WITNESS TESTIFIES HUGE MARIJUANA STASH IS 'DELIVERY' AMOUNT

Jury deliberating case against woman who had 132 pounds of drugs in her
basement.

The cubes of marijuana taken from a house at 1703 Princeton was enough to
last a lifetime, an undercover officer testified at a drug possession trial
on Thursday.

"That will last more than the lifetime of one person," the Kalamazoo Valley
Enforcement Team agent testified, referring to the six boxes of confiscated
marijuana.

The 132 pounds of marijuana were taken from the house rented by Beatriz
Valdez Pina, who is charged with possession with intent to deliver more
than45 kilograms of a marijuana and maintaining a drug house.That quantity
of marijuana has a street value of $150,000, according to the prosecution.

Defense attorney Patti Shirley said Pina was not aware there was marijuana
in the basement and maintained that someone else with access to the house
was storing it there without her knowledge.

The Kalamazoo County Circuit Court jury of 10 women and two men received the
case late Thursday afternoon.

During the one day of testimony, the undercover agent said he went into the
house with a search warrant on Nov. 29. He said he was met with an
overpowering aroma of marijuana as he started to descend the basement
stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs was a lot of cellophane plastic wrap, and cubes
of marijuana were found to the side of the furnace in the center of the
basement.

"When you have that amount of marijuana, that is delivery amount," as
opposed to user quantity, he said.

None of Pina's fingerprints were recovered from the mounds of evidence
removed from her basement, the officer testified.

Assistant prosecuting attorney Dave DeBack also called on Ollie Chambers,
the landlord, who testified that Pina was the only person to whom he rented
the house.

The undercover agent's supervisor, Sgt. Michael Mastromatteo, testified that
Pina told him she knew he was there because of the "stuff in the basement,"
which she later clarified as being "marijuana."He said she also told him she
did not use the drug.

But Shirley maintained Pina knew the KVET officers were there to search her
house for drugs because the undercover officer said so when he returned to
the residence with a search warrant.

In closing arguments, DeBack said Pina was clearly maintaining a drug house.
He then started to stack the six boxes of marijuana on the edge of the
prosecution table.

"The reason I'm stacking this up is because the defendant has built herself
a wall of ignorance," he said."She's basically hiding behind this wall of
ignorance and saying 'I don't know anything.'

"I think it flies in the face of common sense that a person can have 132
pounds of marijuana in her basement, stinking to high heaven, ... (and claim
ignorance of its presence)."

Shirley maintained that the prosecution had insufficient evidence to link
Pina to the marijuana seized.

As she made her closing arguments, Patti removed, one by one, the boxes
DeBack had stacked on the table in front of him.

"Well, this wall is very impressive Mr. DeBack built," Shirley said.
"There's a lot of marijuana, pot, here. There's a lot of plastic here,
there's a lot of stuff here. But what's not here is any evidence of intent.

"The proofs in this case were short, or brief, because this case is lacking
substance."

Checked-by: Don Beck