May 28, 2013 |
Gerald Monroe Jr., a Monroe-area farmer who uses medical marijuana, stands next to his mother at a rally Tuesday in downtown Detroit where supporters protested his 10-year federal prison sentence for growing and distributing the drug. / Bill Laitner/Detroit Free Press
Medical marijuana users have long decried Michigan’s state and local police and prosecutors as unfair but Tuesday’s target was the federal government.
Two dozen marijuana advocates — including lawyers and advocates from as far as Seattle and Phoenix — gathered at noon outside the federal courthouse in downtown Detroit to protest the sentencing of Gerald Duval Jr., 53, a Monroe-area farmer who was sentenced to 10 years in prison after being convicted last year of conspiring to manufacture more than 100 marijuana plants, manufacturing plants with an intent to distribute them and maintaining a place of distribution.
The federal charges stemmed from a raid of Duval’s farm and pot-filled greenhouses by federal officers.
“Jerry Duval and his 10-year sentence is emblematic of how the Obama administration has been undermining state medical marijuana laws,” said Brandy Zink, chair of the Michigan chapter of Americans for Safe Access.
At the moment that federal agents raided his farm, “I was 100% legal” under Michigan’s medical marijuana act, Duval told the crowd. Standing beside him was Duval’s mother Sharon Duval, holding a sign that said: “No one should go to jail for medical marijuana.”
Duval was convicted in federal court in April 2012 of conspiring to manufacture more than 100 marijuana plants, manufacturing plants with an intent to distribute them and maintaining a place of distribution. Duval’s lawyers argued that he owned two large locked greenhouses in which his son Jeremy and daughter Ashley Duval — both state-registered medical marijuana caregivers — raised marijuana plants for their father’s use and others’ while abiding by Michigan’s law for medical marijuana. Jeremy Duval was sentenced to five years in prison while Ashley Duval was not charged, family members said.
Federal prosecutors persuaded a jury that the Duvals used medical marijuana as a front while tallying big profits by peddling marijuana to non-patients.
“The jury even saw the defendants’ drug ledger showing they had sold about $300,000 worth of marijuana to non-patients” in the months before federal agents used a search warrant to raid the Duvals’ property in August 2011, said Gina Balaya, spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Detroit.
Federal officials in Michigan have said that U.S. prosecutors could ignore the Michigan act that allows use of medicinal marijuana because “state laws are not relevant to federal narcotics laws,” Balaya said after today’s rally. That approach, voiced for months by federal officials across the country, had medical-marijuana advocates in Detroit lambasting the Obama administration.
“There’s been 200 SWAT-style raids across the country (of medical-marijuana users) since Obama took office,” said Kari Boiter, of the nationwide Cannabis Defense Coalition in Seattle. Boiter said she was on a nationwide “Peace for Patients” tour, speaking out on behalf of defendants like the Duvals.
Gerald Duval Jr. also has a prior conviction for federal cocaine conspiracy, “and that’s why his sentence was 10 years instead of five,” Lavigne said. The elder Duval’s children — Jeremy and his sister Ashley Duval — were both state-registered caregivers, entitling each to possess a maximum of 72 plants, making the contents of the two greenhouses of about 100 plants fall within Michigan’s legal limit, said one of his lawyers, Tom Lavigne, of the Detroit-based Cannabis Counsel law firm.
Gerald Duval Jr., who has diabetes , heart disease, a transplanted kidney and other ailments, was ordered to report to a federal prison in Massachusetts for seriously ill inmates on June 11, said Lavigne. Three other Michigan marijuana growers are to surrender Thursday to other federal prisons Thursday for sentences of up to four years, Lavigne said.
Federal agents “seized Jeremy’s notes and they just surmised dollars signs and various amounts — there was no evidence of sales to non-patients and they didn’t bring anyone in like that as a witness,” Lavigne said.
Both Duvals have filed appeals with the federal appeals court in Cincinnati, he said.
Contact Bill Laitner: blaitner@freepress.com or 313-223-4485.
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