The Michigan Supreme Court has reversed a state appeals court decision, issuing a ruling Wednesday that a single photo identification of a man suspected of robbing and shooting another man at gunpoint in Detroit wasn’t sufficient.
It’s a case that was argued last week before hundreds of students at Cass Tech High School in Detroit, as part of court’s Community Connections program that takes its proceedings on the road to high schools and colleges across the state.
It was the first time the high court held its proceedings at a Detroit school.
The case involved Elisah Thomas, 20, who was charged in a 2014 robbery and shooting on the city’s west side. Thomas has denied being involved in the incident, and told the Free Press Wednesday that he’s happy to be able to put the whole matter behind him.
“It was a rough time of my life that I’m glad to have over,” said Thomas, who was 17 and a high school senior at Oak Park High School at the time of his arrest. “This system can break you.”
Maria Miller, spokeswoman for the Wayne County Prosecutor’s office, said Wednesday that “there has not been a decision,” on whether to file a notice to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The key issue in the case: Whether the identification of Thomas raises due process concerns. After the victim, Dwight Dukes, was robbed and shot, police officers canvassed the area looking for a suspect. They came across Thomas, who said he had left his home to get a meal from a nearby coney island restaurant.
The police officer took his picture with a cell phone. Within a hour of the shooting, the officer was showing the single cell phone photo to the victim as he was being wheeled down a hospital hallway, asking him “Was this the guy who shot you?”
Lawyers for Thomas argued that the process was unnecessarily suggestive. A Wayne County Circuit judge agreed in February 2015, throwing out the identification and dismissing the charges. But the Michigan Court of Appeals reversed the circuit judge in December 2016.
“Due process concerns arise when law enforcement officers use an identification procedure that is both suggestive and unnecessary,” the court said in a written ruling.
“The parties do not dispute the facts relating to the identification: the victim viewed the assailant’s partially obscured face for no more than seven seconds on a dark city street with no streetlights while a gun was pointed at him. The description the victim gave to police officers was generic and could have described many young men in the area; moreover the victim’s description of the assailant changed between his first interview and his follow-up interview at the hospital.
“Accordingly, the trial court determined that the single photograph identification was sufficiently unreliable and that it should be suppressed. We agree with the trial court’s assessment of reliability based on the relevant totality of the circumstances.”
Thomas faced multiple charges, including one count of assault with intent to murder and one count of armed robbery. But the high court ruling means the charges against Thomas have been dismissed.
Thomas said the quick ruling – after oral arguments were held a week ago – indicates the members of the court “saw all of the flaws” of the case.
“They never even gave me a gunshot residue test,” Thomas said, adding that if they had, he would have never been charged.
“They didn’t have anything. They didn’t have any evidence against me.”
Thomas, who was taking community college classes in Lansing after the charges against him were originally dismissed in 2015, has dreams of being an entrepreneur and plans to return to college to get a degree in business administration.
But he worries about people who aren’t as fortunate as he was. He said he worked multiple jobs to raise enough money to pay his attorneys.
“I really feel for anyone who falls into this kind of situation,” he said. “I had the money to pay an attorney … A lot of people don’t.”
Contact Lori Higgins: 313-222-6651, lhiggins@freepress.com or @LoriAHiggins
LANSING, MI – The legislature is considering a bill that would limit medical marijuana growing licenses to 1,500 plants per location, something that’s the exact opposite of what the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs has recommended as it crafts regulations for medical marijuana facilities.
The legislature last year passed a bill regulating medical marijuana facilities, including growing operations. Three types of growing licenses are allowed:
The Class A license allows a grow of up to 500 medical marijuana plants.
The Class B license allows a grow of up to 1,000 medical marijuana plants.
The Class C license allows a grow of up to 1,500 medical marijuana plants.
But LARA, which was left in charge of many of the details in implementing medical marijuana facilities regulations, signaled last month that it would allow even bigger grows by letting companies “stack” the largest licenses and grow many times 1,500 plants in one location.
Lobbyists try to shape Michigan’s medical marijuana rules before they’re made
Emails obtained by MLive and the Michigan Campaign Finance Network show a pattern of influence.
“It is the intent of the Bureau of Medical Marihuana Regulation to allow a potential licensee to apply for – and be granted – multiple (“stacked”) class C grow licenses in a single location,” wrote the department in a Sept. 28 press release.
That, said Rep. Jim Runestad, R-White Lake, is “beyond what I think many legislators intended.”
He is the sponsor of House Bill 5189, which would limit medical marijuana growers from holding more than one license at a single facility. He also chairs the House Judiciary Committee, which took testimony on the bill Tuesday morning.
“Having super-grows could potentially monopolize the market and may not be the direction that we would want to go immediately. Only time will tell who the good actors are and if it is reasonable to allow unlimited stacking of licenses per location,” Runestad told the committee.
Rep. Tim Greimel, D-Auburn Hills, questioned whether this bill would really quell monopolistic tendencies. It would still allow the same person to get multiple Class C licenses at different locations, he pointed out.
“That doesn’t reduce the likelihood of monopolistic control over licenses any more than having them in one location, does it?” Greimel asked.
Under the bill, local governments have to “opt in” if they want to license medical marijuana facilities. Two representatives from local communities had different takes on the bill in the House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday morning.
Small towns have big say on future of Michigan’s medical marijuana industry
Businesses are pushing local governments to allow medical marijuana within their boundaries.
Thetford Township Trustee Eric Gunnels said he supported the bill.
“I do think that we should be cautious, that we don’t allow, like you said, monopolies, monopolistic ventures to consolidate the market into the hands of a few,” Gunnels said.
But Bangor Township Supervisor Glenn Rowley said his area had a shrinking revenue stream and large industrial properties medical marijuana grows would bring to life. They already have a few large companies requesting local permits for multiple Class C grows. He opposes the bill.
“We want everyone to succeed,” Rowley said, adding he hoped they made a pile of money so big you need a Sherpa to get to the top of it.
Runestad said there was more testimony he couldn’t get to before the committee was scheduled to end. At this point, though, he thinks there are the votes to get it out of committee and is planning to take it up again at the committee’s next meeting.
With temporary licensing on the horizon, California’s cannabis industry is obviously on the cusp of really big things. With this green rush, our California cannabis business attorneys have been brought on to work on all kinds of M&A deals and a bevy of MAUCRSA and local law regulatory compliance issues. These projects have exposed us to many who pitch various and sundry goods and services, claiming to offer “new paradigms” and “value adds,” but actually offering little to nothing.
In this post, I set out the five most common predatory practices we’re seeing in the Golden State cannabis industry so you can spot them when they’re coming at you and avoid them.
Brokers. Whether it’s for M&A, financing, or finding real estate, many brokers are all too willing to sell cannabis companies down the river when it comes to compliance and just plain common sense. Far too many brokers neither know nor care about local or state law and they work only at cramming a deal down the parties’ throats to ensure they get their coveted commissions. Far too often we are getting brought into deals that involve unenforceable contracts or situations that will get one or both parties in trouble for failing to comply with local or state licensing, permitting, or operational laws or regulations.
California cannabis businesses need to be careful in choosing their cannabis regulatory or business counsel. For twenty years there’s been no government oversight over medical cannabis operators and this has allowed some attorneys to unduly profit at the expense of their clients and their own ethical duties. And just because regulation is coming does not mean that some of these attorneys will stop their reckless, unethical, or incompetent ways. I’ve written before about how to avoid “OG legal advice,” but it goes further than that. If your cannabis attorney is willing to take a financial interest in your business but is not providing you with the requisite conflict waiver and opportunity for you to consult with outside legal counsel, that should be a huge red flag. If you know more about state and local regulations than your cannabis lawyer, that’s another red flag. If your cannabis attorney is trying to “lock” you into a long-term fee agreement that you can’t cancel at any time, that’s a massive red flag (yes, I have seen at least one self-proclaimed cannabis attorney with this sort of fee agreement). If your cannabis lawyer is encouraging you not to be transparent or not to get things in writing or is steering you away from basic business and corporate duties to try to hide things and/or assets, this is yet another red flag. These predatory attorneys will eventually be knocked out of California’s cannabis industry one or the other, but until then it’s buyer beware.
Consultants. Out of all groups on this list, this one is generally the worst. Not only is it increasingly difficult to determine the value most cannabis consultants provide, there are way too many cannabis consultants running rackets because they themselves are blocked from pursuing licensure with the state or a given city or county. We also have seen more than our share of consultants trolling for cash by playing off the naiveté of would-be cannabis licensees. I recently reviewed a proposed agreement with a consultant who wanted seven figures per year for getting a company “through the political process” to receive a cannabis license, yet didn’t include anyenumerated services nor any end date. Seeing as how California’s Bureau of Cannabis Control has made clear that state licensing procedures will not be a difficult undertaking, the idea of politicking for licenses makes no sense and paying for such politicking makes even less sense. Don’t be fooled.
Accountants. There’s nothing like talking to a would-be client who has no clue what 280E is yet is working with an accountant/CPA who claims to know cannabis taxation issues and charges premium rates for that “specialized advice.” You need to make sure your accountant/CPA truly knows how to navigate 280E, but above all you want your accountant to be a competent tax professional. All too often we run into accountants who claim to be experts for cannabis businesses that do shoddy jobs on standard accounting or are impossible to reach when their clients need them. In other words, choose your accountant/CPA wisely.
Cannabis conferences and trade groups. Every time we turn around, there’s a new cannabis conference or trade group in California (or elsewhere). Folks have figured out that they can make serious money off the “Green Rush” by throwing events in major cities without much knowledge about anything cannabis-related, or that they can better market themselves and their personal agendas through setting up trade organizations. Few of these conferences have any educational value and most choose their speakers based on who pays for “membership” or “sponsorship.” Having paid to play, the speakers use these conferences mostly just to shamelessly pitch themselves or their products. We have heard of many expensive yet wildly disorganized conferences with speakers who were super stoned and conveyed nothing of value or importance. On the trade group front, watch where you put your money since many of these organizations are neither unified or even organized when it comes to any kind of meaningful mission for change. Be especially wary of self-appointed and deceptively misleading “task forces” that are not actually compiled and appointed by a given city or county, but rather set up to showcase the goods or services of the person or people who formed them. In other words, do your due diligence.
