Raids and aftermaths

An Oakland County Court jury found 70-year-old Barb Agro guilty of delivery/manufacture of marijuana last week. Although she is a registered medical marijuana patient and caregiver, Agro faces as much as four years in prison.

This is the first case stemming from several Oakland County Sheriff's raids on alleged marijuana dispensaries in Ferndale and Waterford, as well as private homes, last Aug. 25. Agro was working in the office at Clinical Relief in Ferndale when it was raided. During the raid, Agro felt confident enough in her legal status to inform police that she and her husband Sal, also a registered patient, grew marijuana in their home. Later that day their home was raided.

Because the front door was unlocked when police raided the house, the Agros were in violation of the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act, which specifies that patients and caregivers who grow marijuana must keep it in a locked and secured area. That led to Oakland Circuit Judge Wendy Potts ruling in favor of a prosecutor's motion that Agro could not use medical marijuana as a defense. Sal Agro died from a heart attack a week after the raids. Barb Agro will be sentenced on July 13.

"Once she gets sentenced, we go to the court of appeals," says Agro's attorney Jerome Sabbota, who adds that the appeal will be based on the jury being kept in the dark about her status as a certified medical marijuana user. Given the injunction against using the medical marijuana defense or any reference to it, Sabbota says, "There was no defense to the charge legally."

Because Agro's defense could not mention medical marijuana, activists attempted to make the jury aware of Agro's patient status by passing out information to jurors as they came and went from the courtroom.

"I believe it backfired," Sabbota says.

When Judge Potts became aware of the actions by activists, she spoke to each juror individually to be clear that they would follow the law as it was presented in the case. Sabbota says that three jurors asked Potts if Agro was a medical marijuana cardholder, but the judge refused to answer. Oakland County Prosecutor Jessica Cooper was quoted referring to the activists' activities as jury tampering in a June 9 Oakland Press article, and ominously noted that some of the activists have been identified on video.

Individuals charged in the Ferndale and Waterford raids are scheduled for pretrial on June 27 — including Agro. These are cases where sheriff's deputies used fake certification cards to gain entry and purchase marijuana, and brought marijuana in to sell to the dispensary. Police also allege that marijuana was illegally sold outside the facilities. Cooper's tactic to get the judge to nullify the medical marijuana defense in the Agro case bodes badly for the medical marijuana community. If a prosecutor can get a judge to nullify the law on a technicality, then there is essentially no MMMA defense.

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