04/12/2007 00:00:00
US: Pot plants returned to Fort Collins couple
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DENVER — It sounds like a pipe dream, but Jim and Lisa Masters are
serious. They believe Fort Collins police detectives should have been
watering, fertilizing and otherwise caring for 39 live medical marijuana
plants seized from their home in August 2006.
Police on Monday gave the plants and other materials — growing lights,
fertilizer, loose marijuana — back to the couple after a judge last week
said their property should be returned. Drug charges against them were
dropped in June.
When the couple drove their minivan to the police warehouse Monday to
pick up the healthy, cannabis-producing plants they remembered, their
plants were dead, dry and, in some cases, moldy.
Their attorney, Brian Vicente, said he plans to file a lawsuit on their
behalf on grounds that the couple’s property should have been returned
undamaged.
“It was kind of surreal,” said Vicente, who inventoried the material as
it was given back to the couple. “There were 50 different bags with
paperwork, some labeled ‘live’ marijuana plants. We opened them all, and
they were dead.”
Fort Collins police spokeswoman Rita Davis said the department did not
have a responsibility to care for the plants because the couple did not
have proper documentation under the state’s medical marijuana
constitutional amendment, which was approved by voters in 2000.
She said because there was no paperwork identifying the couple as
medical marijuana patients or medical marijuana providers, the case was
treated as a regular drug case.
“It would have been handled differently” if they had the proper
paperwork, Davis said.
While the couple did not have documentation at the time of the raid,
District Court Judge James Hiatt ruled the couple met the definition of
caregivers under the law.
Vicente said Jim and Lisa Masters proved they were providing marijuana
to several licensed medical marijuana patients.
“This is a great victory for medical marijuana patients,” James Masters
said in a statement. “While I am disappointed by the condition of the
plants, it is a relief to have them returned. I just hope other patients
won’t have to suffer as I have.”
Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario is among several law-enforcement
officials who have criticized the law, saying it compels police to grow
the illegal plant to prove a case. In November 2005, prosecutors dropped
a case after deputies destroyed 130 plants seized at an apartment.
Officials submitted photos and cuttings of the plant, but a judge said
the actual living plants had to be presented as evidence.
http://www.timescall.com/News_Story.asp?id=5007
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=13059
Author:
Daily Times-Call via UKCIA
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