OTTAWA COUNTY TURNS OVER MEDICAL MARIJUANA RECORDS

Holland, MI - When Ottawa County handed over hundreds of pages of
documents relating to medical marijuana, freelance journalist Eric
VanDussen considered it a victory.

In September, the Traverse City-based researcher submitted a Freedom
of Information Act request for the documents, but the county summarily
rejected it because the data was "exempt from disclosure under the
Attorney Work-Product privilege," which protects attorneys from having
to disclose materials that could reveal their theory of a case or
trial strategy.

So VanDussen filed a lawsuit in his home county against Ottawa County
Prosecutor Ron Frantz, seeking $500 in punitive damages in addition to
having the county turn over the documents. He claimed the county
"arbitrarily and capriciously violated the FOIA." About six weeks
later, the lawsuit was dismissed, and the county turned over about 700
pages of documents.

VanDussen is working on a documentary and wants to find out "which
prosecutors are more apt to go after medical marijuana patients with
the full force of the law," he said.

"There's no conformity at all," he said. "That's what I'm interested
in. It's been two-and-a-half years (since the state's medical
marijuana law went into effect), and there's still no real standards
or direction for people who are involved in medical marijuana.

"I absolutely knew their argument that those records were not public
records was ludicrous," said VanDussen, who is researching the
differences in how medical marijuana cases are being prosecuted in
Michigan counties. Doug Van Essen, an attorney for Ottawa County, sees
the situation quite differently. The FOIA request was simply directed
to the wrong place, he said.

"We could say, 'Look, you should have sent the FOIA to the county, not
the prosecutor,' however we said, 'Give us three weeks and we will
give you some --not all -- of the documents you're looking for.' We
could have made him drive down from Traverse City and look through all
those records but instead we gathered them up."

VanDussen's initial request was rejected because he asked for
documents the prosecutor wasn't authorized to give, such as police
reports, Van Essen said.

"He was targeting the wrong official," he said.

Records show VanDussen emailed his FOIA request to Ottawa County
Prosecutor Ron Frantz on Sept. 9. He asked for documents detailing
marijuana-related arrests or criminal charges in which the defendant
either had a medical marijuana card or argued they had a medical
reason for using marijuana.

He similar FOIA requests in Michigan's other 82 counties; Ottawa and
Kalkaska counties sent him rejections, VanDussen said.

The county reached an agreement with VanDussen in April, however,
promising to hand over medical marijuana law-related police reports
and search warrants for free.

If the prosecutor's office was unable to provide certain documents,
they should have stated so in their letter to VanDussen, he said, then
given him what they could.

Meanwhile, Kalkaska County has also agreed to give VanDussen the
information he requested. He's still waiting to receive documents from
several other counties, too.