Gerald “Jerry” Duval Jr., a 54-year-old kidney-pancreas transplant patient with coronary artery disease and diabetic retinopathy, grew medical marijuana with his son Jeremy on the family property at Petersburg under Michigan’s medical marijuana law.[1] Monroe County sheriff’s deputies searched the barbed-wire greenhouses in June and August 2011, finding 144 plants and then 67 more, for 211 in total, far above the 12 plants Gerald could grow as a patient and the 72 each that Jeremy and his sister Ashley could grow as patient-caregivers.[2][3] Ashley was never charged.[2]

Federal agents had arrested the Duvals in 2011 for manufacturing with intent to distribute, conspiracy to manufacture and maintaining a drug premises, and a jury convicted father and son in April 2012 without any medical-necessity or state-law defence.[1] Gerald drew ten years and Jeremy five; Gerald surrendered on 11 June 2013 to FMC Devens in Massachusetts, where advocates said his care would cost taxpayers more than $1 million and complained his treatment was inadequate.[4][1] The Justice Department also moved to forfeit the family’s home and farmland.[1]

Appeal fails

The Sixth Circuit heard argument on 23 January 2014 and on 7 February affirmed, backing the search warrants and rejecting the family’s compliance claims; Jeremy’s earlier felony drug conviction had already disqualified him as a caregiver.[1][2][3] The court backed Deputy Ian Glick’s account that a confidential informant, not an earlier visit to the farm, sparked the case, and rejected the family’s challenges rooted in the state medical law.[2][3]