Not Guilty!

Two high-profile court cases offer hope for patients and caregivers

For many years, going to court usually meant one thing for a medical marijuana patient: going to jail. Even though a progressive stance on MMJ has been the law of the state since 2001, ambiguities and lack of precedent were enough to scare most Coloradans away. Convictions of high-profile caregivers, such as Chris Bartkowicz of Highlands Ranch in 2011, didn’t help, either. The courts may be shifting, however, as two cases this summer may provide patients with a glimmer of hope.
The Caregiver

Elisa Kappelmann was a corporate trainer at Hewlett Packard before teaching plants to grow to their full potential. A victim of a tough economy, she took her 401(k) and opened Southern Colorado Medical Marijuana LLC and a contiguous warehouse in Colorado Springs. She had filled out the mountains of paperwork, provided financial disclosures and applied for licensing with the city, as well as the state Department of Revenue and Secretary of State. Unfortunately, that wasn’t enough to deter the CSPD, which raided her grow in May 2010.
Her verdict wouldn’t be read for another two years.
Charged with drug cultivation for 99 plants and more than a pound of marijuana, Kappelmann, 51, refused to take a plea—as several other growers did—and insisted she was innocent. The pending charges precluded Kappelmann from being listed as the owner of her own business due to licensing restrictions set by the Medical Marijuana Enforcement Division. It took a jury only six hours to find  her not guilty, and critics quickly called into question El Paso County District Attorney Dan May’s priorities on prosecutions.
“At the conclusion of all of this, we were still wondering why the government spent tax dollars on this case,” attorney Rob Corry said in a press statement.
May, however, would not be deterred.

The Patient

In 2007, the American Cancer Society estimated that over 59,000 new cases of leukemia would be diagnosed in the United States. Bob Crouse was one of those unlucky souls. The longtime proprietor of Yakibob’s in Colorado Springs, he left the business in the hands of a friend when it was clear the disease was taking too much out of him to continue working. Looking for answers, he found Phoenix Tears, a highly concentrated form of medical marijuana that requires pounds of plant material to produce enough cannabinoids to fight his form of blood cancer. The results were astounding.

In a December 2011 email to supporters, Mark Slaugh of the Colorado Springs-based iComply, a compliance services company, relayed that “Bob [Crouse] has almost dropped half of his cancer when comparing the results to his original diagnosis in 2007.”

Slaugh also noted that Crouse “takes no other medications for his cancer,” seemingly justifying his high plant count. The news was bittersweet, though, as Crouse was no longer making the oil himself.
Eight months earlier, police had seized his 55 plants and over six pounds of cured flowers, charging him with two Class 4 felonies.
Unlike Kappelmann, Crouse asserted the marijuana was cultivated for his own personal use, a claim considered dubious by the prosecution, and that a paperwork snafu shouldn’t limit his access to medicine. Presenting an affirmative defense, he argued a physician recommended more than six plants, as provided in the Colorado Constitution, and that piece of paperwork alone justified the grow. This time, the jury came back in four hours, and with the same verdict: not guilty.
Court just got a little less frightening.

 A Cautionary Tale

The Chris Bartkowicz case can definitely be pointed out as an example of the sometimes turbulent world of MMJ enforcement in Colorado. The licensed medical marijuana grower was sentenced last year to five years in federal prison. His 2010 arrest galvanized the MMJ community—a federal judge ruled that Bartkowicz could not cite Colorado’s MMJ law as a defense and the DEA insisted he was not in “clear and unambiguous” compliance with Colorado law. No happy endings here.