CASE TESTS MEDICAL POT LAW

Defendant says deputies ignored his license to grow marijuana for
medicinal use.

The administrator of Colorado's medicinal marijuana program testified
Thursday to what everybody in the courtroom already knew about
nuances of the state's medical pot law: "It's subject to
interpretation," both by law enforcement and patients who possess a
medical marijuana card.

Specifically, Debra Tuenge, of the Colorado Department of Public
Health and Environment, was addressing a provision in the medicinal
marijuana amendment to the state constitution that gives possessors
of pot licenses legal footing to fight criminal charges when they
possess more pot than the six-plant limit imposed by the amendment.

That issue is central to cultivation of marijuana charge that
54-year-old Thomas Nathaniel Sexton Jr. is facing in Pueblo district
court. Tuenge testified at a hearing for Sexton before District Judge
David Crockenberg.

Sexton's lawyer, Karl Tameler, was seeking suppression of statements
Sexton made to investigators from the Pueblo County Sheriff's
Department and sanctions against the district attorney's office for
destruction of evidence. The sheriff's department raided Sexton's
pot farm on Siloam Road in Beulah on Aug. 14, 2007. Prosecutors
waited about a year to charge him. Investigators seized 128 pot
plants on Sexton's property. He had posted a sign instructing law
enforcement to contact Tuenge to verify the validity of his
operation, but deputies and detectives who testified Thursday said it
was largely ignored.

The sheriff's department pulled the plants, essentially rendering
them useless, without following the protocol with the state to see if
Sexton was approved to grow that many plants. Detectives also
testified that they did not notify the judge who approved a search
warrant for the property that Sexton claimed the farm was legitimate.

Former Pueblo County Deputy Chris Green, who previously spearheaded
the Fremont County marijuana eradication project for two years and
also participated in the Sexton raid, testified that if he had been
in charge of the investigation he would have handled it differently,
including delving into Sexton's claims of validity before destroying
the farm.

Sexton's business, MediMar Ministries, caters to a clientele of
patients suffering from a variety of ills, including cancer. Under
the state's medical marijuana law, a possessor of a medicinal
marijuana license can designate a caregiver to grow up to six plants
- - three that are mature and near harvest, and three in the seedling
phase - in addition to the six plants that the patient can grow for
themselves.

On the night of the raid, Sexton provided documentation of some of
his patients, but not all of them. That prompted investigators to
believe that he was growing more pot that the law allowed.

However, Tameler raised the issue of a provision to the law that
allows physicians to prescribe more than the amount of plants
specified in the constitutional amendment. Among some of Sexton's
patient records were statements from doctors granting their patients
extra plants.

Sexton's own medicinal marijuana prescription was presented as
evidence Thursday. It entitles him to grow 60 plants for personal
use.

Tuenge's testimony did little to affirm or to dash Tameler's
contention that permission for additional plants can be granted by
doctors.

"It does state in the law that a patient and a caregiver can go into
court and explain why they have more than is medically allowed,"
Tuenge said. "Some physicians might put an increased plant count on
(prescriptions), but that doesn't allow our office to say that's OK."

Judge Crockenberg will not allow statements made to deputies by
Sexton before he was read his Miranda rights to be used. However, he
ruled that other photographs entered into evidence would show the
same things that were depicted in a series of photographs of
Sexton's property that sheriff's deputies lost.

Tameler expects to file another motion with the court challenging the
constitutionality of the search.