both angles.
But, by looking at the Latin definition, you'll get a sense that it doesn't necessarily ground itself upon any organized, systematic group, so to speak.  But, it's rather, essentially, based upon the English words of culturing, sanctity, education, civilization.  All those words pretty much congeal to the essence of the word, religio.
Q.  And it does that also congeal to the role that it plays in your life?
A.  Yeah.  If I use the products inappropriately, then it wouldn't.  It would be basically just an indulgence, which is not, in effect, the behavior that would be ascribed to those particular words derived from the Latin.
Q.  Now, you understand that, quite obviously, your beliefs would not be viewed as orthodox or traditional by many people, do you not?
A.  What do you mean by many people?
Q.  The more common - -
A.  We've done a - -
Q.  - - church attending members of American society.
A.  Well, it would seem that's the truth of the matter.  But -
Q.  And, in fact, some of the more traditional beliefs, I think you indicated earlier, would condemn or forbid the use of your psychedelic drugs in what they believe is a pursuit for– -                                                                                                             
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - their religion.
A.  I've discussed that matter with some chemist friends of mine, and it seems like there might be a different way of looking at that.  That in the industrial revolution, due to the abuse factor, the Christian organizations took a dim light. But that previous, in more of the European places, the Christian organizations did not have any particular set way of looking at the use of these particular - - albeit in a small statistical sampling of - - I mean, not sampling, but statistical use of those compounds in the natural vegetative state as being not blasphemous towards the deital image.
Q.  Does your belief and the use of your psychedelic drugs to achieve the state you've been describing occupy the same role
in your life that a more traditional, orthodox religion would have for a member of its faith?
A.  I would say I give it my hundred percent, whereas most people I've known, when they deal with religion, it's like almost a combination of wetting the appetite of the female in the role of their life so that they can get the due rewards from that arrangement, be it an altruistic relationship or just a sexually motivated relationship.  So, in that respect, the role of religion is debatable in terms of using in this argument as to whether I'm of the same degree of hold - - I think I'm losing my audience here.  The degree to which you put your life devoted to that religion seems to vary with the organized religions, based upon what you're level of involvement with that religion is.  And I only digress to the sexuality point just as a digression.  But the point, essentially, being that organized religions have a lot of different functionalities besides just attainment of a condition of effectually being between you and God in a non-separateness sense.  So that you're being, in essence, is attuned to that force that is defined as God.
Q.  Now, you understand that more orthodox religions believe that they have achieved a feeling of satisfaction or a state in their religion through alternative means such as prayer - -
A.  Right.  Right.
Q.  - - or fasting, that type of thing.  Is that true? A.  Fasting I know really nothing about.  I've only pursued it in terms of health reasons.  Prayer, I've always wondered about the efficacy of the verbalizing one's attunement.  But for some people, it would be similar to a - - an analogy with the mantras, yantras and tantras of the eastern methodologies. But, the - - prayer seems
to work for a lot of people.  Although I've heard of many instances where prayer is mainly just psychic coercion.  But other times, prayer seems to be a bonafide focusing device for that - - well, I pardon the expression, focusing, since it's - -
Q.  Have you been able to - -
A.  - - presumptive.
Q.  - - identify any of the more orthodox means or practices of religions that you're familiar with that would allow you to achieve this state, these experiences - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - that you've been talking about?  For example, would prayer, that you may have tried or experienced - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - have allowed you to reach the state that you reach with your psychedelic drugs?
A.  No, not for me.  Prayer, if one defines it and then uses it, seems to be just that, a quieting of the mind and focusing upon the object of one's wishes.  Whether it be the furtherance of their understandings so that they can effectively deal with their virginity or whether it's just the help that they want from God to intervene in someone else's travail.  But that's all I see as prayer.  But I may be a little bit deficient in terms, because I haven't utilized it that much.
Q.  So, your use of psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs actually goes beyond a means or mechanism of communicating.  It actually is a way of actually examining your inner self?

MR. MILLER:  Judge, I'm going to start objecting - -
MR. DE WITT:  Yeah.
MR. MILLER:  - - to the leading form of the questions. I believe Mr. DeWitt's the one who's supposed to be telling us about the religion and not Mr. Shull.
MR. DE WITT:  Okay.
THE COURT:  Well, I'm going to overrule it.  You'll be allowed to cross-examine.  Go ahead.
MR. DE WITT:  I'll take that to heart.  I'll try to keep - -

Q.  I think your answer was yes.
A.  Yes to what?
Q.  My last - - let me rephrase it.
A.  Okay.
Q.  How important is the use of psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs in these personal, spiritual beliefs of yours?
A.  Very important.  I wouldn't devote 100 percent of my life, giving up a tenuous career in piano composition to pursue
chemistry if it wasn't that important to me.
Q.  And why did you pursue chemistry?
A.  Well, it wasn't to make clandestine profit.  It was to derive the skills so that I could effectively deal with these chemicals without having to deal with the black market.
Q.  Would it be a fair statement to say that, in essence, you have, in fact, devoted your life to the study of chemistry for the creation and synthesis of these various substances that you have been using?
A.  That's very simplistically stating it so as to almost imply that that as the only goal.  Obviously, there are other factors in life, such as a vocation, such as you know, personal relations, the whole gamut of human interaction that goes beyond just to a bedroom experience that you'd have with a psychedelic substance.  So that it was kind of like what you'd do when you know that something means something to you, and you pursue the avenue in which you got there.  It would be like having a fascination with motor boats or airplanes and going to the process of redesigning it or making a new one, or making one that you've never made before just to understand and fully appreciate the existence of that, for lack of a better term, object of devotion.
Q.  Based on your experience and your experiments and your knowledge and your exploration of other more orthodox religions is there any other means that you are aware of that allows you to achieve these states and these experiences other than use of psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs?
A.  The answer has a no.  But everyone else has got to be different than me.  The use of psychedelic drugs does not work for
many people that I know.  They have no interest.  But I still relate with them on a hundred percent giving, taking level.
Q.  Do they work for you?
A.  Do they work?
Q.  Yes.
A.  Yes.  They do work in terms of the stated objectives.
Q.  And the stated objective is to allow you to achieve these various levels of states of consciousness that we've talked about earlier.
A.  I haven't figured out what the limits are in terms of states of consciousness.  I've been told by many people that they only work certain levels.  That once you get past a certain level, they will not work.  But then that would be beyond your death, so to speak.  So that their interest to me is in terms of the
- - well, strike that sentence. 
It just is leading nowhere.
Q. Would you have any means or ways of achieving these various levels and states that we've talked about if, as the government is telling you here today, you can't use psychedelic drugs?  
A.  Excuse me.  I couldn't hear.
Q.  Do you have any other means or mechanisms or ways of achieving - -
A.  Oh.  All right.
Q.  - - these various levels? (Pause)
Q.  Would you like me to restate the question?  Would that help or - -
A.  Well, if I say, no, it doesn't give one the idea that I'm open-minded.  If I say, yes, then it seems like I'm damning myself by saying my interest is not valid.  So that what I want to do is relay exactly the predicament that I'm in in terms of my life being essentially bet it all, go and understand the process.  Hell with everyone else who says be cautious.  I'm not saying non-cautious in terms of a toxicological or neurological sense, but cautious in terms of a social positioning, the use of things that are necessarily - - not nec - -yeah, necessarily looked and disdained upon due to the factors of people feeling their ego needs to always assert a volition ability instead of a coercion as the pharmaceuticals do.
Q.  Let me, perhaps, rephrase my question, then.  And I'm not going to suggest - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - that you're not open-minded.  But - -
A.  Yes.
Q.  - - at this point in your life, are you aware of any other ways of achieving these - -
A.  Right.  I know - -
Q.  - - levels we've talked about?
A.  - - that was the question.  But I just wondered whether the Court was aware that this was my hesitancy.  And so, essentially, I'll have to say that at this point in my undertaking of living, no.  I don't have any other ulterior methods.
Q.  All right.  Now, at the time that the government initially seized the property at your home, there were some very extensive notes concerning your experiments.  Is that correct?
A.  Is this religious belief?
Q.  I'll - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  We'll get into that.
A.  Okay.  Extensive notes on - -
Q.  The results of your various experiments.
A.  Well, they weren't extensive.  They were just sketches that I made at the interim points where I felt I was sufficiently rational to make a stab at describing, in a comprehensive sense, so as to alleviate the floridness and the consumption of finger time which dissolves a lot of the capabilities of experiencing, which cannot be while you're concentrating on something else.
Q.  Why did you make these sketches?
A.  Oh.  You're talking about art?
Q.  Well, your notes.  I'm sorry.
A.  I thought we were talking about notes.
Q.  You used the word, sketches, and I did not know if you were referring - -
A.  No.
Q.  - - to art or - -
A.  No.  well, it could be art.  It could be anything for that matter.  You know, how driving and drinking don't mix.  Now, what was the question regarding the art., or I mean, not the - -
Q.  You had made - -
A.  - - sketches.
Q.  Let's scratch art for the moment.
A.  Right.
Q. You had mentioned that at certain points during your use of the hallucinogenic drugs you would make, and I don't know if it would be better referred to them as notes - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - or - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - something.  What was the - -
A.  I basically stipulate the time, date, dosage, and the intended objective, in terms of the experiments I made in the recent.  And these were the only experiments I made with psychedelics that I had made.  And this is new to the Court.  The things that I said in there were predominantly in terms of emotional states of attunement and communication with other people that you normally don't have when you are in a one-to-one situation.  It's all by myself.  I conducted all these experiments by myself.  I'm familiar enough with the drug as to not get myself into a situation of needing someone else's help, as is classically defined in the medical experiments with psychedelic materials.
Q.  So you were actually recording some of your sensations and feelings and emotions as a result of these - -
A.  In sketch-hand notation, whereas it would mean a lot to me. It wouldn't mean a lot to another person if they read it without knowing.
Q.  Why was it important to you to record these?
A.  Well, I wanted to make sure that I didn't err in the initial assumption that my sister, my oldest sister, would make, in that you don't want to make something more out of a mundane situation.  In other words, you don't want to become using - - you don't want to start using a drug in other to supplant a normally unfavorable situation.  In other words, if your life isn't all rosy-posy, you don't want to take a drug to make it better, because that's an illusion.  I wanted to make sure that I didn't fall into that trap of using this material so as to make my life better where it couldn't be better by my own damn efforts.  The use of the drug was for a specific purpose, and it had nothing to do with the development of my life, which is basically hard work.  And it takes a lot of movement to produce a good life.  So that when I documented the observations, the feelings, the points that I notated basically, it was for that purpose of making sure that I didn't fall into that position of just taking the drug for, you know, well, here's a free evening, let's do it, you know, and blah, blah, blah.
Q.  Would you term your taking of these drugs as systematic?
A.  Well, in this particular case, I took it systematic for a particular reason.  That is, to determine the dosage levels, the cross-tolerance with its parent compound and, what was it, 43 or something.  It was - - no, wait.  It was 1910 it was first synthesized, MDA.  And I only had probably three grams of material, because I botched the reaction and converted the rest to the MDMA.
Q.  In part of our brief, we have indicated or suggested, and you and I have talked that this is probably a superficial analysis, that you're using these drugs to attend some type of a states not unlike nirvana that's found in some of the far east
religions.
A.  I don't know much about nirvana, actually.
Q.  But is a state of consciousness or a special state of your spirit.
A.  Yeah.  It would basically be where the body's infused with the spiritual flow and it's capable of relating to it as it's relating to the accouterments of its normal functioning.  So that, in essence, is increasing, so to speak, the perceptual activity.
Q.  And your use of psychedelic or hallucinogenic drugs allows you to reach these levels.
A.  Yeah.  It does.

MR. SHULL:  I have no other questions.
THE COURT:  Cross-examination.
MR. MILLER:  Thank you, Judge.
THE COURT:  Before we take on that, do you want to have a copy of that affidavit marked as an exhibit and move it into evidence so that Mr. Miller has the ability to cross-examine on that and anything you've covered?
MR. SHULL:  That would be fine, Your Honor. (Off record talking)
MR. SHULL:  Should we just number this as "1", Your Honor?  I don't know - -
THE COURT:  That'd be great.
MR. SHULL:  - - that there's any other outstanding exhibits in the case.
THE COURT:  Just mark it "1".
MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, at this time, I would move to introduce Defendant's Exhibit "1", which was the affidavit that was executed by Mr. DeWitt which was attached to the motion to dismiss that was filed in this matter.  I believe a copy of it
was provided Mr. Miller as part of our pleading.
THE COURT:  Any objection?
MR. MILLER:  No objection, Judge.
THE COURT:  "1" is in evidence.  Mr. Miller.
MR. MILLER:  Yes.

CROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. MILLER:

Q.  Mr. DeWitt, when did you start using drugs?
A.  Which drug?
Q.  Any drug, any type of drug.
A.  Oh.
Q.  Your first experimentation with any sort of drug. A.  Okay.  After junior high.  Yeah.
Q.  What sort of drugs did you start using?
A.  I can't remember whether it was alcohol or marijuana.  And I really can't remember which one was which in terms - -
Q.  How old are - -
A.  - - of time.
Q.  - - you, sir?
A.  Forty.
Q.  All right.  So this would've been about what time frame we're talking about.
A.  Age of mine?
Q.  No, no.
A.  Or the year.
Q.  I'm talking about year.
A.  Oh.  1969 to '70.
Q.  And do you begin using other kinds of drugs?
A.  Beyond alcohol and marijuana? Yes.  I think, after that, I went directly to LSD.
Q.  And about how old were you when you started using LSD?
A.  I think it was 16, 17.  Seventeen.
Q.  And how often do you use LSD?
A.  How often did I? Well, considering it was a black market, the dosages were extremely low.  If you consider in terms of worthwhile experience?
Q.  No.  I asked you how many times you used it, sir.
A.  Okay.  Well, that's why I mentioned it.  Because if there's nothing there.  But the use, probably, around 50 or something like that.
Q.  Fifty times.
A.  Max, yeah.
Q.  And how long - - over what - -
A.  Oh.
Q.  - - span of time? .  We're talking up to two years ago.  Right.
Q.  What other drugs up until two years ago did you use?
A.  As I mentioned in the, say, pre-detention hearing interview, I'd used cocaine about six times in a social setting.  
That was in a generally unfruitful result.
Q.  Unfruitful in what sense?
A.  Unfruitful in the sense that I wasn't compelled to use it anymore.  I've always - - this is too much words, but I've always felt rather disciplined, so I never felt compelled to use a drug even it had - -
Q.  So your use of cocaine was not religious in nature.
A.  No.  No.  It was just something that people were doing in a social setting, similar as to alcohol, that sort of thing.
Q.  When did you start using methamphetamine?
A.  I used it once in an oral dose that a fellow high school student, drummer, actually, gave me while I was working at Voit Rubber in Costa Mesa, California - - Santa Ana, excuse me.  And the dose was oral and it was just that one time.  And then I started using a nasal variety of absorption in the few months preceding that first arrest.  And that was in basic frequency of say, like two, three times a week for those two or three months to be accurate.
Q.  Did you make your own methamphetamine?
A.  Did I?
Q.  Yes.
A.  No.  I was never successful.  I got to the phenyl-2-propanone as you've confiscated and analyzed.  And that's as far as I'd gotten to.  I'd burned the reaction twice previous. And I could not reductively ammonate (phonetic) it, so I threw away the product into my disposal containers and that was it.
Q.  For whom were you making the P2P?
A.  What?
Q.  For whom were you making the P2P?
A.  For who?
Q.  Yes.
A.  I presume myself.  I wasn't making it for anyone else.
Q.  Were you making it for an individual named John Ryan?
A.  In response, for your benefit, the question - -
Q.  No, no.  I'm just asking - -
A.  - - and the answer - -
Q.  - - for a response - -
A.  - - yeah.
Q.  - - yes.
A.  Since it's not related to religious arguments, no, I wasn't making it for him.  No.
Q.  Had he supplied you with the chemicals to make that P2P?
A.  No.  I asked him for some pyridine, and I asked him for some - - well, actually, I kind of asked him, yeah, for the acetic anhydride.  But all the rest of the ingredients were my own.  I had procured the phenylacetic acid from a laboratory in a five - - five, um, I can't remember.  But it was the fifth floor of the UMKC building where they were cleaning out chemicals and slating them for EPA disposal.  And I was doing that job, so I took some of the stuff slated for disposal.
Q.  Did you allow Mr. Ryan to store chemicals on your premises that were to be used in the manufacture of P2P or metham-
phetamine.
A.  Split that sentence in half, and you've got an accurate statement.
Q.  Well, why don't you split it in half and give me the answer.
A.  Okay.  Yes.  I did allow him to store the chemicals temporarily there.
Q.  So that was not a religious experience.  You were simply allowing somebody else to use your premises to store chemicals to be used in the manufacture of P2P.
A.  No.  You're construing sentences beyond the truth here.  I did allow him to store the chemicals there temporarily.  And the reason for that - - well, first, back to your original statement.  The questioning of whether it's a religious activity.  I don't think it's really a religious activity to instigate a contact with the monetary system, would you?
Q.  I guess my question is, you were allowing your premises to used store chemicals that were going to be used in the manufacture of P2P.  Correct?
A.  Hum.  I'm trying to answer this correctly.  I'm not trying to evade your answer (sic).  I had no knowledge as to what Ryan's chemicals were to be used for.
Q.  Why did you allow them to be stored there, then?
A.  Well, this is what I was going to say.  He had basically proposed the idea of being a chemist for his company, JTR Research, originally, when I met him 29 days before I terminated the relation, at Linda Hall Library of Science and Technology.  And it was basically the way he let on and my gullibility that gave me the predicament that I've got right now.  But I can't say that it's negative in the sense that at least I have a lot of these factors out in the open instead of hidden, which I've always felt a little bit strange hiding from other people.  But given the current laws, I've always felt the need to lay low in terms of exposure of other people and exposure of myself.
Q.  What sort of chemicals do you keep at your house?
A.  In terms of that first laboratory?
Q.  Yes.  This would've been around that time frame.
A.  Well, okay.  In this document that I'm thinking of handing to the Court, in footnotes, I say that I would basically
be amenable to explaining what compounds I was desiring to synthesize, which would give you a basic genealogy of the actual chemicals.
Q.  I want to know what chemicals you stored at your place, Mr. DeWitt.
A.  Right.  And this is what I just said.  From the chemicals, if I were to explain all the chemicals there, I'd be taking for now and for infinity - -
Q.  You can name them.
A.  - - explaining.
Q.  Was it acetic anhydride one of them?
A.  Yeah.  I had about - -
Q.  All right.  All right.
A.  - - four bottles of acetic anhydride.  Yes.
Q.  Used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.  Correct? A.  That's one of the uses, sure.  Yeah.
Q.  What other chemicals did you have at your house?
A.  You really want a list of ones relevant.
Q.  That Mr. Ryan stored - -
A.  Oh.
Q.  - - at your house.
A.  That he had.  Oh, okay.  I had his order.
Q.  What was that?
A.  That was the benzyl cyanide.
Q.  Okay.
A.  Okay.  The phenylacetonitrile, same term.  And then you have the toluene.  And then these are in the largest containers Lancaster would send.  Then you have the mercuric chloride in the 50 gram container.  And then you have the pyridine and the acetic anhydride.
Q.  Right.  All items used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.  Correct?
A.  No.  The benzyl cyanide wasn't used.
Q.  Could be used.
A.  Well, it could be used, but you'd need more than that. You'd need sulfuric acid.
Q.  Did you have sulfuric acid at your house?
A.  I think every laboratory does.
Q.  I'm not asking about every laboratory, Mr. DeWitt.  At your house, did you have it?
A.  I always have sulfuric.  This is what - -
Q.  All right.
A.  - - produced this scar (indicating).
Q.  So Mr. Ryan was storing chemicals at your house that were used in the manufacture of methamphetamine.  You are a chemist. Correct?
A.  I try to be a chemist.
Q.  Okay.  And he was storing chemicals that are used in the manufacture of methamphetamine at your house.  Correct?
A.  It would appear that way.  Correct.
Q.  Now, methamphetamine is not psychedelic drug, is it, Mr. DeWitt?
A.  I would say that it was a mild material in terms of my physiology.
Q.  Mr. DeWitt, it's a stimulant.  Is that correct?
A.  That is technically what you'd find in most pharmaceutical descriptions.
Q.  You do not hallucinate.  
A.  Well, that's what I was just implying by what I originally said that you felt was countering your stab there. I found it
did produce a - - and this was from my 1970 oral dose, a perceptual state that seemed on the verge of hallucination.
Q.  But you don't hallucinate.  Correct?
A.  That is incorrect.
Q.  You hallucinate using methamphetamine.
A.  Well, when you said I do hallucinate versus I don't hallucinate, you miss the in-between state.
Q.  I just want to know whether you hallucinate.  I'm not interested in the in-between state.
A.  Okay.  I did hallucinate.
Q.  Could you describe those hallucinations?
A.  No, I can't.
Q.  How did you know that you hallucinated?
A.  Well, this is something you know.  It's not something that you care to describe, because its description would entail an
encumbering use of the language, whereas to make ineffective the description to the actuality.
Q.  Did you hallucinate?
A.  Yes.  I told you that.
Q.  Describe the hallucinations.
A.  Okay.  I'll satisfy your curiosity.
Q.  I'm not curious, sir.  I just want an answer to my question, please.
A.  Well, the question needs an answer.  I'm reliving the moment in time back in 1970.  So give me a little bit of time, unless, of course, you're pressed for time and would like a - - okay.  Give me a little moment to pause.

THE COURT:  Let me - -
MR. DE WITT:  Yeah.
THE COURT:  - - tell you this.  I've got a 10:30 - -
MR. DE WITT:  All right.
THE COURT:  - - meeting I need to take up.  I'll give you an opportunity to revisit it.
MR. DE WITT:  Okay.
THE COURT:  And we'll reconvene here in about ten minutes.  Okay?
MR. DE WITT:  Okay.

(Recess at 10:36 a.m., until 10:56 a.m.) (Call to Order of the Court)

THE COURT:  Okay.  We're back with Mr. DeWitt.  If you'd come back up here, Mr. DeWitt, and take the stand, and I'd remind you that you're still under oath.  We'll continue with the cross-examination.

BY MR. MILLER:

Q.    Okay.  I think when we last - - the answer to my last question was is you indicated that you used methamphetamine when you were 17 years of age.  Correct?
A.  Yeah.  I was working at Voit Rubber, MacArthur Boulevard,  Santa Ana, California.  Took it - -
Q.  And you - -
A.  Yes.
Q.  - - indicated at that time that you hallucinated from - -
A.  Yeah.
Q.  - - the use of it.
A.  To explicate the visual phenomenas or the perceptual phenomenas, I'm not really quite sure show you delineate it. But it seemed like being a cast in the mold of attuning to the chemical industry, in general.  I was painting tanks at the time, chemical tanks.  So, it was an attunement to the whole mystery, the essence of the chemical industry.
Q.  While taking methamphetamine, you became some sort of - -
A.  Well, it was an inkling.  It wasn't exactly a full blown hallucination.  But it was definitely a perceptual state that I found fascinating and very interesting.
Q.  And you indicated that you began using methamphetamine, again, approximately two years before the search warrant in May of 1993?
A.  No.  This is two months.
Q.  Two months.
A.  Yes.
Q.  What caused you to begin to use methamphetamine?
A.  I was introduced to it by, gee, I guess by a person by the name of Richard Butler.
Q.  You began using methamphetamine.  Correct?
A.  Yeah.  Um hum.
Q.  And how often did you begin using it?
A.  As I said previously, two to three times a week for the duration of that month.
Q.  And how did it affect you?
A.  Well, since I was involved emotionally with his wife, I was involved with the emotions in terms of the experiential side of the perpetual modification ensuant (sic) with the drug's use.
Q.  How did it affect you?
A.  My feelings towards other people were magnified.  Feelings
Q.  You did not hallucinate.  Correct?
A.  Well, that's not really a correct assumption there.  I did perceive real, tangible events that were in process.
Q.  It changed your perception, correct, much the way excessive use of alcohol changes one's perception? Correct?
A.  Incorrect.
Q.  You saw things differently?
A.  We are talking about my body, aren't we?
Q.  Yes.  We're talking - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - your body.
A.  Okay.  So I must speak from my own experience.  Consequently, alcohol does nothing for changing my perspective.
Q.  Well, let's forget alcohol.  You began to perceive things differently because you were taking a drug.  Correct?
A.  Obviously not to answer your question, because your question does not address the issue.
Q.  All right.  So, it wasn't the drugs that were making you perceive things differently.
A.  It was this particular drug.  It wasn't any drug.  It was this particular drug.
Q.  All right.  Did the methamphetamine cause you to perceive things differently?
A.  Yes.  In a positive sense, it did.
Q.  And that's why you take drugs.  You take drugs so you can perceive things differently.
A.  Are we talking about methamphetamine or - -
Q.  Methamphetamine.
A.  - - are we talking about drugs in general?
Q.  Methamphetamine.
A.  Okay.  Then, don't use the plural.  Yes.
Q.  All right.  You take MDMA to see things differently.  Correct?
A.  Well, I wouldn't use the word, see, because there's more
perceptuality (sic) than - -
Q.  To perceive things differently.
A.  - - than vision.
Q.  To perceive things differently.  Correct?
A.  To perceive the elements within my psyche.
Q.  All right.  It is a wholly self-indulgent.
A.  Wholly.  You mean whole as in - -
Q.  As in wholly self-indulgent.  Yes.
A.  Circumference.  Pi - -
Q.  Yes.  You're taking these drugs - -
A.  - - diameter squared.
Q.  - - so you can have a different perception of things.  Correct?
A.  No.  I wouldn't consider it a self-indulgence.  I would consider it a self-administration.
Q.  All right.  Does this make you - - does this in any way effect your relationship with your fellow man?
A.  Yes.  If I used it to an abusive sense, it would tend to diminish my relational capacity with other humans.
Q.  And if you don't use in it an abusive sense?
A.  If I didn't use it all versus using it in a controlled, productive sense.
Q.  Uh hum.
A.  Based upon my need at the particular time in which I'm alleging that I need to use it, I would say that it would have a potentiality for increasing my ability to ferret and understand other humans' intentions and desires with my present existence.
Q.  And how is that, sir?
A.  Well, basically by knowing the facets of their personality to a greater degree than which I would had I not gone through the process of perceiving the elements within my psyche which are dominant and existent within other people.
Q.  Does your use of psychedelic drugs cause you to do more good acts for people?
A.  Well, it did inclinate (sic) my desire to start piano.  It didn't inclinate (sic) my desire to start the flute.  My desire for piano composition.  My desire for continuing work with my father's field was - - of building waterfalls, was concurrent with the open state of consciousness that I obtained from psychedelics.  Yes.  So, I have - -
Q.  Do you consider methamphetamine a psychedelic?
A.  As I alluded to perfectly, there is a stimulatory description to the CNS from the pharmaceutical industry, but that in my particular unique case, I found a psychedelic quality to it. To substantiate it in terms of physical parameters, such as you're trying to grasp at, would be probably not availing in this situation current.  So, I don't know exactly if you can elucidate further to substantiate your position.  But, go ahead.
Q.  You do not hallucinate in the same way you would in the use of LSD or MDA.  Correct?
A.  No, I would say - - well, to answer your question.
Q.  Yeah, please.  Please just try to answer my questions.
A.  All right.
Q.  That would be very helpful, shorten this immensely.
A.  LSD works differently from MDMA.  MDMA works different from methamphetamine.
Q.  It's your position that you should be able to use any drug you want to in order reach this changed state of perception. Correct?
A.  No, huh uh.  No.  You've got it backasswards there.  Any drug that will do the job, yes, of producing that state.
Q.  Now, you would masturbate during these times, too, am I correct, of your journal is - -
A.  I masturbate - -
Q.  Is that a fair statement?
A.  I masturbate on a regular basis due to the fact that I have been a celibate for 20 years.
Q.  All right.  Now, that's not an out-of-body experience you're trying to - -
A.  No, no.
Q.  - - obtain there.  Correct?
A.  It's like your fingers.  You try to keep - -
Q.  What you're attempting to - -
A.  - - them exercised.
Q.  What you're attempting to attain there, sir, is simply a
heightened sense of sexual - -
A.  Wait, wait.  What is your point here.  I didn't understand.
Q.  Excuse me.  I ask the questions.  You give the answers,  okay, Mr. DeWitt.
A.  Yeah.  Right.
Q.  We'll get a lot farther if we do it that way.
A.  Okay.
Q.  My point here, sir, is that what you're doing there is simply sexual stimulation.  Correct?
A.  What I'm doing where?
Q.  When you masturbate using these drugs.
A.  Oh, oh.  I thought you were saying masturbate.  Okay.
Q.  I did say masturbate.
A.  No.  But you said using drugs as well.  That one time where you found it in my research notes where I'd masturbated during the consumption of that particular drug, my intent was to decipher.  And I basically came from probably the same area that you were indoctrinated into.  That is, the alleged sexual stimulatory properties of the drug.  The point that I found was that it didn't increase any degree of sexual response.
Q.  But your point in doing it, sir, was not self - - it was nothing other than pure physical self-fulfillment.  Correct?
A.  This particular point?
Q.  Yeah.
A.  It was to understand, such as a scientist would understand the nature of a particular function.
Q.  Let me put it in more blatant terms.
A.  Okay.  
Q.  You were simply just seeing what effect it would have on an orgasm.  Is that correct? That's pure and simple why you were
doing it.  Correct?
A.  Right.
Q.  All right.
A.  Right.  Right.
Q.  So - -
A.  Of course.
Q.  - - it was self-stimulation in its basest sense.  Correct?
A.  Well, not in a punitive sense.  But in - -
Q.  I'm not making a judgment.  But that's why you were doing it.  Correct?
A.  I was doing it to understand whether it had any effect - -
Q.  Right.
A.  - - upon the normal motor functions.  Motor functions. We're not talking about pleasure derived here.  We're just talking about a motor function, the ejaculatory impulse of the male specie.
Q.  All right.  Now, you indicated that there were on three grams of MDMA at your house in February.  I'm not sure of the exact amount.  But there were, initially, somewhat like six grams in the initial distillation of the amine, which is not salted.  And that eventually dwindled down, after the blotches I made in the distillation, to approximately two to three usable grams in terms of the weighing  process.
Q.  Why would you need 400 grams of MDMA? A.  Why?
Q.  Yes.
A.  I hadn't even thought of that question.  I had just pursued the reactions in a scientific method.
Q.  A personal dosage unit is approximately 100 - -
A.  We've already - -
Q.  - - milliliters.
A.  - - been exposed to those facts.  Yes.
Q.  Correct?
A.  Yes.
Q.  So that means there are ten dosage units in each gram. Correct?
A.  Right.  I initially started out with 40 grams.
Q.  So you had 4,000 dosage units at your house in February of 1994.
A.  All in one place?
Q.  Throughout your house.
A.  Um hum.  In separate - -
Q.  Is that correct?
A.  - - in separate reactions.
Q.  All right.
A.  Right.
Q.  That would be a 12-year supply of MDMA.  Correct? 
A.  On whose schedule?
Q.  Using - - I'll just say using it once a day?
A.  Once a day?
Q.  Yeah.
A.  You cannot use it once a day for the rest of duration.
Q.  You were using it once a day.  Correct?
A.  I used the material 26 times, 27, 28.  I can't remember - -
Q.  Um hum.
A.  - - whether it includes MDMA, MDA as well.  I used it to determine cross-tolerance and tolerance.  Tolerance is a factor within psychedelics and the - -
Q.  So, you were simply seeing how - -
A.  - - use - -
Q.  - - much - - wait a second.
MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, I'm going to object.  Could the witness finish his answer, please?
THE COURT:  Let him finish, Mr. Miller.
MR. DE WITT:  Okay.
MR. SHULL:  I'm sorry.
MR. DE WITT:  I will be quick.
A.  The finishing - - the tolerance, the use of it over a period of consecutive days diminishes its effect, so that the same dosage would not - - and then, obviously, if you prescribed yourself the amount to effectuate the same result, you’d consume that whole amount, if you didn't die from the toxicology, in probably one year instead of 12.
Q.  Let me ask you this, sir.  How were you supporting yourself in May of 1993?
A.  A personal agreement with my mother.
Q.  And that agreement was.
A.  She would give me money.
Q.  How much?
A.  It varied, based upon my needs.
Q.  All right.  Give me an idea for the year prior - -
A.  Matter.  Oh.  Well - -
Q.  - - to May of 1993, how money did your mother give you?
A.  When we started out, something like between five and $800 a month.  And then when we got down to there not being a heavy load of bills and burdens to do while I was educating, the amount would go down to 400 to 200, something like that.
Q.  Approximately $100,000 worth of glassware discovered in your house in May of 1993 - -
A.  Um hum.
2.  - - how were you able to acquire that glassware?
A.  From the university.
Q.  How?
A.  And from Richard Butler.
Q.  Could you explain? What do you mean? How did you obtain it from the university?
A.  I worked in a lab there, 318.  Dr. Chang's lab was being dismantled, and I was told by Dr. - - oh, gosh, what's his
name?  I'll get to his name.  But I was told to basically scrounge around and see what I could use, basically.  And so, I
took what I found necessary to refurbish my mentor's lab and my home lab, basically.
Q.  So, it's your testimony that they gave you $100,000 of glassware and rheostats.
A.  No.  I made use of the rejected material to basically furbish my lab, and I cleaned it and things like that.  I had some it repaired, basically.
Q.  And how would you obtain the chemicals, too?
A.  Chemicals.  Oh, EPA had cited a problem in the universities, and so they took it upon themselves to dispose of all unused chemicals.  So, the times that I was working for the university, you can verify that by the state payroll records for the university, I was - - and the personnel that were working there, professors as well.  The privy status I had in terms of disposing of some of the chemicals, I used what I found necessary and extracted what I needed from the bottles to specifically address the issues of synthesis that I had, at my house, desiring to do.
Q.  Between the breakup of that lab in May, 1993 and February of 1994, you acquired another $60,000 worth of glassware.

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, I'm going to object only to the fact that Mr. Miller's question assumes facts not in evidence and that's that his assignment of some arbitrary value to the glassware.
THE COURT:  Well - -
MR. MILLER:  It doesn't matter to me.
THE COURT:  - - this cross-examination.  So, I'll allow Mr. Miller to ask the question.  If you dispute the assumption, you can raise that point.

Q.  How were you able to obtain $60,000 worth of glassware and equipment?
A.  I just said that that came from the laboratories what were being taken apart.
Q.  I'm talking about between May and February time frame.
A.  Oh.  That was the same laboratory.  Yes.
Q.  So, all the glassware that you obtained - -
A.  I mean, it's just sitting in limbo.
Q.  I understand.
A.  There's a long period of time that people are not moving
in.  Actually, the person who moved into that lab is a friend of mine.
Q.  So, who's the - -
A.  Tom Sandresi (phonetic).
Q.  Who is the person at the university who gave you permission to take that glassware to your own residence?
A.  No one gave me permission to take it to my own residence. I assumed it upon my own decision. 
Q.  Did you steal it?
A.  No.  No.
Q.  Well, who - - I guess, Mr. DeWitt, what - -
A.  That assumes - -
Q.  - - I want to establish is how it got from the university to your house.
A.  Oh.

MR. SHULL:  I'm going to object to this line of questioning.  This clearly exceeds the question of my client's religious beliefs.  Now, they're going into the origation (sic) of some of the equipment and chemicals, which has nothing to do with what his belief is.
THE COURT:  Goes to his credibility.  Overruled.
MR. DE WITT:  Well, it would seem logical.

A.  What was the question?
Q.  How did you get it from - - who gave - -
A.  Oh.
Q.  - - you permission to take the equipment out of the university and take it to your own house for your own personal use?
A.  All right.  Okay.  So, in general terms, I gave myself permission, based upon the information and feedback I got from the professors there.
Q.  Now - -
A.  But I wouldn't be so far - - wait.  I'm finishing the question.  
Q.  Oh, okay.
A.  I wouldn't go so far as to implicate them, because they had no knowledge as to my desires.  Basically, just that I was pursuing the interest of chemistry.  And this was a method of developing my expertise and skill in experimental chemistry.
Q.  So, your answer is that you took it from the university - -
A.  Well, in terms - -
Q.  - - without asking.
A.  No.  In terms of the chemicals, because of the EPA, if I had taken them with bureaucratic knowledge, it would've created a compound - - a conflict with the EPA.  So, I did that in secret, so to speak.  But these chemicals were slated for destruction, so they were not being used.  I felt compelled to utilize them, and I was not told specifically to utilize them. But then, I was not told anything to the contrary.  And I utilize things that are available.  Just as you'd take sand from a mountain.  And we don't consider that stealing as long as you have the title to the land.
Q.  On the 17th of May of 1993, you went and tested the P2P you were making at the lab.  Is that correct?
A.  Um hum.  Yeah.
Q.  At the University of Missouri, Kansas City lab.  Correct?
Q.  What was the date?
Q.  The 17th of May, 1993.
A.  Right.  That was the third in a series of tests upon that particular compound.  Two - -
Q.  Were there any persons with you at that time?
A.  No.  I do these things all by myself.  I don't need anyone's help.
Q.  Did you ever take John Ryan to the lab with you?
A.  No.  Actually - - huh uh.  No.  He once dropped me off at the university that I know of.
Q.  Now, is there any depository or book or anything of that nature where one could find an overview of your beliefs?
A.  Where? Where?
Q.  Anyplace.  Is there a book?  Is there a university?
A.  Oh.
Q.  Is there some center of knowledge that one could tap into to find - - to reach some sort of understanding of your
beliefs?
A.  Actually, I can't say definitively that any particular person has written or recorded in some means a system of beliefs that are somewhat ascribable in similarity to mine.  But, the  - - in essence, basically, what I'm saying is I've looked at various other works, including Timothy Leary and his works, and seen them all to be deficient in terms of addressing the issues.
Q.  So the answer to my question would be no.
A.  As to the best of my knowledge, yes.  That is correct.  No.
Q.  Are there any other adherents or any other persons who follow your particular belief system?
A.  Not in the way of becoming a chemist to do the job of administering to yourself the drug.
Q.  Are there any other followers of your particular belief system? Yes or no.

MR. SHULL:  I'm - -

A.  No.

MR. SHULL:  I'm going to object to the vagueness as to defining what his belief system is, whether we're talking generically or specifically.
THE COURT:  Overruled.

A.  No.
Q.  There's no organization to your religion no hierarchy to your religion, correct, in the sense that there's no elders or bishops or anything of that nature.
A.  No.  Huh uh.
Q.  Correct?
A.  No.  Huh uh.
Q.  You have no Bible or Koran or anything of that nature. Correct?
A.  My only Bible would be experimental fact, which tests the validity of spiritual fact.
Q.  All right.  There are no rituals - -
A.  I don't consider - -
Q.  - - in your - -
A.  I don't consider the - -
Q.  - - belief system.
A.  - - the durational exposure in terms of the body and it's relation to the molecule as a ritual.  No.  It's a definite physiological function.
Q.  You have no days of observance or what we would call - -
A.  No.  No.
Q.  - - holy days or anything of that nature, sacred days.
A.  No.  My desire is to just devote 100 percent of my time to this particular - - and this entails, obviously, more than just the primary fixation, and so on.
Q.  Your answer to my question would be, no, you have no holidays or days of observance or anything akin to a Christmas or an Easter or a Ramadan or a - -
A.  Well - -
Q.  - - Passover, anything of that nature.  Correct?
A.  If you look at most personalities, you'll find there's a dual nature to them.  So, Christmas is something that I hold dear.
Q.  Is that part of your religious - -
A.  But it's not part - -
Q.  - - beliefs?
A.  - - of my, you know.  But it's - -
Q.  Okay.
A.  - - part of my personality.  
Q.  Okay.  So the answer to my question would be no.
A.  Most likely, yeah.  No.  Excuse me.
Q.  All right.  Now, if I understood what you said right, it wasn't until this case came about that you looked up the term, religion, and wanted to find out if what you did fell within that definition.  Correct?
A.  Trivial curiosity, but, yes.
Q.  All right.  So it was only after you were indicted in this case that your behavior somehow became religious to you.
A.  No.  That I curious because of the defensive structure of the word - - the defensive structure implied with the word, religion.  It didn't change my attitudes, my progressive attitudes throughout the duration that I've cited as my involvement with psychedelics.  Basically, there's been a continuous stream from my original curiosity.  It hasn't changed.
Q.  Well, is there anything about the use of psychedelics that teach you anything about right and wrong, what we consider the traditional notions of right and wrong?
A.  Psychedelics - -
Q.  Yes.
A.  - - as a substance cannot teach you anything.  It should be obvious.
Q.  Anything about the use of psychedelics which teaches you about traditional notions of morality?
A.  Well, the first question first, before we go to morality.   Right and wrong. Through the use of psychedelics and what I've
gained from the use of psychedelics, I'd say I have not changed my views towards right and wrong. I've always held what I consider to be a sociologically correct version of right and wrong.
Q.  The fact that you devote your life to the manufacture and study, creation or use of drugs, that factor alone, to you, doesn't make it religious - - a religious pursuit, does it?
A.  There you go again.  You're not specific with the word, drug.  Please define.
Q.  MDMA.
A.  Okay.  Rephrase the - - I mean, please - -
Q.  Simply because you - -
A.  Please state it again.
Q.  - - devote your life to a project doesn't make that project religious in nature.
A.  Please state it again.  I was interrupting you while you said it, again.
Q.  Simply because one pursues a project of a lifelong basis -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - -  fact alone doesn't make it a religious pursuit.  Correct?
A.  Incorrect.
Q.  So simply making it a lifelong pursuit makes it religious in nature.
A.  That's the donkey and the carrot.  I mean - -
Q.  Well, it's - -
A.  - - where do we start with the question?
Q.  I'm asking you is it a fact that you want to devote your
life to the study of chemistry, does that fact alone somehow
make this religious?  By analogy, was Thomas Edison's search for the light bulb religious simply because it took him all of his life?
A.  I can't speak for Thomas Edison, so I'll speak - -
Q.  Well, speak for yourself.
A.  - - for myself.  Yes.  It was a religious venture in terms of - -
Q.  Simply because he was a - -
A.  - - investment.  In terms of investment and the results form that investment that I knew would ensue.
Q.  So the mere fact that somebody dedicates their life to a life - - somebody dedicates their life to a pursuit, necessarily to you, makes it religious in nature.
A.  Your angularity of that sentence did not comprehend to my intelligence.  Could you rephrase it?
Q.  Is the fact that somebody dedicates their entire life to a project can necessarily make that project religious?
A.  Well, okay, I cannot answer that for anyone else.  I mean, but I didn't think that's what you were saying.
Q.  Is chemistry - - the pursuit of chemistry to you religious
in nature, the pure pursuit of chemistry?
A.  By all means.

MR. SHULL:  By Mr. DeWitt's specifically or generally?
MR. MILLER:  I asked about Mr. DeWitt.

A.  No.  By all means, it is the same essence of God.  So it is, in essence, the pursuit of God.  So that is the highest form of the word, religion, as opposed to the culturalistic sense of the word, religion, from the Latin definition.
Q.  So the study of chemistry to you  - -
A.  So that - -
Q.  - - is religious - -
A.  - - is right.
Q.  - - in nature.
A.  You got it.
Q.  Is the study of biology religious in nature?
A.  I don't know.  I'm not a biologist.  But I would presume that the facets of God that work throughout the biological realm would, if someone was so inclined, infer some degree of contact, which is the essence of all religion is contact, contact with the deity in the absolute sense.  (Off record whispering)

MR. MILLER:  Nothing further, Your Honor.
THE COURT:  Redirect.

REDIRECT EXAMINATION

BY MR. SHULL:

Q.  Mr. DeWitt, in response to one of the questions posed by Mr. Miller, you indicated that, and I believe I wrote this round - - down correct, you can't learn anything specifically just from the consumption of a psychedelic.  Do you recall - -
A.  Um hum.  Yeah.  That's an - -
Q.  And you're - -
A.  - - old dictum of all psychedelic research.
Q.  Okay.
A.  It all depends on the nature of the experimenter, whether he's well prepared for the job of utilizing the project in mind in a neuro-chemical or psychological point of view.
Q.  And from your personal viewpoint, does the mere consumption of the psychedelic lead to knowledge or does the affects - -
A.  I missed a pronunciation there.
Q.  Okay.  From your personal point of view, does the mere consumption of a psychedelic produce the experience that we've been describing or is it the affects resulting from the taking of that?
A.  Do they do what?
Q.  Is that the affect or is that the reason why you take these substances?
A.  Does everyone understand that question?
Q.  Well, most important, do you understand it?
A.  I know, but - -
Q.  If you don't, we'll go back and we'll rephrase it here.
A.  All right?
A.  Okay.  Rephrase it.  You might as well.
Q.  Well, let me change topic here.  You mentioned something about state payroll records.  Were you, at one point, paid by the university?
A.  Yeah.  It was just a one-shot deal.  One check.
Q.  And how much did you receive for that?
A.  It was around a hundred, something like that.
Q.  Dollars.
A.  Um hum.  Right.  It was a formality.  It took more bureaucratic time than it was worth.  But, heck, at least I'm on the record.
Q.  Does your personal belief require any rituals as might be found in orthodox religion?
A.  I've shied away from rituals because they're seemingly encumberant (sic).
Q.  All right.  Does your personal spiritual beliefs require some type of formal organization as might be found in a traditional, orthodox religion?
A.  Not in a personal needs sense, but in terms of sociology, it might be necessary.
Q.  Okay.  But, at this point, you're the only who has intensified your individual beliefs.  Is that correct?
A.  I'm the only one who what?
Q.  You're the only who, at this point, has intensified what your own - -
A.  Intensified.
Q.  - - individuals needs are.
A.  Intensified?
Q.  Yes.  For example, it's not your belief that what you believe in and how you need to achieve it would work for Judge Larsen or myself.
A.  Oh.  Yeah.  Of course.  I mean, what I said originally in regards to other people's religions, if it works for you, I'll still be your friend.  It's just it may not work for me.  I'm just not going to complain because it crasses - - clashes with my wardrobe, so to speak.  But this is just an analogy.  It's not comparing clothes to religion.
Q.  Mr. Miller asked you several questions about whether the use of psychedelics had affect your traditional sense of morality.
A.  Right.
Q.  Do you remember that?
A.  Right.  And I never got to that question.  I answered the right and wrong one.
Q.  Right.  Do you take psychedelics so as to affect your sense of morality?
A.  It's never really a question.  It's - - to me, morality is a broad-based word which has it's motivations in right and wrong.  But right and wrong are something that takes a lot longer than just the 12 hours, so to speak, of the psychedelic venture.  Right and wrong is something that takes a lot more than just one experience in general.  You've got, you know, smashing your finger in the door, for instance.  That gives you a sense of what right and wrong is.
Q.  All right.
A.  You've got all examples.

MR. SHULL:  I have no other questions.
THE COURT:  Anything else -
MR. MILLER:  Just one.
THE COURT:  - - Mr. Miller?

RECROSS-EXAMINATION BY MR. MILLER:

Q.  Mr. DeWitt, would it be a fair that you take hallucinogenics, and by that I mean, MDA and MDMA - -
A.  Uh hum.  Right.
Q.  - - to see how far those drugs can take you?
A.  By take, you mean spiritually take?
Q.  No.  I mean, to what they can take you to - - what those drugs can do to change your normal state of consciousness, what I would call - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - a sober state, for lack of a better term.
A.  Okay.
Q.  Sober state meaning a state where - -
A.  Yeah.  I - -
Q.  - - you - -
A.  - - I would utilize them to their maximum potential, if there is such a thing as a progressive versus just a one-night stand, so to speak.
Q.  All right.

MR. MILLER:  I have nothing further, Your Honor.
MR. SHULL:  No redirect, Your Honor.

THE COURT: Let me ask you a couple of questions. I think I know the answers to many of these, but just bear with me.

MR. DE WITT:  Okay.

BY THE COURT:

Q.  Mr. Miller has asked a number of questions concerning the overt or external signs that are traditionally associated with most religions - -
A.  Uh hum.
Q.  - - that are recognized.  And I just needed to make sure that I have the record complete.  Are there any formal services that are conducted in connection with your religious belief?
A.  No.  I don't involve other people.  Absolutely.
Q.  Are there any ceremonial functions that are conducted? For example, in the Catholic church there - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - is a mass that's - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - conducted.  Anything like that?
A.  Well, not knowing the full implication of the word, ceremonial, there are functions, yes.  Like listening to music, enjoying the seashore, something to that effect, that would be a conducive type, what'd you say ritual?
Q.  Ceremonial function.
A.  Ceremony, yeah.  But that really doesn't - - it doesn't seem like a appropriate candidate for the - - any ascription of its meaning, ceremony, so.
Q.  For example, the ceremonial function in the mass has to do with, in traditional Catholicism, the Last Supper - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - and the giving of wine - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - and bread in the form of symbols of the body and blood of Christ.  And without saying that's necessary in your religion - -
A.  Um hum.
Q. - - are there any ceremonial functions that are like that that are analogous to that or somehow you would believe to be analogous to that?
A.  That's an on-the-spot question.  But, overtly, no.
Q.  Is there - - and I think Mr. Miller's asked this question concerning a hierarchical - -
A.  Oh, wait.  There - - synthesis is not a ceremony, so. Okay.  But your question, Mr. Miller.
Q.  But Mr. Miller talked about hierarchical structure - -
A.  Um hum.  Right.
Q.  - - to most religions.  And I know there isn't anything like that, but - - from your answer.  But is there any mentor or a clergyman or some holy person, for lack of a better word - -
A.  Hum.
Q.  - - that exists within your religious belief?
A.  Not in the incarnate sense or in the spiritual guide sense, no.  Just, basically, me, myself, I.  Not in an egoistic sense, but just that's the topic to deal with.  That's the dross nature that needs to be developed.
Q.  There aren't from your - - I think I can answer this, but from your earlier responses, I presume that you do not go out
and attempt to convert people to your particular belief system.
A.  No.  No.
Q.  It's a belief system that you attempt to - -
A.  Just to see the end result of my curiosity in the simplest, crudest way of describing it.
Q.  Can you tell me what the fundamental question or questions or concern or concerns - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - are that are addressed by your religious belief? What is the fundamental issue or concern that you address by your
belief system?
A.  The nature of perception.  Perception in God being two sides of the same.
Q.  The nature of God is the concern that you - -
A.  Well, I'm not - -
Q.  - - are questioning.
A.  I'm not really concerned about the nature of God, because it exists independent of whether I have that concern or not. So, the - - just the familiarization, the experience thereof. Am I addressing your question?
A.  What I need to know is, for example, in most religions, they deal with questions, such as the meaning of our existence, the meaning of our life, our death.
A.  Um hum.
Q.  The meaning of what our role is in this universe.
A.  Right.
Q.  Is there a similar or the same area of concern that your religious beliefs pursue?  In other words, is it an effort to explain your existence here on earth? What is it that your concerned - -
A.  Hum.
Q.  - - about that leads you to exercise this belief system? What is the question that you're trying to answer?
A.  Well, it's multi-faceted.  There's the aspect of scientific discovery, the merging of parapsychology and psychology, neurobiology.  Did I mention chemistry?  Yeah.  And then there is the spiritual side, which deals primarily with what the potentialities are of incarnate life, the nature of our movement through space, and what the limits might be practically in terms of the perceptual apparatus that exists before us in this present existence.  What the - - I mean, you've seen the trends in automobile traffic, changing our - - in jet traffic, changing our mode of sociological cognizance.  But, the nature of those things towards the human condition.  I mean, we want to set limits on things or do we want to basically take physical existence completely infused with the freedoms that are available from the point of view of God instead of the seeming sluggish nature to the materialistic world.
Q.  No.  I guess - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - what I'm trying to get to is - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - is the reason to take psychedelic drugs and other chemicals - -
A.  Well, I try to stay within that realm.
Q.  Is the reason why you take those substances to experience the outer body experience that you've referred to here?
A.  Um hum.
Q.  Correct?
A.  Yes.
Q.  And - -
A.  Primarily.
Q.  And do you make some effort to record that experience as you're doing it or after it occurs?
A.  Right.  It occurs in art, music, whatever.  But, scientifically, in words, yes.
Q.  Okay.  So.  What, though, about the outer body experience is of concern to interest to you?
A.  It just gives a greater degree of awareness.
Q.  Of what?
A.  Of time, the nature of one's activities, one's seeming blinders, seeming blind spots in life, what to do, the availability of - - although a lot of it's just autonomic.  So, it's oftentimes a moot point.  But in terms of cathartic areas in your life and personality, that is, just easing from one transitional state to the next for the operant personality.
Q.  Okay.  So, it expands your level of experience beyond what you would normally be able to experience without chemical additives .
A.  Yeah.  A trite way of saying it.  But if you are prepared and capable of rendering some - - I mean, you know, if you were in the ring with someone else fighting it out, you'd have to be on par physically In order to enjoy the fight, so to speak, if you were fighting as an experience.
Q.  Well, let's just stay with the outer body experience - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - here.
A.  Okay.
Q.  You've ingested some chemical.  You've experienced the out-of-body experience that are brought on through - -
A.  Not necessarily, but more often than not.
Q.  Isn't that the goal, though, that you're trying to - -
A.  The goal that I'm trying to achieve.  Yeah.  But - -
Q.  Yeah.  Okay.  Let's just assume - -
A.  - - I was looking at - -
Q.  - - that you're successful in achieving that goal.
A.  - - generalized standard there.
Q.  And you record it, and - - both during and afterward.
A.  Um hum.
Q.  What is the goal of that?  Why is that important to you?
A.  Because I want to be able to attain that state irregardless of whether I'm using a drug or not.
Q.  So, it's - -
A.  It's a condition that I would necessitate to have within my - - just like I'd have a little leprechaun with me all the time, so to speak, in the - -
Q.  So, you want to be - -
A.  - - fairyland description.
Q.  You want to experience that outer body experience for itself.  Or, is there some other reason?
A.  Oh, oh.  Okay.  In terms of the hierarchical nature which probably would cement your idea, the out-of-body state lends direct transmission to the hierarchial - - hierarchial - - hi -
Q.  Hierarchical.
A.  Yeah.  Hierarchical, I don't know why I'm not pronouncing it.  It's a direct contact zone for the experience of God.
Q.  Okay.  So, you've - -
A.  But God is not a particular definable circumstance in spatial constructs of geometry and visualization.
Q.  So you're saying that you take the chemicals to get the out-of-body experience to experience God.
A.  Well, since this is virgin territory, I'll probably say, not so simplistically, hold off there.  I don't want to remove myself from the possibility that I may be experiencing God right this very moment and it's obvious - -
Q.  Well, I'm not trying to remove that from your - -
A.  Okay.  Well, in terms of the - -
Q.  - - I'm just trying to get to the reason why you take the chemical is to go through the out-of-body experience, and I assume that it's for something - -
A.  Yeah.
Q.  - - more than just the out-of-body experience.  I mean, if you wanted that - -
A.  Um hum.  Okay.  Okay.  You got it.  Okay.
Q.  Yeah.  So, it's for some other purpose.  Right?  Have you had that experience?
A.  Yeah.  It would be most medically described as re-integration, putting yourself into an accepting level where you dealt with the facets of your quote, unquote, out-of-body travail.
Q.  And what have you learned from that?
A.  That every time I think that human beings are an easy creature to decipher, there's always someone that seems like
they don't fit the normal analysis, the concept that here is a person that no matter how despicable he may look like, there's a divine spirit that you can actually fathom and appreciate. You know, loving one regardless of who they are, the prostitutes and Jesus.  The fact is that I'm always encountering people that go one step beyond that and seem to have no scruples at all, and there just doesn't seem a heck of a lot to enjoin in saying that they're human.  But - -
Q.  But you don't need to take an out-of-body experience to have that experience.  You have that experience everyday, don't you?  Right?
A.  Right.  Yeah.
Q.  So what I'm trying to get to is - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - you've taken a chemical.  You've done an out-of-body experience and you've had a contact or some relationship with -
A.  A force.
Q.  - - a force or being greater than ourselves.
A.  Um hum.
Q.  What have you learned from that?  If anything.
A.  Hum.  It's a continuous process, so everything that I learn is conditional upon whether I obtain any benefit from that state of conscious dreaming or out-of-bodiness.
Q.  What benefit have you derived from that, then?
A.  Well, I've supposedly tackled chemistry and developed some modicum of ability within the experimental and moderate proficiency in the theoretical, from just the desire to be motivated from the curiosity that I developed.
Q.  Those are collateral - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - collateral benefits.  I'm talking about the experience that you've had after having reached that plane where you - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - you've confronted the - -
A.  Forces.
Q.  - - the experience or the force - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - or whatever - -
A.  All right.
Q.  - - you want to call it.  What can you tell me as a result of that that you've learned?
A.  I have learned that you really can't take things for granted.  You are continually creating your reality each moment that you live.
Q.  Well, what you can tell me about the force or the being or the experience?
A.  What the descriptional status is in terms of words?  Well, it seems like that is the source of all science.  Science is just a way of putting into perspective for the functions of human life, those forces that do exist and make the world such as it is.
Q.  Well, let me - -
A.  Now - -
Q.  - - let me ask you a more general question.  Apart from the experience that you've had with psychedelic drugs or - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - any other chemicals, do you have a belief system that you follow in terms of - -
A.  Oh, okay.
Q.  - - the behavior - -
A.  All right.
Q.  - - that you - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - that you demonstrate and the conduct that you follow in your daily activities?
A.  Okay.
Q.  Is there some sort of a value system that you have?
A.  I'll remember the word, value system, and get back at it, if I don't hit it on the nail here.  The thing that would distinguish my pursuits versus an organized religion, so to speak, would be that I don't accept anything generally upon faith in a predominate sense, but rather, desire to make sure that it is an actual experience within my life, and an actual experiencing of the spiritual existence or force or out-of-body experience.  As far as - - did I answer part of the question there?
Q.  Well, I think you answered the question in terms that the difference between traditional concepts of religion and your idea - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - of what your religion's beliefs are is that you accept nothing on faith.  That you prefer to experience it.
A.  Well, that isn't a disuse of the word, faith.  It's just I don't put a lot of emphasis on trusting a particular credo
based upon someone else's - - I'd like to prove it out myself, and I guess that puts the system of beliefs more upon the scientific realm of hypothesis conclusion. 
Q.  Is there anything that you accept upon faith?
A.  Love.  I don't have any way of proving love.  I just experience it.
Q.  Well, you experience it.  Therefore, you - - is there anything - -
A.  Yeah.  But I don't have it in a condition where I have no love and, therefore, have to seek out love.
Q.  Anything else that you accept based on faith?  When I say, accept based on faith, I'm talking about things that cannot be explained through usual experience.
A.  Um hum.
Q.  The fact that some people believe, based on faith, that there's an afterlife.
A.  Right.
Q.  There's a system of rewards and punishments that go along with that.
A.  Um hum.  Yeah.
3.  Is there anything like that that you accept based on faith? Things that you have no real rational basis to demonstrate, but that you believe - -
A.  Well - -
Q.  - - because of your belief system.
A.  Yeah.  Okay.  I'd say I do have a little bit of faith in regards to the law of karma, so to speak, the rewards and punishment.  Only I don't leave them for an afterlife.  I just look at them as the implicating design in which the current life is working with.  You've got the personal relations.  You've got the work load your life encumbers.  Those are all relateds.  But I use the concept in a face - - I don't mean face - - faith sense.
Q.  Certainly, there's no requirement that you - -
A.  I can't prove it.
Q.  No, well.  And there's no requirement that you experience outer body experiences to accept that principle, is there?
A.  there's no what?
Q.  There's no requirement or - -
A.  Requirement.
Q.  - - there's no connection between having an outer experience and accepting that proposition based on faith, is there?  Or, perhaps there is.  Or, what from the outer body experience has caused you to accept that principle based on faith?
A.  I choose not to accept it on faith.  That's why I've spent so much time delving into this area, because I haven't gotten all the answers formulated.
Q.  Let me direct a question to the type of drugs that we're talking about - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - here.  You need to tell me what drugs you believe are appropriate for you to use - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - in connection with your religious pursuits.  Are they all drugs? Are they some drugs? Are they just simply psychedelic drugs?
A.  Oh, definitely specific psychedelic materials.
Q.  Which would include what?
A.  Anywhere from the endoethylamines to the phenylethylamines, the - - well, what others?  Well, generally, things like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, DET, DBT, the phenylethylamines, like as I mentioned previously, mescaline, MDMA, SDP, TMA, any of those would classify in my book as a psychedelic.  Methamphetamine, I don't know if I'd really specifically classify it. But, in my book, it would render some degree of specificity to a particular type of result.  Although I wouldn't particularly pursue it at this point in time, aside from one particular experiment that I might do.  But that would be related to something a little bit beyond the initial scope.
Q.  Other than methamphetamine and the psychedelics that you've described, are there any other drugs that you believe are appropriate for you to use in religious practice?
A.  Not in terms of modifying my brain.  I have occasion to sip a little alcohol and orange juice.  But I've quit marijuana use just because it's not affectations (sic).  And that's it.  I don't really - - oh, I did mention I tried opium once when I was young.
Q.  I know.  But I'm talking about now when we're talking about
A.  Right.
Q.  - - this religious - -
A.  No.  No.
Q.  - - belief system.
A.  I like to remain pretty much drug-free when it comes to my normal operating consciousness.
Q.  Okay.  Now, other than methamphetamine and the psychedelics, were there any other drugs found in your home during the course of either the search - -
A.  There was a film canister of sinsemilla buds that.  But those weren't used for anything but to taste function.
Q.  What do you mean?
A.  Well, just sort of like a person grabs a cigar after a meal.  I really didn't obtain any psychotropic affect from it, essentially.  It was there for a social mantelpiece, so to speak.
Q.  Okay.  Any other drugs found in your home that were not of the nature that we've just described?
A.  There was just the street dosages of methamphetamine, which were not produced at the laboratory - -
Q.  Okay.
A.  - - or home.
Q.  And were those used as - - or anticipated to be used as part of some religious belief system?
A.  In the versage we've been going through, yes.
Q.  Well, was that your intent at the time or was it much like most - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - people would go to the refrigerator and get - -
A.  Oh.
Q.  - - a can of beer?  Was the methamphetamine - -
A.  No.  No.
Q.  - - there for use - -
A.  Huh uh.
Q.  - - as a - -
A.  It was used for a controlled experiment.
Q.  Okay.
A.  It wasn't used for exploiting my lack of happiness.
Q.  Okay.  Now, there has been some indication that there were quantities of drugs in your home that were in excess of what one might - -
A.  Consume over a year.
Q.  - - consume - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - by oneself.
A.  Um hum.
Q.  Is that true in your opinion?  Is that a true characterization?
A.  Yeah.  I hadn't really considered the amount.  I was more concerned with proving that I could do the reaction.
Q.  Okay.  And - -
A.  I had no clients, if that's what you mean, for purchase. No.  And I had no people thought out in terms of who to sell it to.  No.
Q.  So the fact that there might be quantities there in excess of what one might take personally - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - was just simply a happenstance that occurred as a - -
A.  Well, it was my first reaction, and I felt rather prideful of the accomplishment I've had amongst my competitive friends -
Q.  Well - -
A.  - - in terms of feeling that I could do a job better than they could.
Q.  When you say, competitive friends - -
A.  Well, you know - -
Q.  - - whom are you referring to?
A.  I mean, well, do you want to know?
Q.  Yeah.
A.  Okay.  Mike Kristofferson.  But he was basically interested in psychedelic chemistry, but his direction, his use pattern, did not reflect mine.  But, we did enjoy and do enjoy a good friendship.  And it was just that camaraderie-type rivalry, almost, that instigated my desire to polish my gemstone, so to speak.
Q.  What were you going to do with the balance of the drugs?
A.  I had no plans.  I had no ideas as far as what I was going to do with them, aside from the experimentations that I was
doing.
Q.  You would agree with me that these are - -
A.  Lucrative?
Q.  - - no matter whether or not they're legal or illicit - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - these are serious chemicals that you're mixing and that you're producing.
A.  Oh, yeah.  Yeah.  I definitely have the scars of simple sulfuric.
Q.  So, would you agree that it would be appropriate for you to have some plan for the use or dispersal of those chemicals?  I mean, while you're¬- 
A.  I'm not quite - -
Q.  - - doing this to - -
A.  - - tackling the question.
Q.  - - yourself, doesn't it implicate other people in the community?
A.  If they were to know about it and then rip me off, yeah.
Q.  Okay.
A.  I have, in situations before, where people have absconded with materials just because my innocent sister let them in.
Q.  Okay.  Let me talk to you about the materials that you took from the laboratory - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - at UMKC.
A.  Yeah.
Q.  And what I'm interested in are the chemicals at this point.
A.  Right.
Q.  Those chemicals were to be somehow disposed of - -
A.  Incinerated.
Q.  - - pursuant - -
A.  Yes.
Q.  - - pursuant to EPA regulations.  Correct?
A.  Right.  Right.
Q.  And why would EPA direct that those chemicals be destroyed?
A.  Policy.
Q.  Do you have any other reason, other than bureaucratic policy?
Obviously, the policy's formulated from fact.  But when it comes down to reality, it's oftentimes more than not just policy.  But the fact underlying the policy, if it has any credence, would be that the materials were not being used.  Therefore, they were unnecessary.  They would create a hazard if their disposal was not effected - - effectuated.
Q.  So you would agree that at least some people believe these materials to be hazardous.  Correct?
A.  Oh, yeah.  There's all different strokes for different folks.
Q.  Do you believe the materials that you took were hazardous?
A.  I had a great degree of confidence that in the setting and dosage, time and place that I was using them, their affect would be fairly benign.
Q.  Okay.  But do you - -
A.  Physiologically as well as psychologically.
Q.  I'm not talking about their affect on you - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - once you've mixed them.  I'm talking about the - -
A.  Mixed them.
Q.  - - basic chemicals as you - -
A.  Are you talking about synthesis?
Q.  - - as you received them from the laboratory.
A.  Oh, okay.  Yeah.
Q.  Whether or not those chemicals are of such a nature that -
A.  Oh.
Q.  - - they can be hazardous, if not properly stored and if not properly monitored.
A.  Uh hum.  Well, in answering the question thoroughly, I'll first start out with the identity of the chemicals, has to first be known.  The purity can be an asset in terms of my experimental skills.  So, that is no problem.  The storage is all done in terms of the knowledge that I have of the safety, the reactivity.  I think I stored them fairly appropriately, after the fact, so to speak.  You know, after the fact, I contacted all the appropriate authorities in the community to verify whether those quantities could exist on a residential home laboratory.  And I got an affirmative yes in terms of everyone.  Although I didn't go so far as to actually file with the fire marshal.  But I did get the opinion that if I had less than 55 gallons sum total of flammables, there would be no problem.  And the codes administration did stipulate that public perception was probably the bottom line.  You don't want to create an unnecessary uneasiness in the community.
Q.  Well, certainly, you're taking items that were to be destroyed, according to EPA regulations, gets them out of public scrutiny, doesn't it?
A.  I don't quite understand.
Q.  Well, if you've got a bunch of chemicals that are sitting in a laboratory - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - at UMKC and you take them, you don't destroy them according to EPA's regulations.
A.  Oh, well.  They don't need to be destroyed.  It's just - -
Q.  Well, whatever.  Disposed of.  
A.  They need to be taken off the premises either by a person posting a million dollar bond and taking those chemicals and
putting them in his business.  It's just a matter of they need to be transferred from that location.  That's all.
Q.  But you didn't follow those regulations, did you?
A.  That is correct.
Q.  Okay.  So, it took it out of the purview of - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - public scrutiny, and, in essence, we have to rely on your skill and your good faith - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - and your knowledge - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - to assure us that we don't have a potential hazard sitting over there in your house.  Right?
A.  Right.
Q.  Okay.
A.  Um hum.  Yeah.
Q.  Now, no one - -
A.  It's an act of faith.
Q.  No one told you, no one told you - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - at UMKC that you could take these drugs, did they?
A.  Drugs?
Q.  Take these chemicals.
A.  Oh, okay.  No.  No.  That was my own decision.
Q.  Okay.  And you certainly didn't tell them that you had
taken them.  Correct?
A.  Correct.
Q.  With regard to the equipment, the laboratory equipment - -
A.  That'd be the same thing.
Q.  Okay.  I know that most educational facilities in this community are run on a very tight budget.
A.  Um hum.
Q.  And that they are hard pressed to get equipment.  I'm assuming that no one gave you permission to remove this equipment from UMKC and set it up at your house.
A.  To set it up at my house, no.  But they did tell me to remove it.  Yes.
Q.  They told you to remove it.  Who told you to remove it?
A.  Professor Holder.
Q.  And what did he tell you to do with it?
A.  He gave us a mimeograph saying come and basic ransack and remove anything you want, open to the faculty and students, graduates.
Q.  You mean this professor told you that you could do whatever you wanted with this.
A.  Um hum.  It was an open grab bag.
Q.  Okay.  Do you have a copy of that memo?
A.  No.  I've thought about the same question you're asking.  But the copy was disposed of from the university drawer that I
was operating the desk upon.
Q.  And this professor's name is, again, what?
A.  Andrew Holder.
Q.  And - -
A.  He's a computational chemist.
Q.  He's at the University of Missouri at Kansas City?
A.  Um hum.  Yeah.  He had no real relation to my project.  Totally independent.
Q.  Does he know you?
A.  Yeah.  Yeah.
Q.  Did you talk to him about it?
A.  Um hum.  Yeah.
Q.  What did he tell you and what did you say to him?
A.  Well, just generally, aside from telling that - - I didn't tell him that I was going to take the material home.  He said, take whatever you need.
Q.  Well, do you have a sense of what he thought would be an appropriate use of these items?  In other words, were you to use them at some other laboratory on site, or were you to take them home with you? What were you to do with them? Was there any direction according to those lines?
A.  No.  No.  There was no direction.  It was up to my desire as a chemist to learn.
Q.  Okay.  Now, let me talk to you, again, about your value system.
A.  Okay.
Q.  Do you have a system of values or ideals much as whether it be Judaism, with the Ten Commandments, or Christianity, with the principles espoused by Jesus Christ?  Are there a set of beliefs that you hold and ascribe to?
A.  First and foremost, respect for the innate spiritual characteristics of each individual being, and they'll emanate the most prosperous relational aspects of that possibility.  If you treat them like dirt shit, they'll give you dirt shit. It's as simple as that.
Q.  What else?
A.  I guess I could liken this concept more to the lower specie realms.  But I always think what would it be like to be a, for instance a spider, what would it be like to be one of the creatures and look up at that human and say, I wonder what that's like.  Okay.  Given that type of scenario, what would I, as a human, be able to impart if I was once a spider? And am now a human, could I impart something to that specie of value that would just show them the increased flexibility I have as a specie instead, you know, as a spider?  So if you take that to the human realm, you could just say that that's most akin to knowing that everyone has the potentiality of being anything and everything they always wanted to be, and that they're only not presently exhibiting that characteristic because of some possible hang up in their personality, so to speak.
Q.  Okay.  Anything else?
A.  Let's see.  You know, this comes to the appreciation of the spiritual qualities in each person.  Love one another in the highest sense of the word, love.  And don't denigrate yourself and don't think that you have to suppress the ego to contact the worlds of God or whatever.  But that ego is a good expression, tangible and durable, but a good expression.  So, its illiterance (sic) to the spiritual quest is not a good thing, as far as I'm concerned. In terms of practicality, speak concise, get to the point and effectively utilize words, so that they don't end up rambling.  You always look for the betterment of human kind.  And that can only be done based upon the fact of whether you're a well operating instrument.  And that is the basic reason why I am pursuant to these curiosities.  One of which is the use and synthesis - - or, synthesis and use.  But it's not guaranteed. It's all a faceted-type thing where you can't just say that, well, if I pop this pill, I'll be a better person.  Obviously, everyone agrees that that's a fallacy.  And the interference by the government could be a problem in terms of the flowering of that curiosity.  But I don't really think it should be, based upon the fact that we are, as humans, a strong bunch and we can make decisions, live by those decisions and grow from them.  So, it would seem, on the surface, possibly, you know, if you squash a person's curiosity, then it will necessitate re-growth, you know, like a broken limb or something like that.
Q.  Any other values, though?
A.  I always had a sense of materialistic values.  I always pay the IRS.  Never try to destroy the integrity of the dollar by throwing it into inflation, like the drug wars have been doing. But the general sense of values is that right and wrong are a tool, and they do have a degree of relativity.  But that in a precise format, they have some degree of absoluteness.  And when I took the chemicals from the university, I don't think I was particularly wrong.  I might have not told everyone.  But I felt compelled because the government was making them illegal.  And if I had told them, I would've gotten in trouble.  And my - - the good faith clause that you mentioned, which is a debatable issue in terms of your position as a community servant, makes sense.  But, you know, I, from my point of view, feel that I'm a trustable person in terms of not poisoning the environment, not delving into the deliverance of people in the realm of Hades by giving them a certain quantity of an illicit chemical, which would destroy their morals, or whatever.
Q.  Anything else?
A.  Let's see.  Respect for the idealistic nature of government, realizing that its limited, because it subservient to the maintenance principle, which, in essence, limits it.  But that is, roads, airports, et cetera, or, back in the 1776 days, the boats.  But, that government I've never seen as an evil like a lot of people do.  It's rather just a tool, which can be perverted, but, in essence, is controlled by the individual.  But
Q.    Want to make sure that you're tracking me.
A.    Um hum.
Q.    I'm not talking about all of your beliefs.
A.    No.  I know.
Q.    I'm talking about the core values that - -
A.    Right.
Q.    - - dictate and - -
A.    Well, I just - -
Q.    - - control your life.
A.    I made that tangent into materialistic values.
Q.    My sense is that people have basic core values, you know.
A.    Um hum.
Q.    That - - over which even at cost personal to oneself - -
A.    Um hum.
Q.    - - that you do not violate.
A.    Right.
Q.    And that dictates and directs one's life.
A.    Oh, okay.
Q.  That's the kind of value that I'm talking about.  So even though it might be not personally wise for me to say something,
that because I believe that it's more important to me to tell the truth, that I tell the truth - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - despite the fact that it may have implications to me personally.  Because that value that is so great that I have. That's what I'm interested in.

THE COURT:  Why don't we allow - -
MR. DE WITT:  Well - -
THE COURT:  - - you an opportunity to think about that.  We're going to take our noon recess.
MR. DE WITT:  Oh, okay.
THE COURT:  And we'll reconvene here in about an hour, and we'll continue with this examination.  I'll allow counsel for the government and Mr. Shull to follow up on anything that I have asked the defendant.  So, we'll see everybody back here at a quarter after.

(Recess at 12:14 p.m., until 1:31 p.m.) (Call to Order of the Court)

THE COURT:  Please be seated, everybody.  I think we had Mr. DeWitt on the stand.
And I think, in my usual rather inept fashion, I was trying to glean from our conversation whether or not there were, within your belief system, Mr. DeWitt, certain basic principles that arise from your religious tenants that are such that those are the foundation for your life - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - and for the behavior that you engage in.  And just by way of an example, I think I mentioned the fact that certain communities believe in the fact that one should tell the truth regardless of the consequences or the implications to one personally, or, that one should care for others more than caring for oneself, and to the extent one divests oneself of worldly
goods –
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - and engages in good works with the community, you do that even though it may be self-sacrificing or not always in your own best interest, that it is so pivotal to your belief system - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - that it forms the core sense of values.  And that's I really want to get from you.
A.  Okay.
Q.  Is there a sense of core values that you believe as a result of your religious practices?
A.  Okay.  What I first thought, before you said, was the aspect of improving oneself via the methodologies described in the religious belief as an asset for a sober existence, so to speak.  The core, actual understandings that I derive from that belief would be in relation to seeing what people really are instead of just what their behavior is.  So, I can, basically, from my understanding that I derive with the aid and without, because it comes from all different angles, I can look and see the nature of people and still love them for what they are, even though the behavior they might show towards me may particularly not turn me on, so to speak.  Now, what you mentioned about lying and truth-telling, I've had many occasions of being in a position where I did feel compelled to lie, because people were pressuring me to a point that I felt, well, why do they need to pressure me this way?  And so my point of regret in the fact that I did lie in those situations was enforced by the need for survival from their over-anxious desire to grapple in my storybook instead of their storybook.  So, in that respect, those are the lessons I've learned about life and lying.  Personally speaking, I don't like lying.  It feels better knowing that I've given someone the truth.  I guess what you're hinting at is the fact that I'm not disclosing everything.  And what you said when I last saw you, before I went back to CCA, was the aspect of full disclosure, and that stuck in my brain for quite a number of days, and it's become a pet word, full disclosure.  But it's hard to make those kind of full disclosures even to your mother, sometimes.  When I was young, the problems I encounter basically was the parental attitude based upon the social pressures towards negative attitudes in drug use for the adolescent.  And so, for those reasons, I oftentimes maintained a certain element of silence regarding my own practice, even towards my mother.  My father, you know, it's a little bit different.  I've always basically been able to relate on a professional level fairly candidly.  But when it comes to certain things,  I just felt compelled not to fully disclose.  So, those are the boundaries where I've always faulted myself in not having the ability to be full and forthcoming with everyone.
Q.  Okay.
A.  But in terms of knowing the difference between a lie and a truth, it's fairly obvious.  It's just some situations there are times where it seems like there is a justification for lying.  But I wouldn't want to go into describing the exact situation or an analogy or anything like, because it's probably pretty obvious.  If your life was in danger or something like that, you might lie.  But whether you call it a lie, I don't know.  I've had many an argument regarding the aspect of full disclosure.  But, the main problems I have had are just the illegality context, which has made me hesitant towards putting things out for the people to either pillage or share in terms of their input to a common concept of communication.  You just basically look at what life has to offer.  What you can do is most anything.  You just have to set yourself to the task and not be brought down by negative images of what you can and cannot do, but rise above each particular problem within terms of the imagery involved in realizing a goal.  And it's those basic principles that have always motivated me.  I haven't given up music, but it's just in the background as far as vocation.  It's just I felt compelled not to produce chemicals of a psychedelic nature strictly from chemistry.  But it was originally psychedelic experiments that catalyzed my interest in chemistry.  So, make no mistake, I don't see any profit to be obtained in psychedelics, aside from possible information that would be readable.  The direct benefits from any use cannot be ascribable.  They are only in terms of a long term individual integration.  As I mentioned previously, the medical term would be, what is it?  Re-integration.  Yeah.  I don't know what benefit they'd have for anyone else.  And I know a lot of people do use them.  But I haven't seen too many people who have told me of their use and seemed any bit more capable than what they might've been.  So, it's a fine line between taking any advantage from what there is to offer from their existence, so to speak, since that the human body was rearranged, the compounds would be different.  And in the aspects of materialistically understanding the whole thing is a matter of the physical, visceral nature of my personality, basically, a hands-on type person.  The way I learned piano was by practicing and practicing and practicing.  So, I'm just a very physical, motivated person.  It takes me kissing an iron, basically, to realize that it's hot when I was young.  That is, a clothing iron.  Yeah.  I think I remember something about the - - the relevance of chemistry and the end result from the said experiments as being one of the primary questions, whether the, as in what you were saying, the danger to the community versus the spiritual reward factor.
All I can say in regards to that is when you take upon yourself to tackle any task, be it climbing with no rope on a mountain, you pretty much bet your life on the line.  That's always been the power for a chemist.  He's always exposed to danger in terms of those things.  But he, himself, is the first to go, basically.  He's not sacrificing the community, unless, of course, you're talking about frivolous waste disposal violators, who, essentially, are basically not chemists in the first place, basically raping the land for what they can see.  So, I've always kept pretty much self-contained.  I think Sparks knows a little bit about that, but - - never dumped chemicals, even though the news media had configured me as a dumper.  For some strange reason, my neighbor had it in to destroy my credibility, and she, being such, had the opportunity, so configured the splotches on the backyard as being waste dumps, when, in actuality, it was just a 20-hour exposure of Round Up.  And the rain hit and washed it off.  And so, it didn't completely kill the grass.  And that was just because I was lazy and didn't want to mow the lawn, that I sprayed it on the lawn instead.  Just those aspects that generate an image of a chemist whose cognizance of the need for being responsible.  And that responsibility is based upon the respect for the innate divinity or spirituality of each creature.  It's just a normal aspect of existence.  The more you look at it from that perspective, the easier it is to - - it's, you know, a give and take sort of thing.  What you give, you get, as expressed in all the song lyrics that address that.  The overriding values I have towards life are just the innate pivotal nature, in which the realization you have is always tempered by the mundane aspects of your personality that tend to not acknowledge those aspects that are concurrent and continual at this very moment.  But, we just choose to not recognize them, because we're occupied, focused in a different direction.  But it's that aspect that distinguishes my insistence upon experimental proof of spiritual facts, instead of just relying upon the configured structure of faith and its lower companion dogma, whereby you accept it and say it's true, but you haven't really - - I mean, if you're put out on a desert island, would you have come up with the same thought? That's the point. Probably not.  But, conversely, since it's always in people, that is, the quote, unquote, force or spirit, it's just a matter of proper conjuring or seeding of the facets that bring it into fruition. But the aspect of the desert island usually, more often than not, entails a lot more time than the original asserter of that belief would care to actually profess in terms of what he says he knows is true versus what is true that he could've found out had he had no ulterior stimulation, such as a dogma or a code of beliefs, instead of an experience to one - - of one - - from oneself; or, getting away from the self-concept, the - - the force of God working through the ego, the self.  Ego is usually a more personalized, sociologic function.
Q.  Well, let me turn it back to the lawyers - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - to follow up on any questions they might have.

THE COURT:  Mr. Miller, do you have anything else to ask of - -
MR. MILLER:  I do.  I just have - -
THE COURT:  - - Mr. DeWitt?
Mr. MILLER:  - - a couple questions.

FURTHER RECROSS-EXAMINATION

BY MR. MILLER:

Q.  Mr. DeWitt, I'm going to show you what's been marked as Government's Exhibit "1" and ask you, do you recognize this?
A.  Well, I recognize the writing.  Do you want me to recognize the concept within?
A.  Is that your handwriting, sir?
A.  Yes.  Um hum.
Q.  Are those the notes that were taken from your house?
A.  Let me see.  1/29 - - they've got to be.  (Off record whispering)
A.  Do you need me to comment on this?
Q.  No, no.  I'm just - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - asking if - -
A.  No.  It is.
Q.  - - they're your notes.
A.  Yes.  Um hum.
Q.  All right.  If you'd look through it, if you'd just look through it generally.  I'm not going to ask you about the concepts just yet.
A.  Oh, okay.
Q.  Just whether or not those are - -
A.  Do you want to keep this fast-paced?
Q.  I just want to know if - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - they're your notes.
A.  Yes, they are.

THE COURT:  He just wants me make sure that they aren't somebody else's notes - -
MR. DE WITT:  Oh, okay.
THE COURT:  - - intermingled in there.
MR. DE WITT:  Okay.  Because, if I need - -
THE COURT:  Those look like your handwriting.
MR. DE WITT:  - - need to comment on these, I'm going to need to read a little more carefully, but - -

(Off record talking)

A.  Let's see.  Okay.  Do you know what this is?
Q.  I'm just asking if they're - -
A.  Okay.
Q.  - - yours so far.
A.  Yes.  So far.  Um hum.  Yeah.  And this (indicating) was just an old rejected university thing.  It wasn't my idea.
Q.  Do they appear that they've changed in any way? These appear to be your notes.  Correct?
A.  Yeah.  Correct.
Q.  Now, this series of notes, without going into the contents, reflect your MDMA usage and MDA usage over a period of approximately one month or two months from - -
A.  Yeah.  If the dates are there.  It should be chronology-wise, chronologically correct.  I didn't look at them exactly, but should be.

MR. MILLER:  Your Honor, I move for the admission, at this time, of Government's "1", at this time, the notes that were seized from his house on February 4th, I believe.
MR. SHULL:  No objection, Your Honor.
THE COURT:  Government's "1" is in evidence.

Q.  Now, would it be a fair statement that these notes chronicle your observations or the things that you thought were important during your ingestion of those substances? Correct?
A.  Yeah.  They analogized, or whatever you'd say.  Yeah.  They were shorthand and they'd only be expounded upon by my understanding.  Otherwise, they'd be skeletal.
Q.  Would it be a fair statement that these notes only reflect essentially whatever hallucinations - -
A.  Oh, no.  No.  They were just in terms of the continuity for the experimental facets in which the drug was administered to myself, via myself.
Q.  This had nothing to do with what you were experiencing when you were under the - -
A.  No.  No.
Q.  - - influence of these drugs?
A.  That's not what I'm saying.  I'm just saying they're incomplete in assessing and describing.
Q.  Would it be a fair statement, there's nothing - -
A.  Highlight, so to speak.
Q.  - - there's nothing throughout these which reflects any sort of - - anything of a spiritual nature or anything - -
A.  What was the question?  Is there - -
Q.  - - of a religious nature?  Is there anything noted in that
A.  That would reflect a spiritual nature?
Q.  Yes.  Um hum.  Is there anything in there, I have reached nirvana.  I have reached God - -
A.  Oh.  Oh.
Q.  - - I have done this?
A.  Well, I don't know what nirvana is and I care not to - -
Q.  or, something of a similar nature.
A.  - - care not to strike the flint for God.  But, invisible lover prompter for voluntarily visualization.  That was when I was communing with a girl that I knew in a remote, personal perceptual state.
Q.  Was she there?
A.  Physically, no.
Q.  Oh, okay.
A.  Oh, no.  It was just in terms of a remote, physical perceptual state.
Q.  Meaning what?
A.  Meaning that she was not there, and I was - -
Q.  Hallucinating.
A.  - - perceiving within some non-spacial existence.
Q.  Meaning?
A.  Meaning that there was no distance involved, that the communication was in a non-physical point.
Q.  Okay.
A.  So, hallucination's too broad of a term, if you mind, we might expand our vocabulary to include some others.
Q.  Would it be a fair statement that this chronicles basically what was happening to you when you were under the influence of these drugs.  Correct?
A.  No.  I thought I made that fairly clear.  They're only stabs in terms of the muscular ability to do it before the onset of the drug or do it during a particular lull period, or during a period in which the drug is finished and I'm going to sleep, or things of that nature, where there's time to write. Otherwise, the other things are just grokked and integrated into the personality at a continuous basis.
Q.  These are the things that you thought were important.  Correct?
A.  They were important to write down.  Yes.  But they do not fully - -
Q.  There's no other writings that you have that were seized at that particular time which go beyond that chronicling of your drug usage.  Correct?
A.  Let's see.
Q.  All I'm saying is you have not prepared, nor was there found at your residence, any sort of a diary, chronicle, writing, book in which - -
A.  No.  No.
Q.  - - you relate your drug use to some larger world view, is there?
A.  There's just art.  And that's all I pretty much stuck with right as of - -
Q.  All right.  So, the answer to my question would be, no, there is no chronicle, diary, writing or other item, other than what you call art, which chronicles - - which relates your drug usage to some larger world, do you?
A.  The only point that I have to offer on that is that world view seems to imply by what you want, and the wanting being the words of a description.
Q.  I just really want an answer.
A.  So, to make your answer exist, the art is a symbol, so it is a chronicle.
Q.  What world view does the art symbolize?
A.  Well, see, I came from the world of music where musical symbols meant a lot.  And so, in my frustration from the lack of perfect spatial geometry in music notation, I took to the world of art to relieve the stress of not being able to conceptualize music in terms of a general graph principle where everything is related to altitude and declination in terms of the pitch.  So with those parameters in mind, I essentially focused upon art, and art took upon a symbolic nature where the characters of music symbology merged into art.  And so I just took that as a - -
Q.  Where was this artwork in your house?
A.  Where?
Q.  Where, yeah.
A.  It was in a - - I believe a Kodachrome eight by eleven, a developing paper box, which was cut down a size in which to efficiently hold an approximate 100-page collection of receivables in the realm of art from a ten-year period.  Probably half of them were of a recent, in terms of the recent experimentations.  And then, plus, I've put in numerous other types of arts.  But basically, those were all filtered through the critical thinking process.
Q.  And what do drawings represent?
A.  They represent states of consciousness that were ascribable to the peculiar inability to describe that which is, in essence, somewhat indescribable.
Q.  So what they simply resent - - represent is how - -
A.  Feeling states, so to speak.
Q.  - - high you got.
A.  What?
A.  They simply represent how high you got at that particular time.

MR. SHULL:  Objection.

A.  No.

MR. SHULL:  It's an incorrect summary of the witness' testimony.
THE COURT:  Overruled.

A.  Well, it doesn't matter.  The word does not placate the reality here.  How high is not - -
Q.  It represents simply the affect - -

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, can the witness finish his answer, please?

MR. DE WITT:  The point is - -
THE COURT:  Hold it.  Hold it.

MR. DE WITT:  - - it's describing - - .

THE COURT:  Wait a minute.  Wait a minute.  Got another objection here.  We need to let Mr. DeWitt complete his answer and then move on, but - -
MR. DE WITT:  Yeah.
THE COURT: But I think the question was, does the art reflect - - and I assume that we don't have the art here.

MR. DE WITT:  Yeah.

THE COURT:  Or, that incorrect?
MR. MILLER:  I don't have the art.

THE COURT: Okay. Does the art represent the level of hallucination that you achieved while on one of these drugs, or is there some other meaning that the art takes?
MR. DE WITT:  It's somewhat codified in terms of my own understanding.  Therefore, it wouldn't oftentimes qualify as fine art, and thus, would get rejected.  Because a lot of times - - I mean, rejected by my own critical analysis at a later time, due to the fact that I'm trying to make art for the existent people that would see it beyond my own eyes.  So, therefore, if it doesn't have any value for other people, I would tend to eventually just say, it's a piece of trash, and throw it away.  But at the time that I did it, it reflected a state of consciousness, and, therefore, it was an attempt to materialize that which I knew would not exist for other people, but would be an awareness that I had and was not going to stay within the physical confines of the aftermath, so to speak.

Q.  So did you draw these while you were taking these drugs?
A.  Sometimes.  Sometimes after.
Q.  How far after?
A.  Well, in terms of motor functions, it's usually not best to do it while on the drug.
Q.  I'm just asking, really, Mr. DeWitt - - 
A.  So, anytime after or anytime before, depending upon - -
Q.  Now, other than these pictures - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - is there any other chronicle or diary or book or writing?
A.  Just chemistry, and that's it.
Q.  Just chemistry - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - books.
A.  No.  Chemistry writing.
Q.  Chemistry writing.
A.  Right.
Q.  Meaning chemical symbols and - -
A.  Right.
Q.  - - formulas - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - and things of that nature.
A.  Yeah.  And just dissertations of - - just words and, you know, chemical nomenclatures.
Q.  Let me ask you something just to clarify responses and questions that His Honor asked you.  You indicated that all the equipment you had at your house in May of 1993 was obtained from UMKC?
A.  No.  I tried to include Richard Butler in that statement, but it was rather inabruptly (sic) pulled into - -
Q.  How - -
A.  Yeah.
Q.  How much of stuff was provided to you by Richard Butler?
A.  Oh.  I think I made a list.  But I could only give you a real quantitative answer, if I looked at the DEA inventory.   And I'm missing about five sheets due to illegibility.  But they have the originals, so they could photocopy the five sheets.
Q.  The equipment that you received or that you had your house in February of 1994 - -
A.  Yeah.
Q.  Where did you obtain - -
A.  That was all, right, from UMKC.
Q.  Let me ask you this.
A.  Um hum.
Q.  Did they give to you or did they allow you to take electric scales.
A.  Electric scales.
Q.  Scales, yes.
A.  Oh, those were defect scales that were not being used. Electric scales?  Yeah.
Q.  Let me ask you.  Go ahead.
A.  I took one scale that was being rejected.  It was impossible to fix for the worth of the scale.  So, it had no use. Its sapphires were worn.  So that was just a lead weight as far as I could see.
Q.  Did they give you permission to take it?
A.  No.  I just took it.
Q.  All right.
A.  Yeah.
Q.  What about the Fisher Scientific, model S110 electric scale? Was that the one that was broken?
A.  Fisher.  Fisher what? Oh, oh.  Digital.  Yeah.  That I  just borrowed.  Yeah.
Q.  Did they know that you borrowed it?
A.  No, huh uh.
Q.  What about the infrared spectro - -
A.  That was another lead weight.  It was - - needed fixing and that sort of thing.
Q.  It's a spectrophotometer (sic).  Is that - -
A.  Spectrometer.
Q.  Spectrometer.  Again, was this a - - did they know that you borrowed it?
A.  No.  Huh uh.
Q.  What about a Signet PH controller?
A.  Sigma what?
Q.  Signet, SIGNET--
A.  Signet.
Q.  - - PH controller.
A.  All I remember is a Beckman digital, and that was given to me by Richard.
Q.  This would've been in February of '93.
A.  Yeah.
Q.  They cleared your house out - -
A.  Well, yeah.
Q.  - - in May of 90 - -
A.  They didn't take the Beckman then either.
Q.  Oh, excuse me.  In February of '94. 
A.  Right.  They didn't take the Beckman in May.  So it was still there in February.
Q.  What about a Sartorius electric scale?
A.  Sartorius electric scale.  I think that was another scrap heap piece that - -
Q.  So then did you borrow that without them knowing about it?
A.  Right.  Um hum.
Q.  What about an Ainsworth electric scale?
A.  That was the one I said the sapphires were shot.
Q.  And, again, you borrowed that without their knowing it. Correct?
A.  I took it.  I mean, it wasn't supposed to be returned. It's just a piece of junk.
Q.  What about heating mantels?
A.  Heating mantels?
Q.  Did you borrow those from them, also?
A.  Right.  You've got it.
Q.  Did they know that you had borrowed them?
A.  No.  No.
Q.  What about the new or unused glassware that was found throughout the house?  Had they given you new and unused glassware? And by that I mean triple-neck flask and - -
A.  Those were all used pieces.
Q.  - - flasks.
A.  I cleaned them spotless.
Q.  So, every other piece of glassware - -
A.  Um hum.
Q.  - - in your house.
A.  Yeah.  In reading the grand jury - -
Q.  The library.
A.  What library?
Q.  Every other piece of - - every piece of glassware in that
house was given to you by UMKC?
A.  It came directly from that lab from the previous.  I might remark that Sparks said something about contamination in the
glassware.  That glassware was spotless, triple rinsed, acetoned - - cleaned.  The stuff was spotless.
Q.  There was also various thermometers found.
A.  Um hum.
Q.  There were thermometers.
A.  Right.  Um hum.
Q.  Did you borrow those?
A.  No.  They came from Hellmuth's lab.
Q.  Whose?
A.  Hellmuth.
Q.  Who's Hellmuth?
A.  Professor Hellmuth.
Q.  Did he know that you had borrowed these?
A.  No.  Huh uh.  No.  He just had a bunch that needed what I needed.
Q. And you borrowed what you needed.
A.  Right.
Q.  All right.

MR. MILLER:  I have nothing further, Your Honor.
THE COURT:  Anything else, Mr. Shull?

FURTHER REDIRECT EXAMINATION

BY MR. SHULL:

Q.  Mr. DeWitt, the Court asked you about the quantity of chemicals they found at the premises.  Is the reason why there was so much leftover, the individual doses, was because that simply was the recipe that you were following?
A.  I believe I took that recipe for the last step from Alexander Schulden's (phonetic) book, Pical (phonetic).  And it was somewhere in the latter stages of the second part of the book.  And it was a method using aluminum foil, and it was set for 41 grams as a throughput.  And that's what I used.  I upped the recipe for the ketone, which was the intermediate in that series of reactions, up to fit that particular level.  And that's where I took it.
Q.  Okay.  Thank you.

MR. SHULL:  No other questions.
THE COURT:  Thank you.  Anything else?

FURTHER RECROSS-EXAMINATION

BY MR. MILLER:

Q.  The recipe was for 41 grams of finished product?
A.  That's what his recipe was based around.  It was a - -
Q.  How did you end up with over 400 grams of finished product?
A.  Do you have my spiral-bound UMKC laboratory notebook?
Q.  I don't.  The police.  How did you - -
A.  This is an answer to your question.
Q.  Okay.  How did you end up with over 400 grams of finished product?
A.  I ran the reaction a number of times.  If you'd read the laboratory notebook, you'd know why.  It specifically explains my desires at understanding why the yields were low, why they were high here and the follow-up principles.
Q.  If all the yields - - if all the yields - -
A.  All, okay.
Q.  - - were near 95 or 94 percent.
A.  We're talking about the yield of the reaction.
Q.  Oh, okay.
A.  Not the purity.  Purity is what you're thinking.
Q.  Okay.
A.  Yield.
Q.  All right.
A.  Yield.  Okay?
Q.  Why did you need to do it ten times?
A.  I just finished saying, why was there a low yield, why was there a high yield?  I had to conclusively find out what the parameters were that were affecting the yield.  I'm a chemist.
Q.  Couldn't you have made it in a smaller amount?
A.  Why? The materials are cheap.  It doesn't matter.
Q.  You weren't paying for the materials.  You were taking them from UMKC.  Correct?
A.  No.  I mean, the safrole, the formic acid, the peroxide, they're all cheap.  There's no reason to do it on a small scale.
Q.  One other question.  Who taught you how to make P2P?
A.  Who?
Q.  Yes.
A.  I think I took that method from that Darin Bell book.  He's a, I guess, a professor at USC.  And he goes under the title, Uncle Fester, Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture.  I took that method because Richard Butler had given me that book.  And that's just, you know, it was hanging around.  I thought I'd see whether this book was any good, as far as a method.   Experimental detail is experimental detail.
Q.  You had a copy of that at the first lab.  Correct?
A.  Yeah.  I had a copy.  And then when you guys took it, I grabbed a copy from Richard.  That was his last copy.

MR. MILLER:  I have nothing further, Your Honor.
THE COURT:  Okay.  Anything else?
MR. SHULL:  No, Your Honor.
THE COURT:  Thank you, Mr. DeWitt.
MR. DE WITT:  Um hum.  Sure.
THE COURT:  You may step down.

THE COURT:  Additional evidence from the defense?

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, not on this particular issue.  I expressed to the Court earlier, I am somewhat concerned about the subsequent evidence that the government may apparently be dealing with today.  I've not received the benefit of the discovery.  I don't know if an expert witness may or may not called for on behalf of the defendant.

THE COURT:  What other issue are you reserving the right to present evidence on?

MR. SHULL:  Anything, Your Honor, with regard to whether or not it furthers a governmental interest to regulate the psychedelic or hallucinogenic chemicals used by Mr. DeWitt, and whether or not the government has adopted the least restrictive means concerning that regulation.  I also have received the impression, and I may be wrong, that it will be the government's contention that methamphetamine or MDA is not a hallucinogenic or psychedelic drug. I do have substantial literature which would suggest to the contrary, but I don't have an expert witness available, because that was not one of the issues that I thought was being contemplated by the court's order.

THE COURT:  Okay.  So, you don't have anything, at this point, on any of those issues.  Right?

MR. SHULL:  That's correct, Your Honor.  I have had a conversation with a professor emeritus of biochemistry at Creighton University concerning the subject matter, so I can discuss it.  But I do not have the evidence or the witnesses here today concerning that, if that becomes an issue.
THE COURT:  Okay.  Well, let's take what we can today.
MR. SHULL:  Okay.
THE COURT:  Any other evidence, then, from the defense?
MR. SHULL:  Nothing, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Okay.  Any evidence from the United States?

MR. MILLER:  Other than the - - well, I don't know where we're at. Are we at the point where we found this to be a religion?  If we have, then I think one approach, if we have not - - if we're going to just deal with the religious issue, I really have no further evidence, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Okay.  What other evidence had you contemplated?

MR. MILLER:  Well, if we got to that point, then, simply I would put on somebody from DEA to briefly describe the substances, the issue of whether or not there's a compelling governmental interest, I think, has already been decided.  Congress has already found these to be Schedule I and Schedule II controlled substances.  So, that inquiry is over.  The least restrictive means, I believe, in my brief,  I've cited cases which stand for the proposition that in this particular area, anything short of prohibition, really, it would be ineffectual.  So, therefore, the government's least restrictive means is prohibition.  So, that's where we would be.

THE COURT:  Well, let's take whatever evidence you have available now.  And I'm not in any way deciding whether or not,
at this conjuncture, I've made any decision as to whether this is a religion or whether or not Mr. DeWitt has a legitimate, sincere belief system here, so.  But I do want to get whatever evidence I have available on.  If you would step forward, please, sir.

MR. SHULL:  Your Honor, I have not received a copy of the government's brief.  Perhaps it may be in the mail or something.  Perhaps Mr. Miller - -

MR. MILLER:  We sent it.

MR. SHULL:  - - has an additional copy of it - -

MR. MILLER:  I don't.

MR. SHULL:  - - that I might review.

THE COURT:  When was the brief filed?

MR. MILLER:  Monday, Your Honor.

THE COURT:  Okay.  What do you want to do? What's the problem?

MR. SHULL:  He relies on certain arguments, Your Honor, that he's making to the Court that I haven't had the opportunity to even be made aware of.  I'm confident it was placed in the mail and it may be coming in today's mail.  But it was not there as of my departure this morning.

THE COURT:  Do you a copy of it here?

MR. MILLER:  I don't believe I do, Your Honor.  I just have my - -

THE COURT:  Is this is the government's response in opposition to - -

MR. MILLER:  Yes.

THE COURT:  - - defendant's- motion to dismiss?  Okay, well, my law clerk will provide you with a copy, and we'll give you an opportunity to - - (Off record talking)

THE COURT:  We'll get a copy to you and we'll take a recess and let you read it.