Komorn Law PLLC is proud to report a ruling today from the Genesee County Circuit Court.
This case involved my client’s property and all kinds of salacious allegations of really bad behavior by this property, and I mean bad stuff, like stuff you could never imagine property could actually do.
To add to the drama of all this unimaginable behavior by my clients property, the accuser was an ” entity” called FANG. The story for the last 3 years, told by the State ( the ATTORNEY’S for FANG) was that that the bad behaving property needed to be held by FANG, because it was bad behaving ( if this makes no sense, it is not supposed to).
Additionally FANG was of the opinion that because of these allegations they should be able to keep all of my client’s bad behaving property (there has been no conviction).
Today in the civil forfeiture against my client and his “allegedly evil” property the Court granted our motion for summary disposition ( no genuine issue of fact existed to which reasonable minds could differ) ultimately dismissing the forfeiture case and ordering the return of all that bad behaving property.
AN INITIATION of Legislation to allow under state law the medical use of marihuana; to provide protections for the medical use of marihuana; to provide for a system of registry identification cards for qualifying patients and primary caregivers; to impose a fee for registry application and renewal; to make an appropriation; to provide for the promulgation of rules; to provide for the administration of this act; to provide for enforcement of this act; to provide for affirmative defenses; and to provide for penalties for violations of this act.
Qualifying patient or primary caregiver; arrest, prosecution, or penalty prohibited; conditions; privilege from arrests; presumption; compensation; physician subject to arrest, prosecution, or penalty prohibited; marihuana paraphernalia; person in presence or vicinity of medical use of marihuana; registry identification card issued outside of department; sale of marihuana as felony; penalty; marihuana-infused product.
Registered qualifying patient or registered primary caregiver; arrest, prosecution, or penalty, or denial of right or privilege prohibited; conditions.
AN ACT to license and regulate medical marihuana growers, processors, provisioning centers, secure transporters, and safety compliance facilities; to provide for the powers and duties of certain state and local governmental officers and entities; to create a medical marihuana licensing board; to provide for interaction with the statewide monitoring system for commercial marihuana transactions; to create an advisory panel; to provide immunity from prosecution for marihuana-related offenses for persons engaging in marihuana-related activities in compliance with this act; to prescribe civil fines and sanctions and provide remedies; to provide for forfeiture of contraband; to provide for taxes, fees, and assessments; and to require the promulgation of rules.
History: 2016, Act 281, Eff. Dec. 20, 2016 Compiler’s Notes: Enacting section 2 of Act 281 of 2016 provides:”Enacting section 2. The legislature finds that the necessity for access to safe sources of marihuana for medical use and the immediate need for growers, processors, secure transporters, provisioning centers, and safety compliance facilities to operate under clear requirements establish the need to promulgate emergency rules to preserve the public health, safety, or welfare.”
PART 8. MARIHUANA ADVISORY PANEL (333.27801…333.27801)
MARIHUANA TRACKING ACT
Act 282 of 2016
AN ACT to establish a statewide monitoring system to track marihuana and marihuana products in commercial trade; to monitor compliance with laws authorizing commercial traffic in medical marihuana; to identify threats to health from particular batches of marihuana or medical marihuana; to require persons engaged in commercial marihuana trade to submit certain information for entry into the system; to provide the powers and duties of certain state departments and agencies; to provide for remedies; and to provide for the promulgation of rules.
Statewide monitoring system; use as integrated marihuana tracking, inventory, and verification system; requirements; rules; bids; violation; termination of contract.
Pontiac — The state agency that oversees Michigan’s courts plans to investigate how local officials handle search warrants after paperwork came up missing in the case of an accused Oakland County drug dealer.
Christopher Khalil Dukes, 34, of Rochester Hills, was granted a mistrial this spring on a charge of possession with intent to deliver 450-1,000 grams of heroin after prosecutors, police and court officials were unable to produce a warrant authorizing the placement of a mobile tracking device on his car.
Prior to trial, investigators had not disclosed the existence of the device, as required by law.
Information gained from the tracker was used to obtain a warrant in August 2015 authorizing police to search Dukes’ apartment, where they found a kilogram of heroin with a street value of up to $300,000, cash and guns.
Authorities have said the warrant authorizing the tracker was misplaced, but Dukes’ attorney has questioned whether the document ever existed in the first place.
In a recent hearing, 50th District Judge Ronda Fowlkes Gross, who reportedly approved the warrant, testified her court does not keep records or copies of search warrants signed by judges — nor is that required by law.
Asked about the judge’s statement, John Nevin, a spokesman for the Michigan State Court Administrative Office, said that according to case file management standards, the court should keep search warrants stored in an annual group file by date of issuance.
Nevin said the office’s regional administrator “will be looking into the issue.”
Asked whether the office’s inquiry would be focused on Oakland County, Nevin replied, “Certainly start in Oakland and then investigating if it’s a problem elsewhere.”
The controversy over the missing search warrant led the Oakland County Sheriff’s Office to change how it stores search warrants and supporting documents.
Undersheriff Michael McCabe said following the Dukes mistrial, the department began scanning search warrants and affidavits into a digital file that’s included with every case file.
“We always had and continue to have a hard copy file,” McCabe said. “We just felt it was a good practice to have a digital file in the event a record could not be found for any reason.”
In Dukes’ case, attorney James W. Amberg obtained a mistrial on the first day of trial after cross examination of a detective revealed the GPS tracking device — a legal tool used by law enforcement officers — had been secretly placed on Dukes’ 2015 Cadillac.
In subsequent efforts, Amberg determined no one had a copy of the search warrant authorizing placement of the GPS device.
After weeks of searching at five possible locations, Detective Charles Janczarek, the lead investigator, found a signed affidavit for the tracker warrant in a milk crate in his basement.
Amberg contends there is no evidence that Janczarek and the Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team ever properly obtained the initial warrant.
He said that means the second warrant for the apartment — which relied partly on the tracking device information as probable cause to search the residence — was deficient and any evidence obtained through it should not be permitted at trial.
NET officers said Dukes’ activities — monitored for 30 days through the tracker — supported the request for a second warrant to search his apartment, where the drugs were found.
Investigators also had focused on Dukes based on an unnamed “reliable confidential informant,” who told officers Dukes was distributing cocaine throughout Oakland County.
Dukes had been linked with six active DEA investigations, according to Janczarek’s warrant affidavit, and had been monitored in “short term traffic/meeting indicative of narcotics transactions” over 10 times in Oakland and Wayne counties in a 30-day period.
Amberg slammed authorities’ handling of the case in a legal brief submitted to Judge Rae Lee Chabot of Oakland County Circuit Court.
“This case is extremely disturbing,” Amberg wrote to Chabot after a two-day hearing in June. “The Oakland County Narcotics Unit is allowed by the Prosecutor’s Office and judges of Oakland County to operate completely in secret, giving those individuals who are subject to their police-state tactics no ability to challenge their investigations.”
Chabot heard testimony from seven witnesses, including assistant county prosecutor Beth Hand, who supervises drug unit cases, and Gross.
The assistant prosecutor in the Dukes case, Shannon O’Brien, declined to comment to The News.
But in legal motions filed July 25, O’Brien said a “preponderance of the evidence at the hearing supports a finding that the GPS tracker search warrant existed, but is lost. There is no evidence of any perpetration of fraud in the production of the GPS tracker affidavit; Defendant’s accusations in that regard are wholly without merit.”
Chabot will consider the testimony, legal briefs and possibly additional verbal arguments before the case moves forward but the testimony to date offers some insight on how investigations and search warrants are handled. Among them:
■Janczarek said he remembered filing the search warrants for the tracker and the apartment search in court and giving copies of both to Hand.
■Janczarek said he recalled storing information, including his original draft for the tracking device warrant, on a computer “memory stick,” which also has disappeared.
■Gross testified she recalled conversations with Janczarek about the tracker warrant.
■Janczarek’s supervisor, Detective Sgt. Douglas Stewart, testified officers purposely do not write reports or keep notes of their ongoing investigations.
■Hand, who made the charging decision in the case, testified no GPS tracker search warrant or affidavit was submitted to her.
In filings to Chabot, Amberg said that in his dealings with the FBI, DEA and Homeland Security in narcotics cases, the federal agencies all kept “detailed reports for every single thing they do in furthering of investigations.”
“If this had happened in federal court, the ax would come down hard,” Amberg told Chabot when arguing for a mistrial in March.
Amberg characterized Gross’ testimony in June as “either untruthful” or her knowledge of warrant processing “astonishingly poor.”
He noted that Janczarek had copies of a warrant seeking suppression of the tracking device warrant. That, Amberg said, raised a question: If records aren’t kept, why would there be a need to seek to have them suppressed?
This is not the first time allegations have been raised regarding information placed on a search warrant by an NET officer. In 2013 Sgt. Marc Ferguson was fired when it was revealed he had lied on affidavits and committed perjury in 2011 to obtain a search warrant on a package containing 78 pounds of marijuana he had already opened at a Pontiac shipping company.
The prosecutor’s office subsequently dismissed 17 cases involving Ferguson as a chief witness.
Pontiac— A mistrial was declared in the case of an accused Rochester Hills drug dealer this month after it was disclosed his defense attorney never received pretrial information about a mobile tracking device placed on his client’s vehicle by investigators.
Christopher Khalil Dukes, 34, is charged in Oakland Circuit Court with possession with intent to deliver 450 to 1,000 grams of heroin, a felony that carries a 30-year prison sentence. He remains free on $150,000 bond pending a retrial set for June 19.
But still in dispute — and possibly to be addressed at a pretrial hearing Tuesday — is whether the tracker that monitored his movements was legally attached to Dukes’ 2015 Cadillac. Officials have been unable to locate the original search warrant reportedly obtained from a Pontiac district judge by Detective Charles Janczarek, a member of the Oakland County Narcotics Enforcement Team.
Defense attorneys and civil right advocates said the case underscores concerns about the potential for abuse of GPS trackers by law enforcement and the need for proper search warrants.
Dukes’ attorney, James W. Amberg, said if authorities can’t prove the Cadillac was legally tracked, it would impact a subsequent search warrant for Dukes’ Rochester Hills apartment, where NET investigators arrested him in August 2015 and seized a kilogram of heroin, drug packaging materials, cash and guns. (Photo: Daniel Mears / The Detroit News)
Dukes’ attorney, James W. Amberg, said if authorities can’t prove the Cadillac was legally tracked, it would impact a subsequent search warrant for Dukes’ Rochester Hills apartment, where NET investigators arrested him in August 2015 and seized a kilogram of heroin, drug packaging materials, cash and guns.
“The apartment warrant was obtained based on information that the tracking device had established suspected drug sales activity,” Amberg told Oakland Circuit Judge Rae Lee Chabot at a March 8 hearing after Janczarek disclosed under cross-examination that a mobile tracker and a telephone tracking app had been used to monitor Dukes’ movements.
“If that information was false, then the second warrant was improper and the argument can be made that it has to be thrown out, along with any evidence obtained with it,” Amberg said.
At the hearing, assistant prosecutor Shannon O’Brien said efforts would be made to find the elusive warrant but it “may be just a miscommunication on a document in a very long-term case.”
Amberg told Chabot he did not think the warrant existed: “If this happened in federal court, the ax would come down hard,” he said.
“This may be the most serious issue I have ever encountered during a trial,” Chabot said as she granted Amberg’s request for a mistrial.
Pros and cons of trackers
Trackers are commonly used on vehicles suspected in criminal activity, but police must first obtain a search warrant from a magistrate or judge, just as they do to search a home or office. Officers swear on an affidavit why the tracking device is needed, supported by information about active or past criminal investigations, informant and witness statements, and other evidence.
The affidavit request in the Dukes case — which includes the above elements — has been found, but not the warrant itself.
Paul Walton, Oakland County’s chief deputy prosecutor, said NET officers “are checking 50th District Court files to locate the missing search warrant.”
“We expect they will be able to locate it,” Walton said. “That court handles a lot of paperwork, and it is possible that it was mislaid.”
Oakland County Undersheriff Michael McCabe said Judge Ronda Fowlkes Gross of 50th District Court approved using the vehicle tracker. “This is a paperwork snafu of some sort. We have the affidavit signed by Judge Gross authorizing the tracking device, which is signed at the same time as the warrant.”
McCabe said investigators personally surveilled Dukes for 30 days before seeking a warrant for the GPS device.
“The only thing that is missing is the first page, the actual warrant,” McCabe said. “We don’t know if it was misplaced or lost or what happened to it. But we are 100 percent confident that we had a valid warrant and that this is a solid case and we expect a conviction.”
Legal experts and others who follow such cases say tracking devices are powerful tools for catching criminals but that safeguards are needed to protect suspects’ rights and ensure that warrant requests are accurate and accessible.
David Moran, a University of Michigan law professor, said the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that police must obtain a search warrant to use tracking devices or risk violating the 4th Amendment’s prohibition against unreasonable search and seizure. He questioned why the warrant authorizing the search of Dukes’ home included no mention of the tracking device.
“It surprises me if they didn’t note that (tracking device was used) in the subsequent warrant to search the apartment,” said Moran. “It smells bad.”
“It doesn’t sound right,” said Nathan Wessler, an ACLU attorney in New York who specializes in technology used in searches. “You have to have a warrant to put a tracking device on a vehicle. We’ve known that since 2012.”
Problems with warrants have led to other Oakland County cases being dismissed.
Last month, Circuit Judge Denise Langford Morris dismissed a marijuana dispensary case, finding there had not been probable cause to search warehouses in Waterford and Lake Orion in February 2016, though NET officers had obtained warrants signed by judges; the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office is appealing Morris’ ruling.
In 2013, an NET officer, Sgt. Marc Ferguson, was fired for lying two years earlier to obtain a warrant to search a Pontiac shipping company where he had already opened a package of 78 pounds of marijuana. The incident led prosecutors to seek the dismissal of 17 cases in which Ferguson was a chief witness, including the charges against the recipient of the marijuana, Anastacio Payan of California.
“In 26 years, I’ve never seen a search warrant denied,” said Payan’s attorney, James L. Galen Jr. “Sometimes I think this is all about forfeitures and going after property rather than criminals.”
Walton said an assistant prosecutor brought the Payan incident to light after a witness told her what Ferguson had done.
Informants and surveillance
On Aug. 18, 2015, Janczarek waited for Dukes to arrive at an apartment on Waterford Court in the gated River Oaks complex. After Dukes parked in the apartment’s carport, Janczarek produced a warrant to search the home.
According to a warrant return and court testimony, NET officers didn’t have to go far. Concealed in the bottom of a black soft cooler in the foyer was a “brick” of heroin weighing 878 grams. Six “corner ties” containing 61.8 grams also were found.
The drugs, depending on how they were cut with other materials, had a street value of $95,000 to $300,000, according to the sheriff’s office.
A bedroom closet had a pair of jeans containing $400; a pair of cargo pants containing $6,000 and a second pair of cargo pants containing $16,000. A .45-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun and ammunition were found on a stack of clothes. A .9-mm Walther was found in the glovebox of Dukes’ Cadillac.
Dukes is licensed and has a permit to carry a concealed handgun, court records state.
In Janczarek’s affidavit, he said a “credible and reliable” informant told him Dukes was distributing cocaine countywide, using his Cadillac. Janczarek also noted a police database showed Bloomfield Township police had arrested Dukes for possession with intent to deliver marijuana and felony firearm.
Amberg pointed out in court filings that Janczarek incorrectly reported in his August 2015 warrant request to search Dukes’ apartment that the Bloomfield arrest occurred in November 2015 — which would have put it three months in the future, a mistake overlooked by the prosecutor’s office and the judge.
Rather, the Bloomfield arrest occurred in January 2007 and the case was dismissed in 2008.
After learning in court about the tracker on his client’s car, Amberg said Janczarek’s credibility and the “integrity” of the informant were under question because of a similar October 2015 case. In that instance, Janczarek obtained a search warrant on a drug suspect, Demario Williamson, after making an inaccurate statement to a different judge that an informant’s help had led to an earlier search warrant.
According to the court record, there was no other search warrant connected to the informant in the case against Williamson, who was charged with possession of 50 to 449 grams of cocaine.
Assistant prosecutor Beth Hand brought the concern over Janczarek’s statement to Judge Leo Bowman, who found the officer had made an “honest mistake” and hadn’t tried to mislead the court.
Williamson’s attorney, Paul J. Stablein, unsuccessfully argued since the warrant contained a false statement, any evidence it led to should have been barred at trial. Williamson, who was found guilty and given 20 to 60 years in prison, is appealing his sentence.
Detroit — The former head of the St. Clair Housing Commission embezzled more than $336,000 in low-income housing funds and spent the cash on booze, beauty products, bedroom furniture and homes for her family, federal prosecutors said Monday.
Former Executive Director Lorena Loren, 55, was charged in federal court with conspiracy to commit federal program fraud during an eight-year scheme that benefited and involved relatives, including her husband and son, according to federal court records.
Since 2008, Loren fraudulently used the housing commission’s credit cards to make $166,000 worth of purchases at Amazon, Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club, falsified lease agreements for low-income housing and used the money to pay for her own relatives’ homes, the government alleged.
“Holy crap,” St. Clair Mayor Bill Cedar Jr. told The Detroit News. “I guess you never know what’s going on with people.”
Loren was charged in a criminal information, which means a guilty plea is expected. She could not be reached immediately for comment Monday.
If convicted, Loren could face at least five years in federal prison.
Loren was charged one year after she retired abruptly, the mayor said. She moved to southeast Georgia and bought a $325,000 custom-built house in October, according to public records.
The home is far from low-income housing. The five-bedroom, 2,858-square-foot home features a salt-water pool, 24-foot ceilings, walk-in closets, a game room and detached man cave.
Loren was appointed executive director in 2003 and started stealing from the poor five years later, prosecutors alleged.
She fraudulently obtained housing-assistance payments for properties in which she had a proprietary interest with family members or for the benefit of family members, according to court records.
She falsified lease agreements and money intended to help low-income residents afford apartments was used to rent a home for her son, Ryan Loren, prosecutors alleged.
Lorena Loren also told relatives to establish bank accounts so federal subsidy payments could be deposited and spent for their personal use, including to rent a home in Florida, according to court records.
She lied while claiming her son-in-law was the landlord of a rental property for low-income residents, prosecutors alleged. The property turned out to be Lorena Loren’s home in Port Austin, Michigan, according to court records.
Her son-in-law, Jaime Johnson, deposited the money into a bank account he controlled with Lorena Loren’s husband, Brian, the government alleged.
The $166,000 worth of credit card purchases included adult and infant clothing, furniture, appliances, mattresses, food, beauty supplies, medications and other household items, according to court records.
The money was supposed to maintain Palmer Park Manor, the commission’s low-income public housing facility, prosecutors alleged.
