Federal prosecutors charged five Washington medical marijuana patients who shared an outdoor garden near Kettle Falls, where 74 plants grew on a plot marked with a large green cross visible from the air.[1] All five held doctor’s recommendations, and their combined plant count sat below the state’s presumptive limit of 15 plants per patient, but the government argued the extra must be for sale despite almost no evidence of dealing.[1] Barred from telling jurors why they grew, Rhonda Firestack-Harvey, her son Rolland Gregg and his wife Michelle Gregg were convicted on 3 March 2015 of growing more than 50 but fewer than 100 plants, while jurors acquitted them of distribution, conspiracy, firearms and 100-plant counts that carried five-year mandatory minimums.[1] Family friend Jason Zucker pleaded guilty for a 16-month term just before trial, and Harvey’s husband Larry was dropped from the case with terminal pancreatic cancer and died that August.[1][2]
On 2 October 2015 a judge sentenced Gregg to 33 months and the two women to a year each in federal prison, well below the 41 to 51 months prosecutors sought.[2] The convictions were vacated and the charges dismissed on 3 January 2017, and that October the Justice Department conceded in a brief that pursuing the case had been illegal since December 2014, when Congress barred spending on prosecutions of state-lawful medical growers.[3][4]
