...for growing medical marijuana. Thank you, Michigan, for getting this vicious criminal off the streets. :rolleyes:
An assistant prosecutor told jurors this morning to follow the law and not use sympathy when weighing the fate of a 70-year-old woman facing a drug charge.
In the end, the jury heeded that advice and decided to convict Barbara Agro as charged. She faces sentencing July 13 on one count of delivery/manufacture of marijuana, a 4-year felony.
The former Lake Orion police dispatcher worked as a receptionist at a medical marijuana dispensary in Ferndale called Clinical Relief. When the facility was raided on Aug. 25, 2010, Agro told deputies that she had marijuana plants growing at her house. Deputies found 19 marijuana plants and other items during a search of her Lake Orion home.
“You must hold the defendant accountable for her actions,” said Assistant Prosecutor Beth Hand during her closing argument.
Defense attorney Jerome Sabbota said Agro used the substance for medical reasons.
“In this case here, we have a person who was growing medicine for herself,” Sabbota said.
Sabbota referenced old laws, such as those surrounding prohibition and a law that once made it a crime to harbor a runaway slave. In his opening statement yesterday, he told jurors that laws sometimes need to be changed.
Hand pointed out that Sabbota did not contest any elements of the charged crime.
Hand said marijuana, in the state of Michigan, is still illegal. She said Agro is not charged with using marijuana, but with growing it.
“This is not a medical marijuana case,” she said.
Hand referenced Agro’s age and told jurors that all different types of people break the law.
“The law is that sympathy and prejudice have no place in the courtroom,” she said.
Agro is a registered medical marijuana patient and caregiver. Oakland Circuit Judge Wendy Potts previously granted a motion from prosecutors seeking to preclude Agro from referencing the Michigan Medical Marijuana Act during the trial.
Onward and upward,
airforce
