IAPE Evidence Blog

The Times-Tribune, STATE AND REGIONAL NEWS
BYLINE: Erin L. Niss­ley, The Times-Tribune, Scran­ton, Pa.

Scran­ton, PA

July 08 – A for­mer Scran­ton detec­tive who admit­ted steal­ing more than $8,400 from a police evi­dence room was sen­tenced Wednes­day to serve four months to two years in prison.

Lack­awanna County Judge Vito Ger­oulo said he will allow Leonard F. Ash Jr., 42, of 3015 Jones St., to serve the first two months in the county’s work release pro­gram and another two months on house arrest. Mr. Ash’s attor­ney, Matthew Com­er­ford, said he would file a motion for recon­sid­er­a­tion of the sentence.

“The DA’s office said they didn’t oppose a sen­tence of pro­ba­tion,” Mr. Com­er­ford said. “I’m dis­ap­pointed in the sen­tence he received.”

Mr. Ash and his father left the cour­t­house with­out com­ment­ing to The Times-Tribune on Wednes­day. But in court, Mr. Ash told Judge Ger­oulo that he had been a police offi­cer all his life and was very sorry for what he had done.

In April, Mr. Ash pleaded guilty to theft by unlaw­ful tak­ing and admit­ted he stole more than $8,400, which had been seized in a 2001 drug inves­ti­ga­tion. The theft was dis­cov­ered in the sum­mer of 2009, when dis­trict attorney’s office staffers dis­cov­ered blank paper instead of cash inside the case’s evi­dence enve­lope, accord­ing to court records.

In court Wednes­day, Judge Ger­oulo said Mr. Ash pre­vi­ously explained that he stole the money because he had not been get­ting as much over­time as he had in the past. The judge admon­ished the for­mer detec­tive, say­ing his actions “cast a shadow on other drug investigations.” 

“He received a very good plea deal,” the judge said. “This sen­tence must pro­vide a deter­rent … to those sim­i­larly tempted.”

Mr. Ash was fired in March, accord­ing to Scran­ton police officials.

As part of his sen­tence, Mr. Ash will also have to serve 200 hours of com­mu­nity ser­vice and repay the money he stole.

He will report to the work release pro­gram July 14, Judge Ger­oulo said.

Con­tact the writer: enissley@timesshamrock.com

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

CBSNews.com

Oak­land, CA

Cal­i­for­nia Des­per­ately Needs Tax Rev­enue, Prompt­ing Some to See Green in Mak­ing Grass Legal

(CBS)  A high-stakes polit­i­cal bat­tle is under­way in the cash-strapped state of Cal­i­for­nia. At issue is the narrowly-defined lib­erty peo­ple have there to grow and sell a cer­tain plant … and the desire of some folks to have the state gov­ern­ment TAX it. John Black­stone reports our Cover Story:

In Oak­land, Calif., Richard Lee runs a string of busi­nesses, from cof­fee shops to glass blow­ing that are help­ing revi­tal­ize the once-decaying downtown.

But Lee’s busi­ness empire is built on an unusual foun­da­tion: Sell­ing mar­i­juana  In the back of his Blue Sky Cof­fee Shop there’s a steady stream of cash buy­ers, and not just for cof­fee. “In the front you get the cof­fee and pas­tries, and in the back you get the cannabis,” Lee said.

A sales­man told cus­tomers, “You’re wel­come to pull the bags out and smell the herb as you like.” What’s going on here is ille­gal under fed­eral law, but per­mit­ted under Cal­i­for­nia law that since 1996 has allowed mar­i­juana for med­ical use. A dozen other states have sim­i­lar laws. One cus­tomer named Charles said pot is exactly what his doc­tor ordered.

“So that’s what relieves my anx­i­ety and allows me to cope and feel good,” he said.

Lee has dubbed his Oak­land neigh­bor­hood “Oak­s­ter­dam” … with a nod to Ams­ter­dam and its lib­eral drug laws. His goal is to make this a tourist des­ti­na­tion, with mar­i­juana its main attrac­tion. “Does that worry peo­ple around here?” asked Blackstone.

“No, peo­ple around here love it ’cause they see how much we’ve improved the neigh­bor­hood,” Lee said.

Next door to where Lee sells mar­i­juana, Gertha Hays sells clothes. She says the dis­pen­sary brings peo­ple from all walks of life. “There’s no par­tic­u­lar pot­head,” she said, “so every­one comes over there.”

“So these aren’t just drug­gies in there?” Black­stone asked.

“No, not at all. If you look and see who comes up and down thethe block you’ll see it’s so diverse,” Hays said.

Part of the Oak­s­ter­dam neigh­bor­hood is a nurs­ery grow­ing a cash crop: Med­ical mar­i­juana is now esti­mated to be a $2 to 3 bil­lion busi­ness in Cal­i­for­nia. “Yeah, there’s a lot of peo­ple mak­ing a lot of money,” lee said.

(CBS)
There are now sev­eral hun­dred med­ical mar­i­juana dis­pen­saries in Cal­i­for­nia … and much more mar­i­juana being sold on the street. “We esti­mate, over­all, [the] Cal­i­for­nia cannabis indus­try is in the neigh­bor­hood of around $15 bil­lion,” lee said. While there is dis­agree­ment over the real size of the mar­i­juana mar­ket it’s big enough to have cap­tured the atten­tion of law­mak­ers try­ing to fill a huge hole in the state bud­get. Assem­bly­man Tom Ammi­ano is push­ing leg­is­la­tion to legal­ize pot so the state can inhale new taxes.

“I thought it was high time, no pun intended, for this to be on the table,” Ammi­ano said. “I’m try­ing to beat every­body to the punch with the jokes, because I get a lot of ‘em,” he laughed.

There are many who ridicule the idea, but the state tax board esti­mates Ammiano’s pro­posed tax of $50 an ounce could bring in $1.5 to 2 bil­lion a year.

“We find that highly unlikely,” said Ros­alie Pac­ula, of the Rand Drug Pol­icy Research Cen­ter. She says Cal­i­for­nia is likely to be dis­ap­pointed by the rev­enue raised on mar­i­juana that now sells for about $150 an ounce.

“If you try to impose a tax that is that high, you have absolutely no incen­tive for the black mar­ket to dis­ap­pear,” she said. “There is com­plete profit motive for them to actu­ally stay.”

The tax pro­posal, though, has started an unusual polit­i­cal dis­cus­sion. Accord­ing to one poll, 56 per­cent of Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers say mar­i­juana should be legal­ized and taxed. Even California’s Repub­li­can gov­er­nor has not snuffed out talk of legalization.

“No, I think it’s not time for that, but I think it’s time for debate,” Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger said. “All of those ideas for cre­at­ing extra rev­enues, I’m always for an open debate on it.”

Check out reports on the debate over legal­iza­tion in CBSNews.com’s spe­cial sec­tion “Mar­i­juana Nation.”

Visalia Times-Delta (Cal­i­for­nia)
BYLINE: DAVID CASTELLON

Tulare County, CA

It was the last thing you’d expect to see out­side the Tulare County Cour­t­house in Visalia: a man and his lawyer cart­ing out glass jars filled with mar­i­juana.  The mar­i­juana belonged to Richard Dale­man, who on March 27 was acquit­ted by a jury of grow­ing and sell­ing marijuana.

A judge ruled last week that the med­ical mar­i­juana con­fis­cated from him in Decem­ber by sheriff’s detec­tives had to be returned. Dale­man, 61, and his county pub­lic defender, Andy Rub­inger, retrieved the mar­i­juana Wednes­day from the court-house evi­dence room. It came out to just more than 12 pounds, Dale­man said. “There were about 3 ounces miss­ing,” he said.

Ear­lier in the day, Dale­man had col­lected grow­ing lights and other equip­ment from a sheriff’s facil­ity north of Visalia.

Dale­man, who had a doctor’s rec­om­men­da­tion to grow and use mar­i­juana to treat severe pain from arthri­tis and old injuries, was all smiles as he rolled his mar­i­juana from the cour­t­house to the park­ing lot — using carts pro­vided by court per­son­nel. He emp­tied it into plas­tic trash bags before weigh­ing it.

“They did a good job of keep­ing it,” said Dale­man said, who detected no mold and said it remains good to use for his pain treatment.

Sheriff’s nar­cotics detec­tives arrested Dale­man in Decem­ber at his home north of Visalia. Though the Com­pas­sion­ate Use of Mar­i­juana Act, passed by Cal­i­for­nia vot­ers in 1996, allows those peo­ple with a doctor’s rec­om­men­da­tion to pos­sess and grow mar­i­juana for med­i­c­i­nal pur­poses, dis­putes over inter­pre­ta­tion of the state law have resulted in sev­eral arrests.

In some cases fed­eral law enforce­ment agen­cies have arrested medical-marijuana users and grow­ers under fed­eral drug laws.

Delays

Pros­e­cu­tors delayed return­ing the mar­i­juana after Daleman’s acquit­tal, say­ing they wanted clar­i­fi­ca­tion on how much to return. All of it, Judge Dar­ryl Fer­gu­son said on April 15. Even so, it took another week to make the trans­fer. “Ridicu­lous. They’ve got all these guys down there, and it seems all they do is go and buy dough­nuts — and you can quote me on that,” Dale­man said. “I got sick of it. I told them I was going to come and get it.”

Dale­man spoke Wednes­day morn­ing with Under­sh­er­iff Dahl Cleek. About an hour later, the under­sh­er­iff informed Dale­man he could come get his property.

Dale­man said he nor­mally puts mar­i­juana in food, rub­bing com­pounds and sup­pos­i­to­ries to treat his pain.

But after so long with­out his pain treat­ment, Dale­man said, he planned to smoke the drug as some other med­i­c­i­nal users do.

“I vowed that if and when I got the weed back, that I’d let my son pack a [joint] and [I’d] take a cou­ple of hits — which I have done,” Dale­man said from his home Wednes­day after­noon. “I’m stoned now.”

He said the hits did relieve some pain and stress — a per­sis­tent prob­lem he’s devel­oped since being arrested and jailed for more than three months.

He said he had also pre­pared some of the pot to mix with witch hazel to make a rub­bing compound.

Over the week­end he’ll process some to add to food, Dale­man said.

Dale­man also is prepar­ing his next mar­i­juana har­vest in his back­yard gar­den. He has about 10 pot­ted mar­i­juana plants, donated to him by some­one who read about his situation.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org