Medical marijuana: Richard Wainwright case shows 6 plant limit can expand, attorney says
Now that a dispensary ban has passed in Fort Collins, patients there will either have to go elsewhere for their medical marijuana or sign up with a caretaker who's ostensibly limited to six plants per person. But attorney Rob Corry says this limit isn't hard and fast -- and as proof, he points to the recent verdict on behalf of Richard Wainwright, who was found not guilty of felony cultivation of marijuana even though he'd grown more than 200 plants for nine patients.
"Over and over and over, we hear about this alleged six plant, two-ounce limit," Corry says. "We've heard it so many times that many people think it's true -- but it's not true. The constitution clearly says that within six, you're lawful, but you can have more than that if it's medically necessary. And that's the key."
According to Corry, the roots of the case stretch back to December 2009, "when my client's thirteen-year-old son was caught at school with supposedly 3.5 grams of marijuana that he'd retrieved from my client's ashtray in his room: roaches. And he also had what the prosecution called marijuana paraphernalia -- a can pipe like the kind we probably all used in junior high school, made from a Monster energy drink can. But then, the case metastasized from a brief junior-high-school suspension to a felony criminal prosecution in Adams County.
Rob Corry.
"They had seven detectives from the North Metro Drug Task Force come to my client's home. He let them in, gave them all the documents showing that he was a caregiver. He was completely open with them, answered all their questions, refused them nothing. And they took clippings from what they allege was 226 plants -- although we're not sure if that's the real count, since it's hard to assess what does and doesn't qualify as a plant. And then they prosecuted him in Adams District Court for felony marijuana cultivation and misdemeanor child abuse."
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