Family invites sheriff to inspect their med. weed dispensary; instead they raid

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Annette Shattuck and her husband, Dale, had been facing felony charges of possession of marijuana with intent to distribute, possession with intent to manufacture marijuana and maintaining a drug house. But last month, Michigan Circuit Court Judge Daniel Kelly threw out all criminal complaints filed against the Shattucks “on the grounds of entrapment by estoppel,” according to court filings. Entrapment by estoppel occurs when a government official leads a defendant to believe that their conduct is permissible under the law

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In 2014, the Shattucks were starting up a marijuana dispensary under Michigan’s medical marijuana law. They worked to ensure every last detail was in full compliance with the law as they understood it: They obtained the permission of the landlord of the building where the dispensary, called the DNA Wellness Center, was to be housed. They went to local planning commission meetings to obtain the proper permits and licenses. They discussed business hours, security measures and even signage requirements with the planning commission.

The town building inspector checked the property and approved the signage. The chairman of the planning commission publicly thanked the Shattucks for working within the allowed legal framework. According to court documents, the Shattucks even went so far as to call the local sheriff’s Drug Task Force to invite them to inspect the property and verify their compliance with the law.

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But the Task Force never inspected the property. Instead, acting on an anonymous tip that marijuana was being sold at the location, agents of the St. Clair County Drug Task Force conducted a number of “controlled buys,” where informants with medical marijuana cards entered the dispensary and purchased marijuana under the guise of medical use. That gave them enough probable cause to execute a raid.

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Technically, Shattuck’s dispensary should not have been approved by the town planning commission, because the law does not provide for selling marijuana in dispensaries, Guilliat said. “I think the township probably thought they were doing the right thing, without knowing what the law says,” he added.

On July 28, 2014 – not long after the couple reached out to them to perform a compliance check – task force agents raided both the dispensary and the Shattucks’ home. In addition to charging the Shattucks with a variety of marijuana-related drug crimes, they took a lawnmower, a bicycle, their daughter’s birthday money, their marriage certificate and numerous other belongings, according to Annette Shattuck’s testimony before the Michigan House last year.

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Under asset forfeiture laws, police are allowed to seize and keep property suspected of involvement in a crime, regardless of whether the property’s owners are ever convicted – or even charged, in many cases. Michigan’s laws are particularly skewed against property owners, according a 2015 report from the Institute for Justice. The nonprofit civil liberties law firm gave Michigan a D- on its forfeiture laws, citing “poor protections for innocent property owners” and policies that allow police to keep up to 100 percent of the proceeds from forfeited property, creating a profit motive for seizing belongings.

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Annette Shattuck says that since the charges have been dismissed, the Drug Task Force has returned some of her property. But much of it is damaged. Electronic items are missing power cords and remotes. Her and her husband’s phones were smashed. They returned her husband’s guns and the safe he stored him in, but they didn’t return the key. Two of the kids’ insurance cards are missing. Shattuck says her marriage and birth certificates haven’t been returned, and since the Task Force does not itemize seized documents in its paperwork, it has no record of taking them in the first place.

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The pending charges had made it difficult for the Shattucks to find work. Annette’s husband Dale had worked in construction before starting up the dispensary. But since the police seized all his tools, he had difficulty returning to his old line of work. They turned to borrowing money from friends and family. “We owe a lot of people a lot of money,” Shattuck said. “We depended on the kindness of relatives. If we didn’t have them, we wouldn’t have been able to do anything.”

Even though all charges against her have been dropped, “I’m still not innocent in the perception of the community,” she said. She recently tried to volunteer at an event at her children’s school. But school officials told her that simply being charged with a drug felony was enough to bar her from volunteering there.

Guilliat, the assistant prosecutor for St. Clair County, says that knowing what they do now about the case, his office “would have never gotten involved.” He added: “Since this case, there have been substantial changes due to the case interpretations of this very confusing statute. We now know more than we did back then – if it’s a close call, we don’t do it.” Meaning, he said, that “we don’t want to put people who think they’re doing the right thing – even if they’re not – through the system.”

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