LAW BROKEN AT GROW OP

But it is the cops who are found at fault in search of Coquitlam house
Andy Ivens, Staff Reporter The Province A Coquitlam man who had his
Charter rights trampled during a police search of his house has had
three convictions related to running a marijuana grow operation overturned.

When the police arrived at the home of Jeffery Arthur Bohn in March
1994, they did not show him the search warrant that another officer
had secured from a justice of the peace a few minutes earlier.

The officers arrested Bohn and told him he could not phone his lawyer
until he arrived at the police station.

Justice Catherine Ryan, who wrote the unanimous B.C. Court of Appeal
decision handed down yesterday, found the breaches of Bohn's rights to
be serious. She quoted an Ontario judge in a 1997 case in her reasons
for judgment:

"Convictions procured by state violations of our most fundamental law
lack . . . moral authority."

The only evidence against Bohn was gathered in the search, the fruits
of which the appeal court ruled inadmissible. So, rather than order a
new trial, the court entered acquittals on the three charges of which
Bohn had been found guilty by a B.C. Supreme Court judge at his 1997
trial -- theft of electricity, unlawful cultivation of marijuana, and
possession of marijuana for the purpose of trafficking.

Bohn's lawyer, Neil Cobb, said it's extremely rare that an acquittal
is entered at that level.

A Coquitlam RCMP search team raided Bohn's home on Guilby Street at
about 9:45 p.m. on March 30, 1994, 10 minutes after another constable
had called them on his cell phone to say he had obtained a search warrant.

The search team arrested Bohn at his back door, placed him in
handcuffs and seated him in his living room. He asked to be allowed to
call his lawyer.

While executing the search warrant for the electrical bypass, the
search team found the marijuana grow-op they were looking for. They
had been tipped to it two weeks earlier.

The search team phoned back to the first constable, who went back to
the justice of the peace, who granted a Narcotic Control Act search
warrant.

The first constable arrived at the house with both warrants less than
half an hour later.

"Although the police officers in this case advised the appellant of
the existence of the warrant and the reason for their presence," Ryan
wrote, "they could not produce the warrant which confirmed that the
search had prior authorization from an independent body."

Ryan also questioned the rationale for police taking the offending
shortcut -- only to save time.

"There was no urgency to the situation," she wrote.

"Hydro bypasses are not easily disposed of or moved. The reason to
hurry the search along was created by the decision of the police to go
ahead that night, rather than wait until the next day."

She said the police did nothing wrong "in waiting for word . . . that
a marijuana grow operation was inside.

"What was wrong, however, is that by failing to ensure that the first
warrant was in [the] possession of those who were searching, the
police breached the clear dictates of [the Criminal Code]."