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Originally charged with a felony by prosecutors, a Silver Spring woman walked out of a Montgomery County court Thursday with what amounts to a slap on the wrist after using a little-known state law that reduces the sentence of those convicted of marijuana possession if the drug was used medicinally.

Nineteen-year-old Winnie Gesumwa of Silver Spring was originally charged with a felony count of possession of a controlled dangerous substance with the intent to distribute after being arrested Feb. 24 at a friend's apartment.

Police responded to complaints of marijuana smoke from the apartment on Sligo Avenue and found Gesumwa with 17 small bags of marijuana with a street value $170, according to court documents.

She spent a night in jail.

"It was cold and scary," Gesumwa, a student at Montgomery College with no prior convictions, said after a hearing in Montgomery County Circuit Court.

Gesumwa was diagnosed with epilepsy in 2002, a year before the Maryland General Assembly passed House Bill 1222, the Darrell Putnam Compassionate Use Act. The law states that if someone convicted of possession of marijuana proves to a judge that the drug was used for medicinal purposes, the maximum penalty is a $100 fine and no probation.

An amendment to the law passed in 2006 defined which diseases could be defended by medical marijuana. They included HIV and AIDS, cancer, sickle cell anemia and seizures, among others.

Gesumwa has myoclonic epilepsy, which has no cure and leaves those afflicted with sudden seizures and "blackouts." Medical records of the epilepsy were presented as evidence in court.

"Sometimes when I'm in a conversation, I'll pause and just stare at you," Gesumwa, a native of Kenya who moved to the U.S. in 2000, said of the blackouts. While speaking after the hearing, she suffered a seizure and needed recent conversation to be repeated.

She began taking medication for the epilepsy and the side effects included headaches, backaches, sleep apnea and anorexia. It affected her studies at John F. Kennedy High School in Wheaton, and she eventually had to join Montgomery College's Gateway to College Program, because it allowed her to go to school later in the day after getting sufficient sleep.

Last summer, after speaking with fellow counselors at a camp for epileptic children and doing research online, she learned that marijuana helps ease the effects of epilepsy.

She consulted with her doctor and began using marijuana, promising her mother she wouldn't smoke in their apartment on Peartree Court in Silver Spring. The early morning blackouts that occurred frequently were suddenly all but gone.

"Epilepsy is always bubbling on the surface, and it can explode at any moment," said Alex Foster, Gesumwa's Rockville-based attorney. "… Marijuana addresses that ‘bubbling-on-the-surface' quality that's always there."

Foster said he had never heard of the law prior to this case and few judges, prosecutors and lawyers in the state know about it.

Gesumwa, who didn't know about the law until she met Foster, was cross-examined by Assistant State's Attorney Stephen Chaikin, who wanted more that just the defendant's testimony to prove the marijuana could be used to treat epilepsy.

"It sounds good, it feels good and it seems right, but without an expert witness or medical records, how can we prove anything?" Chaikin asked.

Foster presented results from medical surveys that he said prove marijuana is an effective treatment for epilepsy in place of testimony from doctors, which the family could not afford.

Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Andrew L. Sonner said Chaikin's argument – that Gesumwa used her epilepsy as an excuse for possessing the marijuana – was thin and said the law applied to Gesumwa's case.

"You came close to an argument, but you don't have the evidence," Sonner said to Chaikin.

Sonner sentenced Gesumwa to a suspended $100 fine.

She said she has not smoked marijuana since her arrest and has seen a recurrence in blackouts. She is wary of using it again, because of the lengthy legal procedures associated with the case.

"It's a lot of work for something that could have been easily figured out," she said.