Failing to check the Colorado state medical marijuana registry before confiscating and destroying more than 42 marijuana plants may have burned the local Larimer County Sheriff’s Office.
In the fall of 2010, investigators with the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office and a SWAT team, raided the Fort Collins, Colo., home of 35-year-old Kaleb Young after tracking down and examining his financial records, property information and utility records while conducting undercover surveillance, and confiscated his marijuana plants.
Now Young is seeking $210,000 in damages for his plants, and Young’s attorney, Rob Corry, describes the confiscation of the plants as a violation of Young’s civil rights, since the Colorado Constitution requires that seized medical marijuana be returned on acquittal.
“They had 18 SWAT-level officers wearing battle dress uniforms, many of them carrying assault rifles,” Corry said of the 2010 raid. “They ripped Kaleb out of his house with guns drawn — this for a guy who had no criminal record — and did the same thing to his mother.”
Though Young had nothing on his criminal record more serious than a traffic violation, law enforcement had him under surveillance for about five months.
“Multiple police officers went over there, made observations, pulled power records. They spent hundreds of hours working this up. It was ridiculous,” Corry said. “They charged him with three felony counts: cultivation, possession with intent to distribute and possession of over eight ounces, which was felony level at that time.”
But Young had every right to grow those plants, since he was registered with state’s medical marijuana registry — he just hadn’t received his medical card (red card) yet, due to a backlog in the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s processing of medical marijuana paperwork.
Unconstitutional raid?
Lucky for Young, he had a doctor’s note allowing him to grow 50 plants.
According to an April 3, 2013 filing by Corry, “the only action (the lead investigator) failed to perform was to check the registry to determine whether plaintiff was a registered medical-marijuana patient and caregiver,” which Young was.
In the lawsuit, Corry says “throughout December 2011, Mr. Young repeatedly attempted to enforce, through counsel, the District Court order that required the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office to return property previously seized from his residence.”
The lawsuit also highlights that the Colorado Constitution states that any marijuana or paraphernalia seized by “state or local law enforcement officials from a patient or primary caregiver in connection with the claimed medical use of marijuana,” must be returned on acquittal.
Young’s plants and equipment were eventually returned to him, but he says the plants were worthless since the deputies had cut them from the roots, bagged the plants in plastic bags, and failed to maintain them. Corry said that in Colorado, it’s completely acceptable and ordinary for Fort Collins Police Services to take samples and photos of plants, leaving them at the scene where the warrant was served.
Young filed a lawsuit in December 2012 against the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office. Corry says his client expects to receive $5,000 per plant — a number that is based on what law enforcers in Colorado have testified a marijuana plant is worth, in addition to attorney fees.
Corry has ample experience representing people in marijuana-related cases across the Rocky Mountain state, but says this case — a medical marijuana grower is acquitted at trial and sues law enforcement for not returning marijuana plants — is the first of its kind.
“You hear a lot about these cases being threatened,” he said. “But to my knowledge, none have gone the distance yet.”
Federal law trumps Colorado Constitution
Jim Alderden was the sheriff when the 2010 raid occurred, and he has previously told local media that the sheriff’s office “couldn’t uphold the constitutional requirements to keep medical marijuana plants alive and said plants held as evidence wouldn’t be maintained because the office lacked the people, space and resources to do so.”
Also concerning for Corry during Young’s arrest was that the deputies confiscated numerous documents from Young’s home — including information on patients Young was a medical marijuana caregiver for — into evidence.
In his report, Pete Mesecher, the lead investigator of the case, provided photocopies of medical marijuana registry documents that identified Young and his many patients, which included copies of their driver’s licenses.
According to Mesecher’s report, the sheriff’s office had grown suspicious of Young since he had not reported any income with the Colorado Department of Labor since 2005.
Mesecher wrote in his affidavit in the civil case that he didn’t maintain or cultivate the plants because that would have violated state and federal criminal laws. “Notwithstanding” the Colorado Constitution, marijuana is illegal under federal law, according to Mesecher’s affidavit.