[420 Girl]

SEBRING - The cases that resulted from the dismantling of roughly 90 grow houses in Highlands County are about 90 percent resolved, according to Assistant State Attorney Steve Houchin.

Three cases are still pending, including one against Hansel C. Vasallo, who is charged with cultivating marijuana, trafficking in marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia.

His case is scheduled to go to trial on April 12.

Houchin said the next pertains to mortgage fraud. The state attorney's office has 10 of those cases on their plate, while the statewide prosecutor is working the same number.

The majority of the work done with mortgage fraud - about 60 to 70 percent - is being handled by the U.S. Attorney's Office, according to Houchin.

Several suspects were arrested in Miami in October on charges of mortgage fraud and grand theft stemming from the Highlands County grow house busts.

The accusations were that the suspects bought the house through illegal means for the sole purpose of growing marijuana.

When the grow houses were busted, the people inside were not those in charge of all the money used in the operation, according to Houchin.
"These were simply the farmers," he said.

Prosecuting the farmers

Deputies with the Highlands County Sheriff's Office arrested approximately 105 people between Nov. 8, 2006 and Aug. 25, 2009 in connection with the grow houses.

That amounted to around 60 or 70 cases, according to Houchin, since many were co-defendants.

With that many cases, there were bound to be challenges, he said. The marijuana evidence was one of them.

When the grow houses were busted, the seized plants were stored in portable metal units, where the marijuana literally melted and decomposed. Deputies later learned, from Polk County counterparts, that the marijuana should have been dried first.

The decomposition of the plants led defendant Nelson Rodriguez, one of the grow house defendants, to file a motion asking the court to dismiss the marijuana evidence since it could no longer be produced in court or weighed.

"Defendant claims that as a result of the improper storage, the cannabis mildewed, creating a biohazard to anyone inside the storage facility," according to court documents. "As a result, defendant contends he cannot inspect, copy, test or photograph this evidence."

Rodriguez's motion was denied, and he pleaded no contest to charges of grand theft, theft of a utility or cable service, trafficking in marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. He was sentenced to three years in state prison, followed by three years of probation.

Chivalry not dead

The case was interesting because it represented another trend the state attorney's office saw when prosecuting the grow house suspects. Elisabeth Hernandez was a co-defendant. She was also Rodriguez's wife.

Assistant State Attorney David Ward, who handled most of the grow house cases along with fellow prosecutor Richard Castillo, said there were several instances of married couples being picked up for growing pot.

In several of those types of cases, the husband would take full responsibility to try and spare his wife further prosecution, according to Ward.

"Who says chivalry is dead?" he said.

Rodriguez ultimately took the hit for his wife Elisabeth, according to Ward.

While some wives did walk, just because a husband was willing to take the fall didn't always mean the spouse simply got away scot-free.

"How much independent evidence do I have against the wife?" Ward said when discussing what the next step would be. "They truly are all fact driven."

He remembered in one of the cases, the wife had $25,000 cash in her purse that she claimed was from a Miami home sale. Enough red flags were raised that the suspect received a lesser sentence.

That was the case with Elisabeth Hernandez. Despite her husband trying to put everything on his shoulders, she was adjudicated guilty of grand theft, theft of a utility or cable service, a reduced charge of attempted trafficking in marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia, according to court records,

She was sentenced to three years of probation.
It wasn't me
A common tactic for grow house defendants was to try and plead ignorance, according to Ward.

If the wife didn't have a husband who'd prove his love with prison time instead of flowers, she might claim she didn't know what was going on behind the locked door.

A very common story was a Miami homeowner saying he didn't know what his tenants were up to when he rented them the home in Highlands County, Ward said.

The tenants would counter by saying the items used to grow the marijuana had been left there by the homeowner.

Others would claim to simply be dropping by right before the authorities showed up to bust the grow house.

In each of these cases, the prosecution would have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the suspects were involved in the grow operation.
Sometimes, the evidence wasn't there and a no bill would be announced by the grand jury, which means the evidence does not support the charges.

Daniel Isaac Moreno, Inakis Lopez and Victor Hernandez-Gonzalez were a few of the earliest defendants who were no-billed, according to court records.

A no bill was also announced in Elisabeth Hernandez's case on a charge of manufacturing marijuana.

Restitution

Since many of the grow house cases dealt with electricity theft, restitution was made in several of them.

That amount was often in the tens of thousands of dollars per case, according to Houchin.

Before an amount was determined, either Glades Electric or Progress Energy would send an investigator to see how many grow lights were found, Ward said.

The number of lights would help investigators estimate how many kilowatt hours were used per day. That total would be multiplied by the number of days the grow was operated.

Ward said that determination was made by grow house experts, who could look at the size of the marijuana plants to figure out how long they had been growing.

Taking all that information, a restitution amount for the stolen electricity could be made.

"They were all estimates," Ward said.


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