US CO: Louisville Medical-Marijuana Patient Heads To Trial

LOUISVILLE MEDICAL-MARIJUANA PATIENT HEADS TO TRIAL

Man Plans To Give Speech At CU Ahead Of Trial

Boulder Daily Camera
By Vanessa Miller
Wednesday, July 22, 2009

BOULDER, Colo. — A Louisville medical marijuana patient who was arrested last year on suspicion of possessing more than a legally allowed amount of the drug is fighting back as he heads to trial in Boulder County District Court next month.

Jason Lauve, 38, was arrested June 26, 2008, on suspicion of felony marijuana possession after police searched his home and found more than 30 marijuana plants. The case is scheduled to go to trial Aug. 3, and Lauve is asking people to support him by attending the trial, writing letters to the media and contacting the Boulder County district attorney to "tell him to stop prosecuting sick people."

Lauve, who uses a cane and a wheelchair after breaking his back at Eldora Mountain Resort in 2004, also is holding a talk Tuesday at the University of Colorado titled "Medical Marijuana: How Patients and Caregivers Can Protect Themselves."

"We're depending on the First Amendment to educate people about what's going on," said Lauve's attorney, Rob Corry.

At Tuesday's talk, Lauve will share his story about how he was injured, how he self-medicated, how he ended up in Boulder County Jail and why he's now headed to trial on felony charges.

Lauve, Corry and a patient advocate with the Rocky Mountain Caregivers Cooperative hope to educate Colorado patients about the law and their rights to legally grow and possess marijuana. Patients with "debilitating medical conditions" can use cannabis as a medicine, if a physician recommends it, according to Corry.

But authorities sometimes deny that right, he said, like in Lauve's case. Corry said his client presented police with a valid medical marijuana card when investigators searched his home and seized his medicine.

"He did nothing wrong," Corry said. "I'm baffled as to why the District Attorney's Office feels it needs to spend court days and Boulder County residents' time to sit for three days and assess whether this person is guilty of a felony and deserves to spend time in prison."

District Attorney Stan Garnett said he can't comment about Lauve's case because it's heading to trial, but he said his office is committed to treating Lauve fairly.

"We only prosecute cases where we have sufficient evidence and can prove a violation of the law," Garnett said. "We don't prosecute cases to make examples of people. In fact, it's important to me and everyone in my office that we treat each case individually and each defendant fairly."

Garnett said he has a "fair amount of sympathy" for medical-marijuana patients.

"But my job is to enforce the law is it is currently written," he said.

Boulder County sheriff's Sgt. Barry Hartkopp, who works on the county's drug task force, said medical marijuana patients can legally possess six marijuana plants and two ounces of product. A doctor can give permission to have more, he said, but evidence found at Lauve's home led investigators to believe that "he was outside the limit of the law."

Lauve said he was just following his doctor's orders on how to treat himself for the extreme pain he's suffered since a snowboarder crashed into him at Eldora five years ago. Lauve -- who was in his 10th year volunteering for the Eldora Special Recreation program when he was injured -- said he wanted to find a way to wean himself off morphine and other opiates, and ingesting marijuana through food helped him do that.

Lauve said he got into trouble after trying to grow his own plants without much knowledge of how to do so. He had dozens of unusable plants, and decided to collect them in trash sacks in his garage. He didn't want to put them by the curb for fear that teenagers or criminals would find them.

"I had no idea what to do with them," he said.

Even if he had been using all the plants officers found in his garage, patient advocate Timothy Tipton said, Lauve had a doctor's permission to possess larger amounts of marijuana because he ingests the drug -- which requires more plants than smoking.

--- Jason Lauve If you go

Jason Lauve will give a talk, titled "Medical Marijuana: How Patients and Caregivers Can Protect Themselves," at 7 p.m. Tuesday at the University of Colorado's University Memorial Center, Room 247. For more information, visit http://www.colorado420.com/news/freetalk.patients.protect1.html

Lauve's trial is scheduled to begin Aug. 3 in Boulder County District Court at the Boulder County Justice Center on Sixth Street and Canyon Boulevard.

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Attorney: Medical-pot patient didn't have too much

By Vanessa Miller
Originally published 10:02 a.m., August 4, 2009

BOULDER, Colo. — A Louisville medical marijuana patient arrested last year on suspicion of possessing 17 times more marijuana than is legally allowed did not break the law by having too much medication, his defense attorney told a panel of 12 jurors this morning during opening statements in Jason Lauve’s trial.

Although police found stems and leaves and evidence of a marijuana grow inside Lauve’s Louisville home on June 26, 2008, defense attorney Rob Corry said Lauve was an amateur at cultivating medical marijuana and wasn’t able to glean much medicine from his failed grow.

“Not a single witness called by the prosecution or the defense will say that Jason Lauve, from a medical perspective, had too much marijuana,” Corry said.

Lauve, 38, faces a felony marijuana possession charge after police found more than 30 marijuana plants and other forms of the drug in his home.

Prosecutor Karen Lorenz, during opening statements today, said Lauve told police on the day they searched his home that he did not have permission from a doctor to have more marijuana than is legally allowed: 2 ounces and six plants.

Lauve also told police “he was trying to learn what he was capable of and considering spreading out,” Lorenz said.

Regardless of what Lauve was trying to do or why he was trying to grow so much, Lorenz said the facts of the case show that Lauve had an amount of marijuana “far in excess of what is permitted by Colorado law.”

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milehighmedical said:

I'm pretty sure that there was some sort of informant to trigger an investigation?

Maybe they didn't know if he was medical? Makes me wonder... if they have an on-going investigation, do they check to see if the resident in question is medical or not? They can't really since the database isn't supposed to be accessible. So they don't know till they kick in your door? Seems kind of ridiculous.

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Defendant: Pot lets me 'have a life'

Jury to hear closing arguments Thursday in medical marijuana trial

By John Aguilar
Wednesday, August 5, 2009

BOULDER, Colo. — A Louisville man on trial for allegedly possessing excessive amounts of medicinal marijuana broke down in court Wednesday as he testified about the pain he has endured since being hit by a snowboarder on the slopes of Eldora Mountain Resort nearly five years ago.

Jason Lauve fought back tears as he described how he went from being an avid outdoorsman and an expert telemark skier — who taught disabled children how to ski — to being a person in chronic pain who takes a laundry list of medications and uses a wheelchair to get around much of the time.

He said smoking and ingesting marijuana — with a state-issued medical marijuana license — has given him pain relief that no other pharmaceutical drug or medical treatment has been able to provide.

Lauve, 38, faces a felony marijuana possession charge — punishable by up to three years in prison — after police found more than 30 plants and other forms of the drug in his home last summer.

The jury will hear closing arguments in the three-day trial Thursday morning.

Boulder County District Judge Maria Berkenkotter told the eight men and four women on the jury Wednesday that they could find Lauve guilty of a felony possession charge of more than 8 ounces of marijuana, or one of two lesser counts — possession of 1 to 8 ounces or possession of less than an ounce.

He also faces a charge of possessing marijuana concentrate.

Lauve’s testimony dominated the day, as he spoke about being forced to abandon his days of 100-mile bicycle rides for a cane and wheelchair following the December 2004 ski collision.

“For the first two years, I don’t think I did anything,” Lauve said. “It took me two years to finally learn how to start over. I still suffer pain from that accident.”

He told the jury his health was further compromised in a 2007 auto accident, in which he was rear-ended by a woman who was texting on her phone.

During breaks in the trial, Lauve would lie down on a couch in the hallway outside the courtroom.

Combing through a bag of medications that have been prescribed to him, Lauve testified that he takes Vicodin and Relafen, among other painkillers. But he said they all have side effects that require him to take additional medication.

Lauve told the jury that after discussing the possible benefits of marijuana with his doctor, he was approved for a medical marijuana card and has renewed his license every year.

“I took a considerable amount of time to learn what worked for me,” he said. “I didn’t just jump in and smoke a garbage can of marijuana.”

He said marijuana has helped him function again and allowed him to wean himself off of a couple of the painkillers he was taking, such as morphine and Oxycodone.

“I didn’t want a role of growing marijuana in my life,” he testified. “It was a necessity. It allowed me to be participating in society, to have a life.”

Lauve testified that he sprinkles the potent part of the marijuana bud into his tuna fish or oatmeal or mixes it into his butter before eating it, allowing him to get through the work day without excessive discomfort. He also typically smokes pot three times a day, Lauve said.

Prosecutors allege that the 34 ounces — or more than 2 pounds — of pot seized at Lauve’s house in June 2008 were a clear violation of the constitutional amendment Colorado voters passed decriminalizing medical marijuana. The law limits a patient to 2 ounces of usable marijuana and six plants.

But Lauve argues that the amendment also includes a provision that protects a patient or caregiver who claims to need more than the state-mandated maximum to address a debilitating condition.

He said he simply grew what he needed to ease his pain and never used the drug to get high. He said the 10 to 12 Ziploc bags of marijuana seized by police contained a typical amount of the drug that he would have in his possession at any given time.

He is not an accomplished marijuana grower, Lauve testified, and many of his plants died at his house. He said he kept much of the unusable parts of the plants — the stems, seeds and leaves — in his garage because he was afraid that putting them on the curb for trash collection would make them available to children or criminals.

“Did you ever think in June of 2008 that you had more than what was medically necessary?” asked his lawyer, Rob Corry.

“No,” the defendant replied.

“Did you ever intend to break the law?” Corry asked.

“I had no intent to do that — my main intent was to find an acceptable quality of life for myself,” Lauve said. “From what I understood, I was doing the right thing.”

Earlier Wednesday, Lauve watched as the evidence collected against him was weighed for the jury.

Dana May, a medical marijuana grower who also suffers from chronic pain, testified that the pot recovered from Lauve’s home was low-grade “schwag” full of stems and leaves.

“I smell some very dry, what I consider to be low-grade cannabis with a lot of stems,” May said after placing his face in the opening of a pot-filled Ziploc bag. “This is so low-grade and so low-count, I would have no use for it.”

After the defense rested, Lauve said he felt good about his testimony because “it was coming from my heart.”

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Medical-marijuana patient acquitted on all charges

By John Aguilar
Updated 02:00 p.m., August 6, 2009

BOULDER, Colo. — UPDATE: 1:39 p.m.

A Louisville man who was accused of possessing an illegal amount of medical marijuana when his home was raided last year was acquitted on all charges Thursday afternoon.

After deliberating for a little more than three hours, a jury of eight men and four women found Jason Lauve, 38, not guilty of a felony drug possession charge, as well as lesser charges of possessing marijuana and marijuana concentrate.

Lauve burst out crying when the verdict was announced and hugged his defense attorney, Rob Corry. Several audience members clapped and expressed their approval.

Lauve was charged with possessing 17 times the permitted amount of marijuana that the state allows for medical purposes -- which is set at two ounces and no more than six plants. Police said they found more than 30 pot plants and more than two pounds of marijuana during a raid of his Louisville home in June 2008.

Lauve, who has had a state-issued medical marijuana ID card for several years, suffered severe injuries to his back after being struck by a snowboarder at Eldora Ski Resort in 2004 and has smoked pot three times a day and ingested it once a day to ease his pain.

He argued the constitutional amendment voters approved nine years ago contains a provision that allows patients to ultimately decide the amount of marijuana that gives them relief from a debilitating condition.

UPDATE: 1:25 p.m.

The jury in Jason Lauve's medical marijuana trial has reached a verdict, according to his attorney.

Defense attorney Rob Corry said he received a call from the clerk of the court around 1:20 p.m. informing him the 12-person jury has reached a unanimous decision in the case.

The jury deliberated for about three hours.

An announcement of the verdict is forthcoming.

UPDATE: 10:56 a.m.

Jury begins deliberations in medical pot trial

A Louisville man charged with having an unlawful amount of medical marijuana claimed Thursday morning that Colorado law permits him to decide for himself how much pot he needs to ease the pain induced by a ski slope collision he was involved in nearly five years ago.

Prosecutors countered that accepting the defendant's interpretation of the state's medical marijuana law would give patients "carte blanche" to possess whatever amount of pot they desired, a clear violation of the law's intent.

Lawyers in the case wrapped up their closing arguments this morning and the case is now in the hands of the jury.

Jason Lauve, 38, is charged with possessing 17 times the permitted amount of marijuana that the state allows for medical purposes -- which is set at two ounces and no more than six plants. Police said they found more than 30 pot plants and more than two pounds of marijuana during a raid of his Louisville home in June 2008.

Lauve, who has had a state-issued medical marijuana ID card for several years, suffered severe injuries to his back after being struck by a snowboarder at Eldora Ski Resort in 2004 and has smoked pot three times a day and ingested it once a day to ease his pain.

He argues the constitutional amendment voters approved nine years ago contains a provision that allows patients to ultimately decide the amount of marijuana that gives them relief from a debilitating condition.

"There is no evidence that he had more than was medically necessary to treat his severe debilitating medical condition," said Rob Corry, Lauve's attorney, during closing arguments. "Who gets to decide what is medically necessary?"

He argued that the law states that that decision ultimately belongs to the patient or caregiver and that if the state-mandated maximum of two ounces of pot and six marijuana plants is exceeded, patients can raise an affirmative defense that more of the drug was needed to treat the pain. And Lauve is the only one who knows how much pain he is experiencing, Corry told the jury.

Corry said what's critical in the case is what his client intended to do with the pot he had in his possession.

He said the prosecution brought forward no evidence that Lauve was doing anything more with his marijuana stash than trying to alleviate pain, which has left him reliant on a cane and wheelchair.

Lauve had a large amount of pot at his house, Corry said, largely because he wasn't good at growing it and most of its weight was accounted for by unusable parts of the plant, like stems and leaves. He also said his client's marijuana supply was low-grade and weak.

"He had what was necessary given the potency of the marijuana he had," the lawyer told the jury.

Corry said marijuana allowed Lauve to regain a semblance of a normal life and allowed him to wean himself off a number of addictive synthetic opiate-based painkillers he had been taking.

"It helped him live," Corry said, with his hands resting on his client's shoulders.

The defense lawyer said it's clear that Colorado's medical marijuana law needs clarification in terms of what's an allowable amount of the drug to possess, but he told the jury "the way to clarify the law is not through criminal prosecution" but through law and policy making.

Prosecutor Karen Lorenz said while there may be some ambiguity in the state's medical marijuana law, she said it was clear Colorado's voters wanted some sort of limits in place so that unlimited amounts of pot couldn't be obtained by patients and caregivers.

"Having a license for medical marijuana is not carte blanche or a free ticket to possess whatever you want," she said. "There's no limit."

She said Lauve last fall asked his doctor if he could obtain 15 ounces of pot a month but based on his daily use would actually need much more than that.

Lorenz accused the defendant of concocting random amounts of the drug to justify his pot consumption. She said he couldn't show Louisville police any legal document or doctor's recommendation that would account for the large amount of pot he had in his home on June 26, 2008.

"There's no doctor to support this, there's random numbers being thrown around based on what he thinks he needs on a day to day basis," Lorenz told the jury. "That's not what the medical marijuana statute is for."

She said the state constitution doesn't distinguish between low-grade and high-grade marijuana and that the defense's claim that Lauve's pot supply had low potency is irrelevant under the law.

She lined up nearly a dozen Ziploc bags of pot on the railing of the jury box and asked the jurors to convict Lauve of illegal possession of marijuana and marijuana concentrate.

The jury has the option to convict Lauve on the felony count of possessing more than eight ounces of the drug -- which could land him in prison for up to three years -- or find him guilty on lesser charges of possessing smaller amounts of marijuana. It can also find him not guilty on all charges.

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JWH-018 said:

Federal judges don't allow for medical to even be brought up in court, so in that respect no. At the same time DEA guidelines normally won't allow them to handle less than 100 plants without other charges being the focus. Practically the DEA hasn't touched small grows at all in CO. But there is no black and white on the issue when all you have to go on is a few sentences in a statement made by Holder.

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milehighmedical said:

I'm pretty sure that there was some sort of informant to trigger an investigation?

Maybe they didn't know if he was medical? Makes me wonder... if they have an on-going investigation, do they check to see if the resident in question is medical or not? They can't really since the database isn't supposed to be accessible. So they don't know till they kick in your door? Seems kind of ridiculous.

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whodi said:

is it me or does it seem like medical marijuana growers get busted more than illegal growers..

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