Defense: Hudson Marijuana Search Illegal, Hearing Delayed

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http://www.lenconnect.com/article/20151209/NEWS/151209112

 

A hearing that was to continue Tuesday for a Hudson man charged with illegally growing and selling marijuana was delayed to January in Lenawee County District Court.

 

A preliminary examination begun Friday, Dec. 4, is to continue Jan. 14 and 15 for ___. A defense motion to throw out evidence police gathered in three searches conducted on Oct. 22 is also to be heard by Judge Laura J. Schaedler.

 

Defense attorney Michael Komorn of Southfield filed a motion Monday, Dec. 7, to suppress evidence obtained in the searches.

 

Affidavits police submitted to obtain the search warrants are defective, Komorn stated in the written motion.

 

____ is a registered medical marijuana patient and registered caregiver for five other patients, Komorn stated in the brief. There is no evidence in the search warrant affidavits that ____ acted illegally, he argued.

 

“We obviously do not agree,” said Lenawee County Prosecutor Burke Castleberry.

“If we thought he was within the parameters of the medical marijuana law we would not have charged him,” Castleberry said. Being a registered caregiver, he said, “does not give you the right to sell marijuana to anyone.”

 

The volume of marijuana involved, he said, also exceeds the limits of the state law.

 

____ was arrested in a building in Hudson where one of the search warrants was executed. A building in Rollin and a house on Rome Road were also searched.

 

The searches and arrest resulted from an investigation by the Region of the Irish Hills Narcotics Office.

 

Michigan State Police Trooper Craig Whittemore testified Friday he was in charge of the investigation that included three controlled marijuana buys by a confidential informant.

 

The investigation was started after the drug unit received tips ___ was selling marijuana to buyers without regard to their medical marijuana status, Whittemore testified.

 

He described to the court controlled buys at the building in Hudson. An informant purchased 8, 12 and 16 ounces of marijuana on Sept. 2 and 16 and Oct. 21, he said.

 

During the searches, police seized nearly 21 pounds of marijuana from the building in Hudson, he said. At the building in Rollin, he said, 34 marijuana plants and processed marijuana weighing 91.5 ounces was seized, along with 7.2 pounds swept from a trailer and pickup bed.

 

Search warrant affidavits are void of “any personal information of ___ ever being at, within or going to or from these locations,” Komorn stated in his motion to suppress the seized evidence.

 

“They fail to assert particularity of a crime, or a fact by which a reasonable conclusion could be drawn that a crime was occurring within the desired location,” he stated.

 

Komorn also argued the affidavits should have stated that a warranted search of the Hudson building and Rome Road home were conducted in 2013 with no criminal charges resulting.