[OG Kush]

A Mower County District Court jury didn’t take long on Friday to convict a 45-year-old Austin man on felony drug charges for growing marijuana inside his home.

Timothy Sorgine was found with 86 marijuana plants containing 202 grams (a little over seven ounces) of the drug during a July 21, 2005 search at his 312 37th Street SW home. Sorgine did not deny he was growing the drugs, but used the jury trial to explain why.

Public defender Matt Arthurs cited a Minnesota Court of Appeals 2003 unpublished opinion on the State v. Fordyce in an April notice to the court regarding his client’s intended “defense of necessity.”

It stated the “defendant may assert his ‘due process right to explain his conduct’ by explaining that ‘marijuana provides a life worth living and Western medicine does not.’” The same ruling stated that while the court could not refute that dual argument, “whether, and under what circumstances, the medical necessity defense can be used is for the legislature.”

Assistant County Attorney Jeremy Clinefelter, who prosecuted the case Thursday and into Friday morning, said the only instance in which marijuana is permitted for medicinal purposes in Minnesota is when a patient is terminally ill with cancer and supervised by a doctor. Sorgine walks with a limp and suffers from rheumatoid arthritis.

“It’s not a valid legal explanation,” Clinefelter said of Sorgine’s defense.

Clinefelter said the jury took less than 15 minutes to return a guilty verdict on both counts of fifth-degree drug crimes. The evidence included 107 photographs and a cart filled with bags of marijuana, which presented other attorneys in the courtroom hallways with ample opportunities to snicker.

Sorgine will return in October for sentencing. Clinefelter said Sorgine likely has no criminal history points, so he faces probation on a stayed one year and one month prison sentence.

The case is the second felony drug case the county has filed against Sorgine. Court records show prosecutors dismissed the previous file because the 4 grams of marijuana found in Sorgine’s home in August of 2002 did not meet the minimum standard of 42.5 grams that brings marijuana possession to the felony level.


Newshawk: SX420 - 420Girls.com
Source: 420Times.com
Pub Date: Saturday, August 19, 2006
Author: By Josh Verges/Austin Daily Herald
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