Aspen – A judge Thursday granted a prosecutor’s request to dismiss charges against a licensed medical marijuana grower after investigators unwittingly destroyed the large plants and pictures of them were barred from being used as evidence.
Assistant District Attorney Vincent Felletter asked that charges against Jennifer Ryan be dismissed with prejudice, which Judge James Boyd granted. Charges could be refiled later.
Investigators said Ryan had 131 marijuana plants, 101 more than her licenses allowed, when she was arrested in June by the Two Rivers Drug Enforcement Team. Ryan says that only 20 of the plants were viable and the rest were small cuttings and should not be counted.
The state constitutional amendment that authorized medical marijuana requires that whole plants seized in such cases be preserved as evidence, but officers destroyed the large plants after videotaping and photographing them. They saved only the small plants and one leaf from each from the large plants.
Boyd last month refused a defense request to toss out the case but barred the prosecution from using pictures of the plants as evidence.
