DETROIT — Attorneys filed a federal class action lawsuit against the Michigan State Police crime labs this week, claiming its current marijuana reporting policy violates due process and Fourth Amendment rights and demanding it be thrown out for good.
This suit would have statewide impact, directly affecting the some 180,000 registered medical marijuana patients and anyone caught with marijuana in Michigan. Attorneys Michael Komorn and Tim Daniels filed the suit Tuesday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Detroit Division.
They write the crime labs intentionally misreport marijuana as synthetic, as we saw in the Max Lorincz case in Ottawa County. A judge threw out his felony drug charge 16 months into the case; meanwhile, Lorincz’s 6-year-old son spent 18 months in foster care.
Lorincz is one of the four plaintiffs in the complaint.
But it goes further, writing that the 2013 marijuana policy in the labs was “made in an attempt to strip medical marijuana patients of their rights and immunities, charge or threaten to charge citizens with greater crimes than they might have committed, obtain plea deals and increase proceeds from drug forfeiture.”
“The fact that it continues to go on,” said Komorn, “it’s an outrage; it’s not science. The Michigan Medical Marijuana [Program] was supposed to be a shield, not a sword.”
Last fall, the MSP Forensic Science Division Director Captain Gregoire Michaud, whoquietly retired this May, made a presentation for the Wayne County Criminal Defense Bar. Michaud had said out of the crime labs’ $60 million budget, 40 percent was spent on testing marijuana. He said this caseload volume impeded their work on investigating other cases, specifically testing rape kits statewide.
Komorn reiterated this suit is working to dismiss this policy in the labs and rearrange the state police’s priorities.
“That’s one of the things that I’m hoping comes out of this, is that we turn the focus away from and onto the more, that we would all agree, serious crimes that we need full-on police investigation attention,” said Komorn.
The MSP Public Affairs Manager Shanon Banner told FOX 17 Wednesday they will not comment on a pending case, defaulting to their Nov. 2015 statement.
Later this year, the state police labs are up for their renewal of their international accreditation with the American Society of Crime Laboratory Directors/Laboratory Accreditation Board. It is likely the MSP’s crime labs’ marijuana misreporting allegations will be challenged during this process.
A Michigan man has been living a nightmare. He lost custody of his son after a felony marijuana bust, even though he has a valid medical marijuana card.
Max Lorincz is fighting to clear his name after he was accused of possessing synthetic marijuana. His bizarre case has revealed how politics might influence pot prosecutions in Michigan.
Lorincz claims he suffers from a debilitating back injury. He says when he traded prescription drugs for this edible candy containing marijuana his symptoms got better.
But it was a small amount of hash oil that landed Lorincz in the weeds.
Police found it when paramedics came to his house on an unrelated medical emergency. Prosecutors charged Lorincz with a felony after the state crime lab determined his hash oil came from an “origin unknown,” implying it is synthetic.
Michigan’s medical marijuana law says only leaves and flowers are legal, and concentrates are a crime.
“I’ve had to go back to the narcotic pain medications, and it’s just terrible,” said Lorincz.
Lorincz tells Crime Watch Daily Grand Rapids affiliate WXMI as his case wound its way through the system, he was forced to go back on powerful painkillers.
“The doctors are telling me one thing, the judge is saying another, and when I followed my doctor’s recommendations, that’s when my health started to get better,” Lorincz said. “Going back and following what the judge is saying, my health’s just been deteriorating ever since.”
Max Lorincz says what was worse was losing custody of his 6-year-old boy. In court a social worker testified against Lorincz, saying his use of marijuana, even if it is legal, may make him an unfit parent.
“This is a political decision,” said Lorincz’s lawyer Michael Komorn.
Komorn claims prosecutors influence the state lab to misreport results so they can get more convictions.
“What is unique about this case is they are relying on the lab to report these substances so they can escalate these crimes from misdemeanors to felonies,” said Komorn.
A former lab director says Komorn’s claims are true.
“So it was in my experience, it was just a nonstop political game that really got frustrating and it wore down the morale of our staff, and quite honestly it wore me down,” said John Collins, a former lab director.
Collins quit his job as director of the state lab after he says he was pressured to produce results that favored the prosecution.
“Our laboratories are not in the prosecution business, they’re not in the conviction business, they’re in the science business,” said Collins.
The Michigan Prosecuting Attorneys Association is denying those claims from Lorincz and his attorney.
As for Max Lorincz, he’s now off the hook. A judge dismissed the felony charge, saying there was no evidence to prove the hash oil was synthetic.
Lorincz and his wife are reunited with their son.
“It’s like a hundred pounds has been lifted off my chest,” said Lorincz. “It’s like our entire life was put on hold the entire time he was gone.
“We’ll try and have as many positive memories as we can to make up the gap but there’s definitely nothing that makes up for the time that we lost, that’s for sure,” said Lorincz.
Victims said the judge would sentence them to community service, invite them to his home, and ask them to bend over to pick up cans while he took pictures.
An Arkansas judge resigned just days after he was found with thousands of pictures of nude men in his computer, many who appeared in his courtroom and received reduced sentences from the judge.
Cross County District Judge Joseph Boeckmann was accused of trading softer sentences in his court for men who went to his home and posed for him, sometimes bending over, sometimes nude, and sometimes in acts of masturbation.
In some cases, men sentenced by Boeckmann were photographed at the judge’s home before Boeckmann paid their court fines himself.
It was a practice that investigators believe spanned the entire time Boeckmann served as a judge since 2009, David J. Sachar, executive director of the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission told BuzzFeed News.
In the months-long investigation, Sachar said they have identified about 30 men who were defendants in Boeckmann’s court during the six-year period, were photographed at the judge’s home, and received some sort of payment from the magistrate. Many others have not been identified yet.
“We had victims come forward in the last two weeks who had been denying all this time. There’s a lot of shame and hesitation,” Sachar told BuzzFeed News. “Of course, it took a lot of courage for those people to come forward.”
Boeckmann has not presided over any new cases since November of last year, when the commission first announced the charges against him and the Supreme Court of Arkansas assigned his cases to another judge.
He submitted his resignation Monday, just days after the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission told his attorney they had obtained nearly 4,500 photographs of men in his home computer and camera, including several young men who had been sentenced to “community service.”
According to the commission, Boeckmann would often offer “substitutionary sentences,” to young men in his court, asking them for their personal number or giving them his personal cell phone number.
The men were typically white and between the ages of 18 to 35, according to the documents.
Instead of defendants being sentenced to picking up trash on county roads, the men would be invited to the judge’s home where they would simulate the act of picking up cans from the ground, while, “Boeckmann would photograph the buttocks of the men as they were bending to retrieve the garbage.”
In one case, the defendant told investigators Boeckmann asked him to take two bags filled with cans to his home, and began to take pictures of him picking up the cans at the judge’s backyard.
Victims told investigators Boeckmann would tell them how to pose, sometimes telling them to spread their legs further. One defendant told investigators that after Boeckmann took pictures of him bending over, the judge asked him if he would go inside his home and pose “like Michelangelo’s David.”
Boeckmann is accused of keeping thousands of those pictures in his computer before he resigned and promised the commission to never again seek a job as a local, county, or state employee.
Sachar said the allegations surfaced when the commission was looking into an allegation of conflict interest, where Boeckmann had presided over a case of a personal friend.
“We were wondering, why is he handling a case involving family and friends?” he said.
In that case, Boeckmann had reduced a $50,000 bond for Crystal Avellino, who happened to be the mother of the judge’s niece. But as investigators looked into the case, they found Boeckmann had also presided over cases involving Avellino’s brother, who was engaged in a sexual relationship with the judge, Sachar said.
Investigators discovered a pattern of the judge contacting young male defendants from his court, telling them sentencing involved them doing “community service” at his home, and often paying them for posing for pictures.
“It’s every bit of his judicial career,” he said.
Some of the men were found to have developed a sexual relationship with the judge, while others only posed for the suggestive pictures.
One defendant told investigators he was paid for years to perform maintenance duties at rental properties owned by Boeckmann, and also for posing nude while the judge took pictures.
The judge would allegedly ask him to “spread my legs further and further apart,” and later told him he would not have to pay a $500 court fine.
In some cases, investigators found that Boeckmann wrote personal checks to pay the court fees of the same men who appeared before his court as defendants.
Investigators have reviewed at least one of Boeckmann’s checking accounts, which shows he issued 150 checks to seven defendants over a six-year span, paying them at least $30,000.
Officials have also found evidence the judge’s actions might go back farther than his years on the bench, including his time as a prosecutor in the same judicial district before becoming a judge, and in his private practice.
One man told officials he hired Boeckman for his divorce and owed him attorneys fees at one point. The fees were forgiven in exchange for posing for pictures, with his pants down, after being spanked, Sachar said.
The commission pointed out that during his time as judge, Boeckmann has paid court fees, overlooked court fees, hired, or become involved in personal, sexual relationships with young white men defendants at his court, while at the same time “patronizes, yells and screams at those litigants who are minorities or female, with whom he does not have an intimate personal relationship with.”
The judge repeatedly denied the allegations in statements to the commission during the investigation, and said the pictures were “solely for the purpose of recording proof of community service.”
He submitted his resignation three days after the commission said it had reviewed 1,050 photographs, and was in the progress of receiving 3,400 more.
“Boeckmann denies engaging in any pattern of seeking out young Caucasian male litigants for the purpose of forming personal sexual relationships,” the statement read.
Although his resignation ends the investigation by the Judicial Discipline and Disability Commission, Sachar said the case has been referred for a criminal investigation.
The case is currently being reviewed by federal investigators, as well as a special state investigator.
In July of 2014, the St. Clair County Drug Task Force (DTF) raided the home and business of Annette and Dale Shattuck, a couple who owned a medical marijuana dispensary in Kimball, Michigan.
The Shattucks were at their dispensary, DNA Wellness Center, when DTF agents arrested them, the Washington Post reported. Meanwhile, their four young children were playing at home under the supervision of their grandmother.
“DTF busted in the door that morning, a no-knock, battering ram entry,” reads a briefing filed by the Shattuck’s attorney “During the dynamic entry, armed DTF officers wearing ski masks separated the children from their grandmother at gunpoint, shouting at her to get the dog under control or they would shoot it. The deputies kept the children lined up on the couch at gunpoint, refusing even to remove their masks to help calm the kids, including two three-year-old toddlers.”
[Note: The Shattuck’s Attorney is Michael Komorn. – A well known and highly experienced lawyer for Michigan medical marijuana cases].
A sheriff for the task force told the Washington Post that these claims were a “misrepresentation,” saying there was “no way in hell” officers would point their weapons at children. He did, however, acknowledge that it’s standard practice for officers to draw their weapons in such raids.
Perhaps no story illustrates the confusion surrounding medical marijuana’s legal status better than that of the Shattucks—a couple who went extra lengths to ensure their compliance with state laws.
The Shattucks obtained the necessary permits and licenses from their local planning commission. The landlord of the building where the dispensary was housed gave his permission in the lease. Bill Orr, the chairman of the commission, thanked the Shattucks for “following the ordinance and taking the necessary steps to open the business within Kimball Township in the manner required,” according to court documents.
Annette, a registered caregiver with the state, personally called the DTF and requested an inspection of DNA Wellness to insure that the business complied with state law. But instead of conducting an inspection, the task force decided to send confidential informants into the dispensary to make purchases, which they then used as probable cause for a raid.
Annette and Bill were charged with felony possession with intent to distribute and possession with intent to manufacture marijuana.
The Shattucks’ plight is one of many that show how confusing, patchy medical marijuana laws harm businesses and upend lives. Businesses and caregivers in MMJ-legal states are subject to conflicting signals from different government entities. Even though the federal government does not allow federal funds to be used against cannabis companies operating legally under state laws, the state laws themselves are murky and open to interpretation.
Michigan’s legislature needs to enact clearer laws regulating the cannabis industry—the current law does not address the legality of dispensaries and does not allow for marijuana to be sold from them. The ambiguous rules are not just a problem for those in the marijuana industry:
“The Michigan Supreme Court has spent countless hours adjudicating a total of eight cases involving medical marijuana since the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act was passed in 2008,” reports Downtown magazine.
Supreme Court justices and local governments have pressed the state’s legislature to do something to clarify the laws. But attempts to do so have been stagnant: A trio of medical marijuana bills that have been approved by the House are now languishing in a Senate committee. One of them would establish a licensing system for retailers, growers and distributors.
Meanwhile, 53 percent of voters say they would approve a ballot initiative to completely legalize and tax marijuana, according to a recent poll.
While voters want the plant to be legal and regulated, lawmakers seem not to be prioritizing the issue, putting patients, caregivers and business owners at the mercy of an arbitrary system.
A judge recently threw out the charges against the Shattucks, ruling that the government can’t prosecute you for a “crime” that another arm of the government approved. But unfortunately for the family, the consequences still linger.
Their 10-year-old daughter has been in counseling for more than a year to deal with the trauma as a result of the raid. The DTF has not returned all of their property, and the property that has been returned is damaged. The couple continues to struggle with the burden of legal fees and finding work—though charges have been dropped.
In the absence of federal progress on marijuana policy, states with any sort of legal cannabis, have a duty to responsibly regulate the industry. Whether they have passed useless CBD legislation or have voter referendums, too many states are sitting idly by as local jurisdictions and individuals try to navigate the haphazard laws, sometimes—as in the case of the Shattuck family—with ruinous results.
