STATEMENT TOSSED, POT CASE DISMISSED

A 61-year-old Guelph man's charges of production and possession of
$2.6 million of marijuana were dismissed Dec. 18 after the accused
man's statement to police was excluded based on a violation of his
constitutional rights.

More details of what happened in the case are available since it was
reported last week that the charges were dismissed.

Walkerton Ontario Court Justice George Brophy ruled the rights to
counsel of accused Ba Thuan Tran were violated after a raid on a farm
near Dornoch in September, 2007, supervising federal Crown attorney
Stephane Marinier said in an interview.

Marinier, who was responding to inquiries from The Sun Times last
week, said Brophy acquitted the defendant after a two-day trial.

The decision will not be appealed, said Marinier, of the Public
Prosecution Service of Canada. No one else was charged.

The excluded statement had to do with how long Tran had been at the
residence, Marinier said. It dealt with "the property and how he
(Tran) came to be there," said federal Crown Niall Gilks, who
conducted the trial. He was reluctant to be more specific, since the
statement was excluded as evidence.

Police took the statement when Tran was arrested, Gilks said in an
interview Tuesday. Gilks said he couldn't say how significant that
Charter ruling was. He added "It was a circumstantial case."

Gilks said Justice Brophy considered the entirety of the case and
concluded "there wasn't sufficient evidence to convict the accused."
The judge didn't issue a written ruling, court staff said.

Fifty officers from West Grey, the OPP, RCMP, Guelph, Owen Sound and
Waterloo Regional Police seized 1,990 plants from a property on
Highway 6 south of Dornoch in the former Glenelg Township, police
said at the time.

Officials used a helicopter to fly over the area, which led to the
seizure of an additional 593 plants at six locations. This week, West
Grey Police Service referred calls about the case to an investigating
officer, who could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

Other high-profile marijuana busts have fallen apart in court locally
on constitutional grounds, including one from July 2005 near Meaford.

Justice Julia Morneau ruled in that case two Grey County OPP officers
had no authority to stop two vehicles on a country road one night in
fall of 2003, even if they did find $400,000 worth of marijuana in
one of them. She also expressed concern about the officers'
understanding of the limits of the power to stop drivers.

In April of 2005, federal Crown attorney Doug Grace withdrew charges
against four men accused of growing more than $1 million worth of
marijuana northwest of Kemble.

Police received a tip that "asians" had moved to a rural property and
they might be growing marijuana.

When police arrived, they stopped a Vietnamese man in a cube van who
didn't roll down his window, but instead used his cellphone. The van
smelled strongly of marijuana inside. More vehicles quickly left the property.

But police were found to have insufficient grounds to stop the van.
The tip to police wasn't strong enough, such as it would be from a
trusted informant who had seen the drugs.

A search of the property found marijuana cut and drying in a barn and
in a field between Kemble and Big Bay where it had been grown. The
pot was not visible from the road.