State grants return of Assenberg’s plants

Gazette Editor

Michael Assenberg, Colfax marijuana grower who became part of the state medical marijuana debate, packed a heaping box of paper bags full of marijuana out of the Whitman County sheriff’s office Monday morning.

Michael Assenberg carries a box full of bagged marijuana out of the sheriff’s office Monday morning.

The paper bags containing marijuana plants had been held in custody since officers seized the plants in a search of the Assenberg home on S. Mill Street in May of 2011.

Assenberg collected the packages after Superior Court Judge David Frazier Friday approved the defendant’s motion to have the marijuana returned.

Prosecutor Denis Tracy at Friday’s hearing told the court the state would not object to Assenberg’s motion to return the plants. He said the state has dropped charges against Assenberg and does not plan to file any other charges related to the case. He said his decision evolved from a state appeals court hearing which changed the legal interpretation of the state’s medical marijuana act which was on the books at the time the drug agents took the marijuana out of the Assenberg residence.

Assenberg and his defense attorneys have contended he was operating a legal growing operation as a provider for patients under the medical marijuana act.

Detectives at the time reported they seized 82 plants from the Assenberg residence. The plants were later placed in numbered paper bags and kept as evidence in the event the case ever went to trial. Assenberg was asked to sign off on the bags to acknowledge receipt. Also returned were jars of processed marijuana which had also been held as evidence by the county in the case.

Sheriff Brett Myers assisted in the return of evidence. Assenberg first sought return of his marijuana a week after he entered not guilty pleas to four drug charges in October of 2011.

He was charged Sept. 22, 2011, with two counts of delivery of marijuana, one count of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver and one count of manufacture of marijuana. Assenberg, who was summoned to appear in court a week later, pleaded not guilty.

He was represented at that time by Defense Attorney Steven Martonick who filed a motion Oct. 7 for return of the property. The motion contended Assenberg legally possessed the marijuana under the state’s medical marijuana act.

Tracy in his motion to dismiss Jan. 4 told the court a state appeals court late last year changed the interpretation of the medical marijuana law which was on the books when Assenberg was charged. The appeals ruling reversed a conviction of a dispensary operator with a revised ruling on the “one patient at a time for a moment in time” defense which could be applied as a defense in the Assenberg case. Tracy noted the legislature has made substantial changes in the medical marijuana law since Assenberg was charged and that led to a decision to not pursue the case.

The prosecutor Friday noted in court the situation was unique because it involved return of marijuana to a former defendant. He said he realized it placed the sheriff in an “unusual situation to be doing this.”