LAST MEDICAL MARIJUANA CASE DROPPED

GLENWOOD SPRINGS - A district court judge has dropped the last case
related to a 2004 raid of a Rifle home where an anti-drug task force
found a large marijuana-growing operation that residents maintained
was a legal medical marijuana enterprise.

Authorities insisted the number of plants were far in excess of the
number allowed by medical marijuana permits, but police evidence
mishandling put the cases in jeopardy.

On Monday, District Judge Daniel Petre agreed to drop charges against
Justin Brownlee, the third to have the charges against him dismissed.

"Based on the two previous rulings, we surmised a similar ruling
would come down in Mr. Brownlee's case," said Deputy District
Attorney Scott Turner. "Therefore in the interest of justice and not
wanting to spend the court's time litigating the issues, we decided
to drop the charges."

Turner filed the motion to dismiss the case on Friday, the first day
new District Attorney Martin Beeson took office, but he said the
decision began under previous District Attorney Colleen Truden.

"It was just a matter of timing," said Turner, who was hired by
Truden and kept on staff by Beeson. The case was slated for a hearing
on Thursday.

Charges stemming from the June 2004 police raid began to fall apart
when a defense lawyer showed that investigators, unfamiliar with the
state's voter-approved amendment legalizing marijuana cultivation,
wrongfully destroyed evidence. A judge ruled that jurors wouldn't be
allowed to see much of the remaining evidence.

Brownlee's uncle Gene Brownlee and his then-wife Jennifer Ryan were
moving into the Rifle apartment when a building caretaker noticed a
display of plants, an irrigation system and an automated grow light
system in the apartment's bottom floor. He contacted authorities.
The Two Rivers Drug Enforcement Team raided the apartment and
arrested the couple, Brownlee and family friend Drew Gillespie.

Ryan said she was certified as a medical marijuana grower and was
allowed to grow marijuana. Gene Brownlee said he was allowed to use
the drug to help control a chronic ailment of the esophagus.

Officers said they found 131 plants in the apartment. They took leaf
samples from the large plants and destroyed the plants themselves,
and uprooted 23 small plants and preserved them, roots and all, in
evidence bags.

But the state medical marijuana law requires that all the plants be
preserved in the case an alleged medical marijuana growing operation
is targeted. Officers said they were unfamiliar with the requirement
when they began destroying the plants and after learning of it,
continued to destroy them and took them to a landfill.

In Ryan's case, District Judge James Boyd allowed only the whole
plants to be entered as evidence, and since Ryan had a license to
grow 24 plants, prosecutors dropped the case. District Judge Daniel
Petre reached a similar decision in Gene Brownlee's case, prompting
prosecutors to drop that case, too.

Only Gillespie received any charges. He pleaded guilty to cultivation
charges and is on probation.