MOLD PUTS RETURN OF SR MAN'S MEDICAL MARIJUANA ON HOLD

Sheriff's Evidence Locker Heavily Contaminated, Officials Say

A dangerous mold of mysterious origin is growing on marijuana and other
items in a Sheriff's Department evidence room and it's expected to cost at
least $64,000 to clean up, county officials said.

The existence of the mold was disclosed Friday in a court hearing involving
a Santa Rosa man who wants his plants returned after a jury acquitted him
in a medical marijuana case.

Sonoma County officials are opposing the request, saying the evidence
locker where his plants are held is so badly contaminated that the room is
off limits.

"It's a serious issue," Deputy County Counsel Anne Keck said. "People have
to put on an environmental bunny suit to go in there. The spores are airborne."

Sheriff's Lt. Jay Farmer said the locked room contains evidence from about
7,800 criminal cases. Besides marijuana in burlap bags from a number of
large busts, other items include VCRs, TVs and guns.

"You name it, it's in there," Farmer said.

Alan MacFarlane, who is seeking the return of marijuana grown in his
backyard, expressed skepticism about the contamination, and his attorney
asked a judge to appoint another expert to investigate.

According to a report prepared for the county by an environmental health
and safety consultant, there are three types of mold growing in the
evidence room -- once a laundry room in the old jail -- and the one that
poses the most serious health problem is called scopularlopsis.

The unusual fungi is "an opportunistic human pathogen" that can cause
widespread infection if an individual's immune system is suppressed,
according to the report prepared by the Cohen Group of San Mateo.

The consultant, Gregory Raymond, said he rarely sees scopularlopsis in the
thousands of samples he collects each year.

"There's very little information on this type of fungus in the literature,"
he said. "I talked to microbiologists. None had heard about it growing on
marijuana."

Authorities say the problem isn't likely to affect prosecution of current
court cases, since most of the evidence in the room was taken four to eight
years ago.

But, Farmer said, some of the evidence may still be pertinent to cases on
appeal.

County supervisors have allocated $217,000 to sort through evidence in the
contaminated room and decide how much needs to be decontaminated and kept,
and how much can be destroyed or returned before the Sheriff's Department
moves into its new headquarters, currently under construction.

Farmer said that even without the mold, the evidence would need to be
sorted and its status researched. He said the cost of the decontamination
process by itself is about $64,000.

County supervisors allocated an extra $260,000 this week to purge old
evidence in other storage areas.

During a hearing on MacFarlane's request, Keck said non-porous surfaces can
be decontaminated, but that the burlap bags and the marijuana itself cannot
be rid of the fungus.

"We're skeptical of this claim," replied defense attorney Sandy Feinland.
"There's no logical explanation for the contamination of these plants. They
were raised in Mr. MacFarlane's back yard."

There have been at least two other cases in Sonoma County in which
marijuana was returned to defendanst after drug charges were dismissed
because they qualified as users of medical marijuana.

"Now we're asking for the return of the marijuana," Feinland said.
"Suddenly the plants are so contaminated they will endanger the county if
they're released."

Feinland noted that during MacFarlane's recent trial, some of the buds and
other portions of the 110 plants seized from him was brought into the court
in paper bags and shown to the jury.

But Prosecutor Alex "Bud" McMahon said the specimens that were introduced
in the trial were most likely preserved and kept in a different environment
than the old laundry room.

He requested that the judge refuse to release any of MacFarlane's marijuana
until the matter can be studied further.

"The court doesn't want to return property to the defendant that could
actually kill him," McMahon said.

Judge Robert Boyd said he will delay a decision until he gets more
information. He set another hearing on the matter for April 3.