BY SARA REED
SaraReed@coloradoan.com
A District Court judge in Fort Collins issued a strongly-worded rebuke
today to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment for
not complying with a court order related to a medical marijuana case.
Chief Judge James Hiatt threatened the agency with a contempt citation
and told an attorney from the Colorado Attorney General's office to
turn over information on medical marijuana patients for whom James and
Lisa Masters of Fort Collins acted as primary caregivers.
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"Your client (individuals from the Colorado Department of Public
Health and Environment) needs to get appropriate appellate relief,
comply with the order or, option three, someone is going to wind up in
jail," Hiatt told Anne Holton, an attorney with the attorney general's
office, during a scheduled hearing today.
The Masters, who are medical marijuana patients, were arrested and
charged with cultivation and distribution of marijuana last summer.
Those charges were dropped in June after it was ruled the search of
their home was illegal.
Now the couple has been fighting to get back the equipment and plants
seized from their home more than a year ago. However, that process was
delayed until late next month because the depart-ment still refuses to
produce the records.
As part of the process, Hiatt required prosecutors to subpoena the
records from the health de-partment, which administers the medical
marijuana program. The agency appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court
but that was denied.
Amendment 20, passed in November 2000 to establish Colorado's medical
marijuana program, re-quires the department to maintain a confidential
database of medical marijuana patients. Holton said that privacy
should be balanced against the prosecution's need for the records. The
prosecution's need for the records does not rise to the level to
justify breaching the confidentiality of the medical marijuana
program, she argued.
"The process we are in now is not a criminal proceeding," Holton said.
"The DA's interest is not in prosecuting but in retaining seized
evidence."
Hiatt disagreed and at one point called the delay unfair to the
parties involved. Hiatt gave the department until 5 p.m. Monday to
turn over the records. If the records have not been submitted by that
time, Hiatt said he would issue a contempt citation.
"You can't just say 'we still disagree with the order,' " he said.
Rob Corry, one of the attorneys representing the Masters, said after
the hearing he was gratified that Hiatt and prosecutor Michael Pierson
seem to be taking the matter so seriously but that there is some
frustration in the delay.
"This is medicine that people need," he said.
Corry argued in court that because the charges against his clients
were dropped that they were en-titled to get back their property,
including the seized marijuana. In an order issued in June, Hiatt said
a hearing on the matter was necessary because the medical marijuana
component of the case was never addressed by the resolution in the
case.
Prosecutors have objected to the property being returned, citing that
neither James nor Lisa Masters were registered medical marijuana
patients at the time of the seizure nor was there any docu-mentation
that they were serving as caregivers for other medical marijuana
patients.
